Conservatives plan to reintroduce O-levels in UK schools

Michael Gove, the Conservative shadow schools secretary said that children in English state schools are often at a disadvantage to their wealthier peers because they cannot take the same rigorous exams.

O-levels are still offered by two British exam boards: Cambridge International Examinations and Edexcel but are currently banned in UK state schools.

Candidates worldwide taking O-levels have increased from 642,000 to 654,000 from 2008 to 2009. Singapore’s education system, considered the most progressive in the world, offers O-levels as the main school leaving certificate.

The plans aim to give schools greater freedom to choose between courses. Pupils would be assessed by exams at the end of the two-year course, unlike the current GCSE that combines coursework. O-levels are also graded on a six-point scale instead of the current eight.

Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) offers the International GCSE which is modelled on the O-level and has proved hugely popular among fee-paying private and independent schools in the UK.

Director of the CIE Kevin Stannard said the exams remained popular in many parts of the world and claimed they were no longer the same as the O-levels people will remember. He said: “Content is regularly reviewed and they have kept pace with current educational and assessment thinking."

There is a strong argument that students arriving from Hong Kong in the United Kingdom to study in the sixth-form invariably find themselves ahead of pupils examined in the UK, as O-level subjects being taught in more depth.

Every year the debate that GCSEs are getting easier raises its head, so a strategy such as the reintroduction of the O-level could lead the UK back to a more credible GCSE.

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What are your memories of taking O-levels? Should they be reintroduced? Are GCSEs much easier in comparison?