Why we offer IGCSE qualifications

Manchaster Grammar School, one of the most prestigious independent schools in the North West of England, announced last week that it was replacing all of its GCSE exams with IGCSEs. Although this might appear as a minor decision akin to a school changing its exam board in history or maths, the reality is that there is an increasingly political dimension to the quarrel that is taking place in England over supporters of GCSEs and IGCSEs. Government funded schools are forbidden from offering students IGCSEs because the Department for Children, Schools and Families does not accept that IGCSEs assess the National Curriculum, which is what must be taught in English and Welsh schools. Independent schools can offer IGCSEs, because they do not receive government money.

In recent years there has been a growing lobby that has argued that GCSEs have been dumbed down, made less of a challenge; this lobby further suggest that IGCSEs have maintained their intellectual rigour and are therefore more worthy exams for 16 year olds – a good grade at IGCSE says more about a particular student than does the same grade at GCSE, so the argument goes.

These arguments have not been helped by the high master of St Paul’s School in London who recently described GCSEs as “simply pap, … baby food, … examination rusks…” In response, those who support GCSEs have suggested that the shift to IGCSEs is being done for marketing reasons or for elitist feelings of superiority. IGCSEs give certain independent schools boasting rights over their state school cousins!

This whole discussion is especially topical, it seems to me, coming as it does a week after I announced to NorthStarUK would effectively be scrapping GCSEs in September. Why do we, in NorthStarUK, offer IGCSEs and not GCSEs? Well the simple answer, as I pointed out last week, is that GCSEs have been closed off to us by new government regulations. However, I would argue that IGCSEs are better qualifications than GCSEs, in any case! In my opinion, there are a number of reasons for this, none of which are to do with elitism or because of a supposed dumbing down in GCSEs -

• IGCSE specifications, more often than not, have a wider range of topics to study than GCSE. The National Curriculum has had a stifling effect on school curricula.
• IGCSEs have an international dimension to their courses that is normally absent in GCSEs. In my opinion, this is especially important for young people who are going to be adults over the next 50 years.
• IGCSEs are based around terminal exams, which is education speak for saying that students are assessed by one or more exams at the end of the course. The new GCSEs will be assessed by a series of modular tests where students will be permitted to forget the material after the module has ended.
• IGCSEs are not affected or shaped by politicians – our current national curriculum has seen more changes over the last ten years than I care to remember, and all have been affected as a result of political pressure.