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Your guide to the 2025 PYP changes

Cindy Blackburn, Director of Learning and Engagement, Toddle

Ronalda Fernandes, Manager, Learning and Engagement, Toddle

Table of contents

Big updates have arrived in the PYP for 2025! Here’s what you need to know:

Key concepts now use clearer terminology, say hello to specified and additional concepts (the descriptors remain the same).
Transdisciplinary themes have been refreshed with sharper language and a stronger focus on relevance, balance, and action.
Subject guides have been overhauled for clarity and coherence, replacing the old scope and sequences with a unified structure across all subjects.
Inquiry Learning Progressions (ILPs) provide a new way to make inquiry visible, track growth, and support student agency.
Toddle has already been updated to reflect these changes, so you can get a head start.

The PYP got a major refresh, and we’ve got everything you need to make sense of the updates. Here’s everything you need to know to keep your school ahead of the curve. Plus, we’re sharing a few new resources perfect for refreshing your classroom and digging into the changes right away. Let’s dive in.

Disclaimer: This content reflects the author’s interpretation of the changes and is not officially endorsed by the IB. For accurate and comprehensive information, please refer to the official documentation on MyIB.

Change #1: The concepts

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet – William Shakespeare

The concepts we know and love; form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective, and responsibility are staying the same, but the way we talk about them is evolving.

Why the change?

The major drive behind the change is to make the language clearer and more aligned with transdisciplinary thinking and planning.

Specified concepts are the ‘big ideas’ we explore across the transdisciplinary framework. They provide a shared language to help us explain the world and organize our mental schema across the PYP.
Additional concepts are the more specific, disciplinary ideas connected to our units. These concepts bring depth to units and help teachers target what students will understand in each subject.

And the best part? The descriptors for the concepts remain unchanged, just update the terminology.

Download the all-new specified concepts poster here!

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Change #2: The transdisciplinary themes

No need to panic, the new transdisciplinary theme descriptors were released in December 2024, but there’s plenty of time to adapt. The official updates are here, and schools have until September 2027 to fully implement them (International Baccalaureate Organization, 2024).

Why the change?

In the Transdisciplinary Theme Descriptor Review Development Report (International Baccalaureate Organization, 2023), the IB outlined four key focus areas for the theme review:

Purpose: Shifting the focus from human commonalities to the interconnectedness of humans and the natural world.
Relevance: Updating language to reflect current global education research and making it more inclusive and relevant.
Balance: Ensuring subjects and additional concepts are evenly distributed across themes to foster interdisciplinary collaboration.
Advancement of the IB mission: Encouraging action-oriented learning that addresses local and global challenges.

What’s new in the theme descriptors?

The revised descriptors now feature a driving sentence followed by three conceptual support statements, replacing the longer descriptions used previously. It’s important to note that these bullet points are not intended to serve as lines of inquiry.

Revamp your classrooms with the new transdisciplinary theme posters!

Download for free

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Working with the new themes:

There are some incredible Teacher Support Materials (TSMs) on MyIB showcasing how schools are working with the new themes. It’s important to take time as a team to unpack the new themes to see how the new language and concepts will trickle down into unit and lesson planning and impact the vertical and horizontal alignment of units.

Change #3: The subject guides

This shift toward greater clarity and cohesion has been a long-awaited one. The IB has introduced new subject guides across all six PYP areas: Language, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, Arts, and Personal, Social & Physical Education (PSPE).

What’s new

Each guide now follows a consistent, unified structure, making it easier for educators to plan, align, and collaborate across subjects and grade levels. Gone are the days of navigating different formats, every guide now speaks the same curricular language.

A shared foundation for every subject

Each subject guide includes two key components

The subject overview

This section outlines the philosophy, purpose, and conceptual foundations of the subject. It provides a common understanding of how the subject contributes to a transdisciplinary, inquiry-based education. Notably:

Teachers, coordinators, and school leaders can align on a shared vision for each discipline.
The guides offer practical illustrations of student agency, customized for each subject.
There is renewed attention to community engagement, emphasizing collaboration with families and the wider world.

2. The subject continuum

This is where the curriculum comes to life. The continuum articulates how learning develops over time, using strands, developmental phases, conceptual understandings, and learning outcomes.

For example, in Social Studies, the strands include:

Ways of knowing and systems
Global citizenship and culture
Continuity and change for reimagined futures
Interconnected places, spaces, and relationships

Each strand is mapped across four developmental phases. These phases are not age- or grade-bound, but instead represent increasingly complex ways of thinking and understanding.

Within each phase:

Conceptual understandings describe the big ideas students should grasp.
Learning outcomes identify the observable behaviours and skills learners should demonstrate.

Together, these elements guide educators in scaffolding learning across the years.

Why the change?

The new subject guides replace the older scope and sequence documents and were designed to improve clarity, coherence, and cross-subject integration. Previously, each subject had its own format, which made alignment tricky. Now, the guides offer:

A shared structure and vocabulary across subjects
A deeper focus on conceptual and inquiry-based learning
Better alignment with the IB continuum, especially the MYP
Stronger support for student agency and transdisciplinary connections

With these updates, teachers are better equipped to design purposeful learning experiences that connect knowledge, skills, and big ideas.

Working with the new subject guides:

To make these guides even more usable, we created editable Google Docs that pull everything together, phase descriptions, understandings, and outcomes. Perfect for planning across the year, aligning with standards, or spotting gaps and overlaps.

Tip: Teams can color-code by unit, highlight strands they’re covering, and paste in their own standards for easy crosswalks.

Grab your editable subject guides here!

Change #4: Inquiry learning progressions

“Learning is not the product of teaching. Learning is the product of the activity of learners.” — John Holt

Inquiry has always been at the heart of the PYP, and now it’s being made even more visible. With the introduction of the Inquiry Learning Progressions, educators have a powerful new tool to intentionally plan for inquiry, track learner growth, and make decisions for future learning, all while honouring student agency and the diverse ways learners explore the world.

So what exactly are Inquiry learning progressions?
The ILPs describe how inquiry skills develop in sophistication over time across the Primary Years Programme and into the MYP. Designed for learners ages 5 to 16, they spotlight the ‘how’ of learning by identifying specific indicators for each inquiry skill and mapping them across a path of progression.

Think of ILPs as a roadmap, not a race track. Learners don’t follow a rigid age-based sequence. Instead, they may spend time exploring multiple progression points simultaneously or revisiting a single point over several years. It’s a growth-focused model that respects every learner’s unique journey.

Each progression features:

Inquiry skill: e.g. “Questioning to explore and play with ideas”
Path of progression: A developmental continuum that shows increasing complexity
Indicators: Clear, observable behaviours for each progression point
Developmental growth description: A narrative of how learners typically grow in this area

From the ‘Introduction to the inquiry learning progressions’- Fig 1

Why ILPs matter for teachers

The ILPs give teachers more than just a framework, they offer:

A shared language for inquiry across subjects and grade levels
A way to intentionally monitor and document learning
A lens to give meaningful feedback based on what learners can do
A model that values surface and deep learning

An invitation to support learner agency with clarity and purpose

Most importantly, ILPs shift the spotlight from what learners can’t do to what they’re ready to grow into, making learning visible and actionable.

Bridging inquiry skills and Approaches to Learning

Inquiry learning progressions complement the existing Approaches to Learning (ATLs) by detailing how certain skills develop over time. For example:

From the ‘Introduction to the inquiry learning progressions’

These connections help educators plan interdisciplinary units with deeper cognitive engagement and clearer learning goals. So, how do we begin weaving ILPs into our everyday teaching without adding another ‘thing’? Here’s a practical look at working with them:

Working with the inquiry learning progressions:

To work meaningfully with them, start by anchoring your planning in authentic classroom moments.

Ask yourself:
What inquiry skills are naturally emerging in this unit? Where might learners stretch next?

Here’s how you can begin:

Start small, but intentionally. Choose one or two inquiry skills to spotlight in a unit. Use the progression to reflect on where your learners are, and what growth could look like.
Bring learners into the process. Use the indicators as a shared tool for reflection. Statements like “I’m learning to…” or “I’m getting better at…” make the skills feel owned, not imposed.
Celebrate growth, not levels. Progression points are not checklists to tick off. Documenting how a learner grew into a skill is just as powerful as mastering it.
Plan learning experiences that invite inquiry. Use the sample opportunities as a springboard, not a script. Adapt them to your context, your learners, and your unit goals.
Collaborate and calibrate. The ILPs create a common language. Lean on your team to interpret indicators together, share examples, and ensure a coherent path across years.

Remember: The ILPs are less about “getting it right” and more about getting curious about our learners, their thinking, and the incredible ways they inquire.

Wrapping it all up

To summarize, the four big changes in the 2025 release are:

References:

International Baccalaureate Organization. (2023). Transdisciplinary theme descriptor review development report: Third report for teachers. International Baccalaureate Organization. Retrieved from https://resources.ibo.org/pyp/topic/Development-reports
International Baccalaureate Organization. (2024). Transdisciplinary theme descriptors. International Baccalaureate Organization. Retrieved from https://resources.ibo.org/permalink/11162-431116
International Baccalaureate Organization. (2023). Learning progression development report: Report for teachers. International Baccalaureate Organization. Retrieved from https://resources.ibo.org/pyp/topic/Development-reports
International Baccalaureate Organization. (2023). Early years development report: Report for teachers. International Baccalaureate Organization. Retrieved from https://resources.ibo.org/pyp/topic/Development-reports
International Baccalaureate Organization. (2023). Additional languages development report: Report for teachers. International Baccalaureate Organization. Retrieved from https://resources.ibo.org/pyp/topic/Development-reports
Introduction to the Inquiry Learning Progressions: https://resources.ibo.org/pyp/works/pyp_11162-433516

Your guide to the 2025 PYP changes

Big updates have arrived in the PYP for 2025! Here’s what you need to know:

Change #1: The concepts

Why the change?

Change #2: The transdisciplinary themes

Why the change?

What’s new in the theme descriptors?

Working with the new themes:

Change #3: The subject guides

What’s new

Grab your editable subject guides here!

Change #4: Inquiry learning progressions

Wrapping it all up

References:

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