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Join us in celebrating 25 years of the IPC empowering global learners.

We are delighted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the International Primary Curriculum (IPC), which turns 25 on September 14th!

However, to truly celebrate a fantastic 25 years, we are sharing 25 challenges to get involved with throughout 2025.

25 IPC Challenges

As the International Primary Curriculum proudly celebrates its 25th anniversary, we're thrilled to launch 25 Challenges designed to inject even more excitement and global learning into your classrooms! These thoughtfully crafted activities span diverse subjects and encourage creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking, perfectly aligning with the IPC. We invite you to join the celebration by embracing these challenges with your students. They offer a fantastic opportunity to explore new perspectives, deepen understanding of key concepts, and foster a sense of global community – all while making learning even more memorable and fun.

View the 25 Challenges PDF

History of the IPC

The beginnings of the IPC

In the 1990s, Peter le Noble, Martin Skelton and David Playfoot began to brainstorm on a more effective and truly relevant international curriculum for the Shell schools. It took them more than four years to develop the dream of providing a cross-curricular and thematic programme for children of all abilities, with more than 70 units of work, spread over three mileposts and based around themes of real interest to the children.

Shell's contribution

The acronym 'IPC' first appeared in Shell's vocabulary in the 1930s, when Shell had a 23.75% stake in The Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). Seventy years later, Shell invested in a completely different IPC, which was initially called The Shell International Primary Curriculum. The IPC was designed to meet the demands of 21st-century learning and to be suitable for the diverse cohorts of international children enrolled in Shell schools worldwide.

Starting out

Martin Skelton shares, "I vividly remember, on a visit to the Shell school in Bintulu (Malaysia) during the IPC trial period, how the children and parents enjoyed the Olympics, one of the first units of work we developed and trialled in the Shell Schools".

"I look forward to the IPC community participating in the celebrations and completing the challenges!"

Jaqueline Harmer - Head of the IPC

We asked IPC learners 'What would make the IPC better?' This is what they said -

Nothing, the IPC system is perfect, how it works, how we use it, overall, the IPC is fantastic.

I think nothing would make IPC better because it is already awesome to learn.

I think that IPC is a perfect way of learning so I wouldn't make the IPC different.