The Independent Schools Council is a politically independent, not-for-profit organisation representing 1,270 independent schools educating more than 500,000 children. It exists to promote choice, diversity and excellence in education, developing talent at all levels of ability and from all backgrounds.

Search by: Schools Site Suppliers

Enter Search Keywords:

When is a GCSE not a GCSE?

1 January 2006

Geoff Lucas
General Secretary
Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC)

"When is a GCSE not a GCSE?" It may sound like a riddle from a teacher's Christmas cracker but, for an increasing number of schools in the UK, this is no joke.

The answer, of course, is "when it's an IGCSE" (or "International" GCSE to give it its full title). Offered by both Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) and Edexcel in some 60 subjects, and taken by about 3,000 candidates in over 100 centres in the UK (and over 100,000 students worldwide), the IGCSE is currently not recognised or accepted into the National Qualifications Framework by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). Consequently it attracts neither points in the government's examination performance tables nor funding in the maintained sector. This, in spite of the fact that universities recognise IGCSEs as equivalent to conventional GCSEs for purposes of entry to higher education.

Although only independent schools at home and abroad can offer the IGCSE, those that do so in this country risk jeopardising their "league table" position. An extreme example, from a school in the North West of England, illustrates this starkly. With some seventy ‘home' students (who do conventional GCSEs) and fifty from abroad at the school's international study centre (who do the IGCSE in all their subjects) an 87% A⁺-C GCSE success rate is reduced to 64% in the official DfES figures, simply because the IGCSE results are discounted. While this may seem an isolated and extreme example, government proposals in its 14-19 White Paper to report 5 A⁺-C GCSE achievement, including English and mathematics from 2006, turns this into a much wider concern since these are the subjects proving increasingly popular with schools switching to the IGCSE. At the heart of the debate lie fundamental issues of choice, standards and the inclusiveness of the National Qualifications Framework.

So far as choice is concerned, there is little doubt that many schools are turning to the IGCSE because, in subjects like mathematics, coursework is not compulsory. Until the last changes to the national criteria for GCSE in mathematics some years ago, all schools could choose whether or not to do coursework. That choice is now denied them. Hopes that the Tomlinson 14-19 reforms would lead to a radical pruning of coursework, at GCSE at least, have now been dashed and the flurry of recent interest in IGCSE can be traced directly to this.

But the appeal of the IGCSE goes beyond the jettisoning of coursework. Teachers with experience of both systems talk enthusiastically of the IGCSE's "less obtrusive" assessment style, which leaves more scope and time for teaching beyond the syllabus, of a reduced overall assessment burden (even where coursework is included), of greater differentiation through questions which are better targeted, allowing candidates at both ends of the ability range to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do. They are unanimous that the IGCSE is as good, if not better, as preparation for A level.

Such perceptions inevitably open up the thorny issue of standards. While teachers are adamant that the IGCSE is every bit as demanding as GCSE (many claim it is more so), empirical evidence is limited. However, CIE undertakes regular comparability checks with its OCR counterparts and some Edexcel subjects share the same Principal Examiners. A comparative study of similarities and differences between the two sets of exams commissioned by HMC and the Girls' Schools Association supports the anecdotal evidence from teachers that standards between GCSE and IGCSE are broadly comparable. So far as end-users are concerned, this is certainly the case. Both employers and universities accord to IGCSE the same currency and credibility as its home grown counterpart. Teachers with experience of both invariably consider the IGCSE to be the more demanding of the two. Nor should it be forgotten that the IGCSE fulfils a particular need in catering for those students who transfer to schools in England from international schools abroad where the IGCSE is the norm.

So why then is the IGCSE not a GCSE so far as QCA and DfES are concerned? The simple (and most charitable) answer is that, until now, neither CIE nor Edexcel have sought approval for the IGCSE from QCA. However, neither board is likely to do so as long as they believe that QCA will approve the qualification only if it changes its content (to become a clone of the home grown GCSE) or its name (to differentiate it from the latter). The first of these is out of the question as it is the different content and style of assessment that makes the IGCSE so attractive. A change of name also has drawbacks as the link to the well known "GCSE" brand is important to parents and pupils alike. Unless QCA gives a positive signal that it is prepared to be flexible, the IGCSE will remain the preserve of students outside the maintained sector.

A recent survey of HMC schools shows that forty percent are now either offering, or are thinking of offering, the IGCSE in one or more subjects. If this trend accelerates, any hope of a truly inclusive 14-19 framework will disappear as more and more independent schools turn to the IGCSE, leaving those in the maintained sector with no choice but to make the most of whatever GCSEs emerge out of the post-Tomlinson settlement. In policy terms, such a prospect really would be crackers.