iGCSE vs. GCSE

[WiltsFamily]

Moving back to the Wiltshire area and looking at a few private schools. One offers iGCSEs/GCSE combinations and the others purely GCSEs. It seems that the GCSEs have been reinvented in the past couple years to be harder. From what we understand the iGCSE has more periodic assessment - not just end of term examinations, which suits our DD better. Family member who teaches in upper secondary college says iGCSEs are still not well received. Any thoughts and experiences? It seems the system is in flux.

My children's school does mostly iGCSEs, as do alot of independent schools. It is the same in terms of the one big exam at the end (no periodic assessment). There has not been a problem in terms of acceptance of one over the other - why would there be? One thing is on some league tables iGCSEs aren't taken into account so it skews results.
I wouldn't use the use of one type of exam over the other as a basis of choosing a school.

Your comments are greatly appreciated. We got the impression from the HM that iGCSEs had more periodic assessment throughout. Perhaps that is internal assessments and not necessarily scores towards the final, cumulative exam grade. Thank you for your thoughts.

I can only comment on maths. The IGCSE does not have as much really tricky stuff ( though obviously has some) and the questions are a little bit more straightforward. In IGCSE there are less formulae that you have to learn by heart and also the grade boundary for a 9 is lower so I think it is a bit of an easier option. Although of course anyone who gets a grade 9 at IGCSE is obviously still doing very well.

Why do independent schools favour iGCSEs over GCSEs?

DD took iGCSE maths in January 2016. Back then, before the reformed GCSEs, it was considered more rigorous. It was all exam based - no coursework at all.

Yes IGCSE's ( in maths at least) were harder than the old GCSEs but not the new ones. I don't know why independent schools are still offering them now but I guess they haven't got too much incentive to change.

I teach languages IGCSE abroad having come straight from teaching the new GCSEs at a U.K. comp. For my subject at least I think IGCSE is still harder (although the gap between the two is much narrower).
It’s more “old fashioned” and more he oral exam is incredibly prescriptive (the exact wording of questions for every part is given to the examiner and good practice is supposed to be that we don’t examine our own candidates - whereas we always do in GCSE). We do a relatively small suite of IGCSEs here and amongst those we do, there is still coursework in World literature (but not in British literature!), Global Perspectives and art.

Because GCSEs are what are recognised by the government for league table purposes, every time the government decides there should be a change, the exam boards all have to make that change (usually with not enough notice, so that specifications are barely approved before schools have to start teaching them).

iGCSEs are not subject to that interference, and so there's less change, and I guess that means the schools know exactly what to expect, there are plenty of past papers, etc.

In most subjects:

In terms of difficulty:
Old GCSEs < iGCSE < New GCSEs

In terms of stability / certainty of grade boundaries / question types:
New GCSEs < iGCSEs

Some independent schools are using the 'general perception' that iGCSEs are harder to continue to benefit from the stability. I don't know how much longer that will last, so for example joining a school in Y7, thinking they will do iGCSEs, may be risky.

There remain choices within some specs of iGCSE which may make them considerably easier, but those aren't always the specs that a particular school may choose.