Further IGCSE ESL musings

By Pete on October 14, 2025 • ( 0 )

A few months ago, I wrote a post on the value of the IGCSE ESL course. I’ve had a few other thoughts since, which I’ve shared on other platforms. I just wanted to file those thoughts somewhere under ‘random Pete musings’. So, two disjointed think-out-louds follow….

What’s caused the inflated IGCSE ESL grade thresholds?

Achieving a Grade A in the IGCSE ESL Reading and Writing paper required a score of 54/60 in the last summer series. It was similar the year before.

The raw scores were different for the old syllabus, but some quick sums show that the threshold was equivalent to 52/60 in 2023, 51/60 in 2022, and 47/60 in 2021.

What is making this exam so unforgiving? Thresholds are established based on overall student performance and therefore perceived difficulty of the exam. So…

Are the exams just easier these days, meaning the thresholds are fair?
Do candidates tend to have a higher base level of proficiency upon course entry, leading to higher performance than usual once exam-trained – hence the need for a higher bar?
Is it something else entirely?

54/60 though. That’s something else, isn’t it!

Is a Grade A for IGCSE ESL a missed opportunity?

The latest stats from Cambridge on IGCSE ESL show that 36.8% of candidates attained a Grade A or above. That’s the equivalent of CEFR B2. In fact, Grades A-C (67%) suggest learners are demonstrating skills at B2 level.

According to Cambridge International, attaining a Grade C in IGCSE English *First Language* has a CEFR level equivalency of B2 (thanks Alice Tamang for the share):

I’m not sure how they make that comparison if I’m honest. Even so, as an EAL coordinator in my previous school, I was left with a conundrum. For learners who are ending Year 9 already demonstrating an IGCSE ESL Grade C, Do we…

have high expectations, trust that if they can demonstrate B2 level by Year 9 then they will benefit from the rich input and challenge they’ll encounter in an IGCSE first language course?

keep them on an IGCSE ESL pathway, which should guarantee them high grades and better transcripts, but may not push them out of their comfort zone?

Our team were clear on this. While discussions are on a case-by-case basis with learners and parents, we felt that most learners achieving a Grade C or above in an IGCSE ESL practice paper in Year 9, *should* be challenged – they *should* follow a first language pathway.

The Bell Foundation advocate for ‘high expectations with appropriate support’, and we stood by that. For learners that chose an ESL pathway instead, despite demonstrating high competency in English, we ensured that they *still* had access to a first language pathway. They took the IGCSE ESL early, in Year 10 (summer series), then immediately began studying first-language content and preparing coursework for IGCSE English Language.

We didn’t want our talented multilingual learners, who had demonstrated high proficiency in English already, to feel straitjacketed.

When I look at that 36.8% Grade A stat, I wonder whether there are learners taking the ESL course who do feel straitjacketed. That’s a lot of learners achieving high marks, on a course with a very, VERY high grade threshold, that’s also very limiting content-wise for certain skills.

Are our expectations for such learners high enough? Are we more interested in high grades, or in helping our learners achieve their potential?

Linking the two thoughts…

So, the grade boundaries for the course seem high, yet plenty of candidates are still hitting the top marks. When I originally shared these posts on LinkedIn, I wondered if I was just making a fuss over nothing:

Perhaps the assessments have got easier, hence the grade boundary rise is fair
Maybe the teaching of the course has got better, helping candidates achieve higher grades

But then I think back to conversations I’ve had over the years with teachers leading on this subject in international schools, I have this niggle. here are two examples:

One was with a teacher at a leading international school in Asia. They told me that they were selective when it came to enrollment at Year 9 onwards – learners needed to be working at a minimum of B2 level by then in order to move into Year 10. At Year 10, such learners would start on an ESL pathway, and move onto first language English once they’d taken the ESL exam. I often wondered why, given their baseline score by Year 10 would suggest they could work at first-language level?

Another was a teacher at an international school in Malaysia. Their school had a loose policy of shifting Grade D/C predicted first-language candidates at the end of Year 10 into an IGCSE ESL pathway at Year 11, to give them a chance of higher grades. Again, if they were working at B2 level already, with 7 further months of immersed English study to come, and with 7 further months to train towards first-language exams, was this the fairest move? And was it a huge risk?

Are those teachers doing the right thing? What was the ‘why’ behind their decision? I wish I’d asked.

I have no answer, but I do have my worries. Are those stronger candidates on IGCSE ESL pathways, the ones that may well hold their own in first-language, making the IGCSE ESL course less accessible for those who really need it?

Having co-written an endorsed book for IGCSE ESL, I know that candidates are expected to be working at A2/B1 as they start the two-year course. With B2 as a starting point, the course just wouldn’t provide enough stretch vocab and grammar-wise. Maybe it would skills-wise, but I’m not so sure.

If we accommodate learners that are likely to perform very well, what happens to the candidate with developing proficiency, with a target Grade E (Year 10, Term 1)? They work their socks off, show incredible gains across two years, yet are faced with ever inflated grade thresholds edging that Grade C away from them. Scoring 47/60 would have been a Grade A in 2021. It would have got you a Grade D in the June 2024 exam (Component 11).

Something seems awry – or maybe the teachers/learners should just do better?