IGCSE branded 'marketing tool'

In a way I am glad more schools are opting out of GCSE because hopefully it will force the govt to confront the issue of dumbing down. However, if it carries on and is ignored it is going to entrench inequality in education even more. Am just glad my dcs are only toddlers so there is time for this to be sorted out before it affects us....

At the moment universities are having to look back at GCSE results as tie-breakers among all the A*s at A Level. They do have systems for weighting exam results to counter the higher average grades at independant schools. I don't know how well this works and I imagine that IGCSEs might well generate a two-teir qualification system to match the two-teir education system we already have.

But able pupils are losing out massively as things stand because there is n way for their greater suitability for higher education to be recorded in our current pitiable exam system. I have sympathy with indep heads who opt out of gcses

Yes, I agree with UQD. There is already a two tier system going on.

But I do think universities realise this to a certain extent and tailor their offers accordingly. However, there are many, many pupils at state schools who are not 'in the know' who lose out. The education system is becoming a game that you have to play, coupled, as you have said before, with the pretence that 93% or whatever of the population actually have a choice in the schools to which they send their children.

(Whoops, getting ahead of myself there, since I'm only a foetus right now. Forgot namechange)

I'm sure that's right, abraid. DS1 has been told that pieces of his writing would be A* at GCSE history and English, and he is 13 (year 9). I don't find that wonderful, because it is testimony to the inadequacy of the GSCE, and to the fact that he will spend another 2 years cramming for an exam he can already manage.

SOme boys at my son's prep school have been doing scholarship exams for various private schools. They are 13. Actually, some are probably still only 12. The French papers were the GCSE French exam from a previous year. Part of the revision for maths involved looking at some AS level papers.

This suggests to me that a lot of very bright 16-year olds must be treading water at GCSE.

BTW I don't want to sound like I think people are better or worse, more or less able, just because of where they went to school. I'm interested in the iGCSE angle because that's what DS is currently studying for - but that's because he's studying through an internet school where the lack of a need for marked coursework makes iGCSE the practical choice of exam.

I don't know - do universities and colleges rate people's results differently according to where they went to school? I'd have thought if anything an applicant with a clutch of A grades from a comprehensive might be thought more able than one who'd been to a posh private school, since you might assume the private school one had been pushed much harder, had tutors, etc. Whereas an applicant who got good results in a "lesser" school has obviously got the ability.

Well yes, if people didn't see private schools as "better" in some way than their available state schools, they'd die out wouldn't they? I guess his worry is that if iGCSE is seen as fundamentally better, just because private schools have decided to go for it, then there'll be a bigger disadvantage for state school pupils than there would be otherwise.

I mean, at the moment, an A in GCSE is worth the same whatever school you got it at. But if universities started thinking an A at iGCSE was better than an A at GCSE, then state school pupils who can't take iGCSEs wouldn't be able to compete.

I think he may be a state school head-teacher, not a private school one. The article doesn't make it clear, but does say "The ASCL represents school leaders in both the state and independent sectors."

If schools are saying they need something better than GCSEs to stretch the more able pupils, then maybe the govt should pay some attention to that, rather than saying "state schools can't use them".

At the moment, iGCSEs are looked at on a "like for like" basis by universities, even though they are often talked of as being a more rigorous exam.

It is very depressing. Exam standards are so low, and yet the children's entire secondary education is a cramming for them. DS1 is studying Romeo and Juliet atm, and his teacher talks endlessly about how many marks are available for this element and that, never aout how wonderful the flaming play is. She has lost the ability to think about her subject.

Govt should get its act together and reverse the decline in the standards of the GCSE. Without taking any sides at all on issues around independent fee-paid schooling, if I was head of a school that was in a position to opt out of crap GCSEs then I would so just that.