Great News for Homeschoolers!

Many of us in the homeschooling community in the UK have been on tenterhooks after learning that the Government had ruled out iGCSEs in English Language as an accepted qualification to study free at FE colleges.

This meant that homeschooled students in the near future were going to have to either do one of three things:

1. find an exam centre that would not only offer GCSE exams to private candidates, but also provide a way for them to satisfy the moderated speaking/listening portion of English exams;
2. or take GCSE English in the FE college at post-16;
3. or take the iGCSE as per usual, but hope that it wasn't further eroded as a qualification at, say, university.

So, I can't express my appreciation enough to our hard-working colleagues (and presumably, plenty of independent schools who also take iGCSEs) who have finally broken through the stalemate and received word that the Government has u-turned on this.

Here is an extract from the ruling:

• We have decided, following this review, and in the lead-up to the introduction of the new GCSEs, that the GCSE and unregulated IGCSE qualifications will be treated as being equivalent to each other for the purposes of prior attainment to meet the funding condition. This means that young people who apply to further education colleges, schools with sixth forms and sixth form colleges with unregulated IGCSEs in English and mathematics at A*-C are exempt from having to study GCSE English and mathematics from 1 August 2014. This will apply for the 2014/15 and the 2015/16 academic years. We will review this position for students starting post-16 courses following the first awarding of the new GCSEs in line with a general review of the funding condition."

Further details can be found at this link: http://edyourself.org/articles/WolfReport.php#compulsengmath

But for now, this means that UK homeschoolers can happily take iGCSE English Language 0500 with CIE once again, confident in the fact that it will be accepted and respected as the excellent qualification that it is.

Want a CIE crammer with all the tips for tackling the CIE English exam? Register your interest in the Easter 10-hour webinar by emailing dreamingspiresrevision<at>gmail<dot>com.