How Many IGCSEs Should You Take?

Where the number seven comes from

The Cambridge ICE group award is given for passes in at least seven Cambridge IGCSE subjects taken across five curriculum groups: two languages from Group I, one subject each from Groups II to V, and a seventh from any group. Most Cambridge schools build their option blocks around that requirement, which is why the standard timetable produces seven or eight rather than five or eleven.

A pupil taking six can still apply anywhere. They simply do not receive the group award, which is a certificate of breadth rather than an entry requirement. It is worth knowing that before dropping a subject for a free period, because the drop costs the award as well as the subject.

• Group I — Languages, and two are needed
• Group II — Humanities and Social Sciences
• Group III — Sciences
• Group IV — Mathematics
• Group V — Professional and Creative

How many of your grades anyone actually reads

Sixth-form offers are written in terms of a handful of grades. The usual shape is five IGCSEs at grade C or 4 and above including English and mathematics, plus a grade B or 6 — often an A or 7 — in each subject you intend to take at A Level. Two years later a university looks at your A Level grades first and then, if at all, at English and mathematics.

So the ninth subject is examined exactly like the others and read by nobody. It takes a full teaching allocation, its share of revision, and a slot in the same exam fortnight as everything that is being read. The trade is a grade nobody asks about against a grade that appears in the offer letter.

The choices that quietly close doors

The subject count is rarely what causes trouble two years later. The tier and the combination are.

Each of these is reversible in Year 10 and expensive in Year 12, which is the argument for asking about them early rather than at option time.

• Core tier Cambridge IGCSE Mathematics cannot award higher than a grade C; the Extended tier runs to A*. A Core entry effectively closes A Level Mathematics and is refused by most sixth forms for Physics, Chemistry and Economics.
• Dropping to a single science, or to none, before a science or engineering route. Sixth forms that teach A Level Chemistry from a combined-science background exist, but they are not the majority.
• Taking English as a Second Language where a university later asks for First Language English or a separate language test — an easy grade now, an extra test later.
• Choosing 0607 International Mathematics without checking. It is a separate syllabus with a different emphasis, used by schools whose sixth form is the IB Diploma, and it is not treated as interchangeable with 0580 by every sixth form.

If your school enters you for ten anyway

Then the question stops being how many and becomes where the hours go. Rank the ten by what the next institution will read: English, mathematics, and the two or three subjects you intend to continue sit at the top, and everything else is being taken for the certificate. That does not mean neglecting them; it means deciding in advance which two you will let coast in April rather than discovering it by accident in the exam hall.

We teach the mathematics rather than the option blocks, so this is advice rather than a service. What we will do is tell a student honestly when the Extended tier is out of reach in the time left, because that is the one choice on this page that cannot be undone in Year 12.