A-Level exams tend to be longer than GCSE exams, as there is more content on which to evaluate. However, since you only study 3 A-Levels instead of around 9 GCSEs, you'll have far fewer exams during exam season at the end of Year 13. They also tend to be more difficult than GCSE exams, oddly enough. The main principle of A Level is student autonomy. GCSEs were mandatory, but you're studying A Levels because you want to, so naturally, you're expected to be more autonomous.
Many independent schools now enroll students for this test, possibly because they have many students from abroad whose mother tongue is not English, and also because a large number of schools were disappointed by the way in which the GCSE English test has been characterized in recent years with controversy about the degree. limits. In addition, while work done at the GCSE level may be easier to approach, it often doesn't push the imagination to the limit and can be easily memorized to make it go well on exams. Initially, it was a way to extend the opportunity to earn the GCSE degree to students living outside the UK, whose mother tongue might not be English.
The GCSE course usually lasts two years, but some schools will allow the most capable students to complete it in one year, or to take the exams a year earlier. Thus, for example, a student applying for medicine might present a series of good A levels in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics, but admissions staff can return to previous GCSE results to determine how the student has fared in other areas (e.g. The international GCSE was first introduced ago about 25 years before foreign students, whose mother tongue was not necessarily English, could take the exam. Some teachers (and students) think that the IGSCE exam is now easier than the new GCSE exam, due to the content of the curriculum and the scope of the assessment.
GCSE courses are very rigid in structure and tend not to allow students the opportunity to express themselves through their work.
