Private school axes 'too easy' GCSEs

• Reforms seen as making exam less challenging • Move to IGCSE opens gulf with state system One of the country's leading private schools is to abandon GCSEs after claiming that reforms planned for this year will mean the courses are no longer challenging enough for its students. The overhaul is the biggest single change to the qualification since it was introduced in 1988, removing coursework and introducing a modular system, allowing pupils to retake chunks of the course. Manchester grammar school is to drop the government's GCSEs in all subjects apart from art and replace them with the International GCSE (IGCSE), an alternative more similar to the traditional O-levels. The move raises fresh questions about the fragmentation of the national exams system. New figures show that the number of pupils in private schools doing... [read full story]                    

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