Canadian equivalent to GCSE

[diana4]

Does anyone has any info/experience with applying to study A levels in the UK after completing grade 10 (or is 11 required?) in Canada?
My daughter is currently a Year 10 student, but we might need to move to Canada for year.
Thanks!

I am not sure I understand your question OP. Canadian students are required to complete grade 12 (age 18).

The English and Canadian systems are very different. Why not look at a Canadian school which uses the iGCSE system to work out how they mesh? Fieldstone School in Toronto might be an example.

Are you currently in the UK, looking at taking you daughter to Canada for a year, before returning to the UK?
Don't do it! Find a way to keep her in the UK. It's a really bad time to be moving kids about - especially for just a year. Most people know on the expat circuit desperatly try for stability for kids around that time. Moving within a system is hard enough. Moving systems is is really tough.

Where in Canada would you be moving for a year as all education is provinc there with some fairly major differences?

Provincial*

Each province is slightly different, there are even a small handful of private schools that would again be slightly different within each province.

I think you need to complete grades 10, 11 and 12 to graduate. It’s those last three years that count. I am sure you could give them the grades and they could figure out where she’s at and make it work.

^€ That’s for Canada. I would guess going back to the UK you would need your daughter to do the two years of A levels to complete them. The curriculum is very different in Canada and I cannot see how the UK would allow you to do anything else (they are much stricter around their exams and school qualifications IMO).

I agree with previous poster (Balloon) don't do it. It will just muck your child around and it’s not worth it.

Why 'need to'? If this is an employer requiring this of you then the remuneration package needs to include the cost of your dd going to a boarding school in the UK for that year as well as flights out to Canada for the holidays or cover for her to spend the holidays in the UK. GCSE year is not a good year to drop away into a completely different educational system temporarily. If it was a permanent move it might make more sense to swap over.

Nb to qualify for government funding for university in the UK you need to have been ordinarily resident in the UK for the 3 years before applying. If you take her to Canada for year 11 you will make her an international student - approximately doubling the cost of her higher education.

I agree with a previous poster look for a school that does IGCSE or possibly International Baccalaureate.

Thank you all for the replies. Stuff for thought.

If it is definitely only for one year then I agree with all above, look at having her board in the UK for the year - remember there are state boarding schools as well. The UK system isn't well suited to "taking a year out" at this stage as far as I can tell (daughter same age as yours).

If there is a possibility of her completing education in Canada then the choices become different. A lot will depend on the reasons you might be going there.

I was at school in Australia and we had a girl join our class in year 11 (final year year 12) having done 1 year of her A levels in the UK; her older sister stayed back doing uni in the UK. She was effectively put back because we also had a 2 year system, but the level was totally wrong for where she was up to and it wasn't good for her - even if she'd ended up moving to Australia to join her parents she would have been better off staying in the UK to finish her A levels.

If you want to move back to the UK when she is 16, it's best if she takes GCSE exams in summer 2019.

If she is in Canada, she can take iGCSEs in summer 2019 (British international school or home learning), but these are two-year courses that she would have to have started last September. With some GCSE courses (Maths, English language) there might be enough overlap with iGCSE that she could transfer to iGCSE at the beginning of Y11, but for most subjects this won't be possible.

Realistically, I think one of the following would be best:

1. She stays where she is until the end of Y11 and takes her GCSEs.
2. She moves to Canada at the end of Y10 and then stays there until she has finished her high school education.