The International Baccalaureate's Bilingual Diploma: Global trends, pathways, and predictors of attainment

•A sample comprising 16–19 year old students from 139 countries is used.•Native speaking of English decreases the odds of earning the Bilingual Diploma.•Studying outside of the US increases the odds of earning the Bilingual Diploma.•English–Spanish was the language combination most frequently used for the BD.

This study explored global patterns and pathways in the award of International Baccalaureate (IB)’s Bilingual Diploma (BD) and examined the relationship between several variables and the award of the BD. The sample comprised students from 139 countries, who earned the IB Diploma between 2007 and 2012. The most common combination of languages studied in pursuit of the BD was English-Spanish. Results of logistic regression analysis revealed that the model significantly predicted whether a student earned a BD and explained an impressive 62% of variance. All seven predictors were significant, while student native language had the most powerful effect: the odds of earning the BD were 17.7 times higher for non-native English speaking students, compared with native English speaking students.