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Secondary education

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Original poster

State verse Private

6 replies

mumtothreefairies · 14/10/2017 11:31

Hi, Im in the process of relocating back to England and notice Independent schools have not changed their old IGCSE's to the new gcse's 9-1. I would like to know if this will hinder children getting into sixth forms or even university. I have a DD in yr11 finishing igcse's and a daughter starting year9.

very confused about the system.

OP posts:
LIZS · 14/10/2017 11:33

It makes no difference yet. Dc school have retained iGcses for core subjects but this may change over coming years.

Original poster
mumtothreefairies · 14/10/2017 11:43

Thank you.
My DD is due to sit her gcse's in 2020, however the IGCE's expire in 2019. The independent school we are looking at says they will continue with igce's - it makes no sense to me in my head!
I've also found evidence (Admissions friend at a Russell group Uni) that from next year University admissions will prefer 9-l and will favour that over A*.

OP posts:
catslife · 14/10/2017 12:08

iGCSEs haven't converted over to the new 9-1 system yet - they are still offering letter grades.
iGCSEs are changing in the UK to 9-1 qualifications for first examination in 2020 and the teaching for these qualifications starts in September 2018 because it is a 2 year course.
Independent schools are free to choose either iGCSE or ordinary GCSE. State schools have to offer GCSE because the government doesn't include iGCSEs in the school performance measures.
During the transition from the letter system to numbers there will be pupils with a mix of letters and numbers. A grade 9 is a slightly higher performance than an A* so could possibly be preferred for very competitive courses. But in terms of starting sixth form it won't make a difference and most unis are interested in predicted A level grades rather than GCSEs.

Original poster
mumtothreefairies · 14/10/2017 15:03

Thank you catslife and LIZS - it does make sense what you are saying. I will contact schools to find out a little more.

OP posts:
Fffion · 14/10/2017 15:06

Universities don't tend to do discriminate when students have no choice.

Allthebestnamesareused · 15/10/2017 19:51

My son's super selective which is top 10 gcse grades and ranked 2nd for this year's A level grades still does igcses. Son in yr 11 is doing 5 that will be 9-1 and 6 that will be A*-G. The school gets about 40 kids into Oxbridge each year (around 25% of cohort) plus others into medicine,Ivy League etc so I am pretty certain that the school don't think they are doing their students a disservice in any way.

Ps I have a friend in admissions in Cambridge who doesn't think so either

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