Igcse science

[Qpootle2]

Is it possible to do dual science award and a single science(biology)?

No. If you do dual you can't do singles as well. You can do just one or two singles if you like.

Thanks for the heads up. My ds wants to be a physio and they seem to want biology as a stand alone science gcse. Atm his school seem to be promoting the dual award for all but the very ablest scientists, so you would suggest lobbying to do 2 singles instead of dual award?

Double would be fine for a physiotherapy degree, he would need biology A level though plus another science.

IGCSE was invented for the international schools - so the answers have always been very black and white

private schools cottoned onto IGCSEs as they are great for high grades from expat kids and coulnd not be compared with scummy state schools

then the state schools cottoned onto the trick
and it all went pearshaped ;-)

You can do Human Biology separately.

. Titchy and lizs- that's very helpful thanks. Is there an issue with taking an a level science after dual award re preparation? I will look into the human biology angle. Talkin peace-I'm not sure that was necessary or pertinent but thankyou for your input.

Perfectly possible to do AL science from double at gcse! He'll need high gcse grades though, and a willingness to spend the summer after gcses reading up on the part 3 stuff he won't have covered.

Yes you can do A level after dual. The grades are more important.

Agree with endo, doing double at GCSE does not preclude any career ime, including medicine, dentistry and vet science. Physio needs a level biology, have not heard of any insisting on triple at GCSE.
We take from several schools that only only offer core and additional, inlcuding a very will respected fee paying one that gets numerous kids to Oxbridge etc on this.

hi hobnob,you say 'we take' are you a college/uni person?

No I am meaning school sixth form, we have a large cohort of external students coming to us at the start of y12

You will not be able to do 2 singles unless at private school btw, government directive all must study all 3 to end of y11, either by BTEC, core, core and additional, triple etc, but must include elements of bio, chem and phys.

Hobnob, you're not in s London by any chance are you

Talkin's right actually, I wish to heaven that my DS was taking IGCSE as opposed to GCSE. I've said this before but as DS is quite a literal chap, he found the IGCSE maths questions, at least, far easier to interpret.

My tongue-in-cheek example was:

IGCSE: Here's a bunch of formulae. Use them to answer these maths equations: (All x, y squared, square roots etc etc follow).

GCSE: Here are the formulae. Q1. Ajmit's pencil is blue but Veraswanee's is smaller in a ratio of 1:7.2. How long is Julie's pencil? Give you answer to the nearest square root.

Tanise DS boys schools does all IGCSEs for a number of reasons.

One of them is definitely that it works well for many boys (it's a boys school to sixth form).

The pass rate is better (easier to get a C). It's harder to get an A* though.

It is always linear, which suits the cohort. No controlled assessments, no course work, no units.

It can't be messed about by Gove et al .