How a student navigates their final four years of high school will, to no small degree, determine their future trajectory. We encourage our students, as they progress through Key Stage Three, to 'have a go' at everything — Creative Arts, Humanities, Sciences, Maths, Languages, and Sport — in order to identify the areas of strength and passion that will form the basis of their IGCSE and A-Level choices and build the key skills that will help them to succeed academically; as students get older, they need to reflect not simply on what they'd like to do in the future but, also, whether their talent-set matches their ambition.
IGCSEs and A-Levels may have their origins in British education but are truly global qualifications. Well over a million 16-year-olds sit GCSEs or IGCSEs every year, of whom almost half are outside the UK and, at A-Level, international learners both outnumber British students and far exceed the number of young people opting to pursue the International Baccalaureate (IB). A-Levels are widely regarded as the 'gold standard' for academic rigour and high grades serve as a passport for admission to top universities around the world.
IGCSEs are two-year programmes of study culminating in a series of examinations at the end of Year 11. Britannica students typically take between 8 and 10 subjects, more than the global average and, though we insist that English and Mathematics are part of the package, students also begin to specialise in particular areas of interest and expertise. For students committed to the sciences, IGCSEs in Biology, Chemistry, and Physics are excellent preparation for the rigour of A-Level and, for the more creative, IGCSEs in Art and Music might be their preference — or somewhere in between; many students will keep their options open at IGCSE, choosing a mixture of disciplines about which they are passionate. Stretch and challenge is important, too, with some students studying English Literature alongside Language, and accelerated mathematicians tackling the Additional Mathematics course.
Not only do final grades matter — public examination results allow universities to compare young people worldwide — but, in respect of college applications, many admissions officers care about students' progress, too; it's vitally important for learners to show ongoing commitment to, and improvement in, their programmes of study, and we firmly believe that our smaller class sizes, where teachers can truly get to know their students, tailor their teaching accordingly, and recognise and intervene very quickly where more support is required, allows us to ensure that students stay on-track and achieve their goals.
The same is true of A-Levels, which are studied in the final two years of high school, with most Britannica students graduating with three or four courses under their belt at the end of Year 13. Studying fewer subjects means that students are able to go into an extraordinary amount of depth and detail — some A-Level students, in fact, have been offered additional college credits in recognition of their advanced learning — which is an ideal preparation for undergraduate-level study. Budding engineers will likely choose Mathematics, Further Mathematics, Computer Science, and Physics, while aspiring lawyers may opt for Economics, English, History, and Spanish; there are no 'required' subjects at A-Level and students are able to focus on the areas most relevant to their futures. An additional benefit of International AS-Levels is the modular or semi-modular nature of assessment; students are able to spread their examinations across two years, with re-takes possible where required, which stands in contrast with less flexible systems offering only terminal assessment at the end of Year 13.
In addition to the support that students receive from their subject teachers, form tutors also play a key role in guiding their progress academically and socially over the course of their time at the school, offering advice and guidance at key moments in their journey — such as the selection of A-Levels, how to stay on top of their workload, and how to prepare for their exams — and, as students approach graduation, they receive 1:1 support from Britannica's Head and Deputy Head of Secondary, both university counsellors, to craft the best possible applications to colleges and universities around the world.
