Article by Norman Bernard
I am an experienced teacher of IGCSE, AS and A level English Language and have been the English teacher of Learning Unlimited (LU) specifically since June 2020. In the last few years many more have come to be aware of the terrible inadequacies of the NSC by international standards and are seeking alternatives, often in a confused way. This has created a market in which many see considerable commercial opportunities. Unfortunately, many of these newcomers have no idea of the differences in standard and approach between the NSC and Cambridge International and ought not to be attempting what they do at all.
Blunders abound, both administrative and academic: I hope exposure to some of what I have encountered will enable those seeking an alternative to the NSC to vet the people they deal with more carefully and give them a better idea of what they ought to look for before engaging someone’s services. Administrative errors are important, but the most important things to consider are the potential academic pitfalls and I will have more to say about them.
Administrative Error
This may seem hard to believe, but there are occasions on which I wonder whether people have even read basic syllabus documents with any care and attention. First, let me note that one can progress from AS to A level English Language and from AS to A level English Literature, but that the AS Language/Literature combination is a stand-alone with no A level continuation.
I have dealt with some students who told me that some of their peers only signed up for the AS Language/Literature option because they believed it could also be taken as an A level subject and reverted back to the NSC curriculum once they learned otherwise.
It gets worse than this. I have known people who were misadvised on what mix of Cambridge International subjects was necessary for university application, finding out that what they had done merely provided for matric exemption. A mishap like this will cost you at least a year of your life.
Worse yet, I have also known people who were informed a week before their mock exams that a teacher had been teaching the wrong syllabus for nearly two months.
If mistakes as basic as this can occur, how much more easy it is to give students bad advice about how many subjects should be taken in one exam session. On more than one occasion I have had to warn students against taking on a number of subjects that might be realistic in the NSC but not at AS levels because of the greater volume of work involved combined, more importantly, with higher levels of rigour and more demanding standards.
The moral of the story? Make sure that the organisation with which you deal either has someone who is an expert about the administrative niceties of the Cambridge International system or, at the very least, has access to one.
Academic Issues
Differences in Standard
I have had conversations with a highly regarded and recently retired Director of Academics at a first-rate Cambridge International school in which we were in complete agreement that full A levels in English Language were roughly 16 months ahead of an NSC grade 12, not merely in the contents of the syllabus but also the demanding nature of the criterial by which students are assessed. Please note: 16 months, not 16 weeks.
There is a big difference between even AS English Language, the level below A levels, and an NSC grade 12. In the AS English Language exams of October 2024 the failure rate was 39%, almost comparable to first year failure rate in South African universities. If memory serves, only 4.8% of the students taking the exam got an A. Therefore, even to get the solid but unglamorous C grade usually required for university entrance is a meaningful accomplishment.
By contrast, elite institutions teaching the NSC often see 80% of their students getting distinctions or As thereby proving without necessarily realising it that an A grade is effective meaningless in such circumstances.
Why such all but incomprehensible differences between the two systems? The answer is to be found in fundamental differences of approach which result in fundamentally different academic requirements.
Conceptual Learning vs Rote Learning
Here we come to what is in my opinion the all-important difference between the two systems: in the NSC much more emphasis is placed on rote learning without any deeper understanding of the material that one has to memorise. In Cambridge International subjects, even at IGCSE levels, let alone AS and A levels, the emphasis falls on conceptual understanding.
When I teach my pupils, regardless of their current level, I need above all to ensure understanding of concepts rather than memorization of facts. Let us take one example. I have had students show me questions in which they were asked to identify, say, similes, metaphors, personifications, metonymies and so on and provide definitions of each kind of figurative language.
Now, even at IGCSE level this gets you few marks. The examiners don’t want to know merely that something is there but why it is there and how what you have elected to comment on works so as to create specific literary effects. In fact merely noting that something is there without having any understanding of why it is there is known in a derogatory way among Cambridge examiners as “feature spotting,” by analogy with “train spotting.”
The ‘feature spotting” approach amounts to nothing more than rote learning. Quite often I have had students ask me—with the best of intentions—to list five or six things one must do in a textual analysis. It often takes me some time to make them to understand that this is what I cannot do and should not do because, in Cambridge International, it constitutes the high road to academic failure. Any generic recipe cannot fail to be inappropriate in part to whatever text one happens to be dealing with.
My job is not to convey isolated and disconnected facts but to enable students to master a set of skills that they can apply with some confidence to material they have not encountered before, a much more difficult task. A failure to understand this vital point leads me to another frequently encountered problem: misleading marks.
Grade Inflation
I have had many refugees from providers of the Cambridge curriculum because they came to realise the hard way that they had been the victims of grade inflation. In some cases they had been getting an A grade average for their written assignments only to find once official results had been released that the Cambridge examiners had awarded them a D or even an E leaving them unable to apply for university. This three or even four grade discrepancy ended up costing them a year of their lives.
In some cases I suspect that one is dealing with cynical businessmen who know that if realistic results were given clients might take fright and defect. By the time you have learned to your cost where you actually stand, they have your money for the year and there is nothing you can do about it.
However, I do not believe this is generally the case. In most instances I believe people new to Cambridge teaching—often only with an NSC background—are unaware that they do not understand either the fundamental differences in intellectual approach or the big differences between the NSC and high first world standards.
Rote Learning vs Genuine University Readiness
Let us go back to elite institutions which can get As or distinctions for up to 80% of their students. How is this done? Rote learning is your answer.
I have had many students tell me that not much new work is done in grade 12. Much time is spent going over a decade’s worth of past matric papers in the knowledge that the questions you will be asked will be all but identical or, at the very worst, similar. The result is that on exam you might do very well because you have been asked to do something closely resembling several tasks you have already done before.
To my horror, I have even had students who in conversation have noted that they are even told that if the question has been formulated in this or that way, one should use specific words or phrases to get top marks.
To my mind, this is the antithesis of anything deserving the name of learning. Such methods ensure that even, to put it rather caustically, a diligent donkey can thrive.
But what happens once such people arrive at university? Well, let me tell you an anecdote regarding one of my former students who was doing all of A levels in mathematics, physics and chemistry as well as AS English Language (needed for university admission even though my student intended to study electrical engineering).
When my former student’s peers did their first mathematics and physics about 6 weeks into the first term, people who had arrived cock-a-hoop with their six or seven distinctions got marks which,, to quote the boy’s father “were comparable to their shoe sizes.” Why the 75% to 80% drop? Was the test unfair because it covered material that had not been covered in class?
No: the students had to think for the first time in their lives and could not do so. They were utterly incapable of even simple kind of lateral thinking that might enable them to apply concepts and theory to problems of a kind they had not seen before.
This is why failure rates at South African universities are of a kind that would appall any self-respecting general if they were battlefield casualties.
Unless you wish to join the ranks of these unfortunates, make sure that the people you deal with are experienced in Cambridge International teaching and have a verifiable pedigree and track record.
Quite simply, the teachers you deal with must have subject-area expertise of a kind that enables them to work at a higher level.
The Cost Trap vs Accelerated Programs
Many of the students I have dealt with who needed to be taught properly from scratch in a way that necessitated the difficult unlearning of inappropriate methods selected the provider that failed them for one main reason: cost.
This is entirely understandable. The parents of these children were often already paying expensive private school fees and there are limits to what all but the very rich can do.
However, resist this impulse if you can. If you are one of those who have been poorly taught and have to redo everything, will the amount you end up paying be less than if you had selected someone genuinely qualified regardless of price?
If a teacher knows the syllabus of his subject well and can cultivate and enhance understanding through conceptual learning it is also possible to cover a syllabus adequately in a fraction of the normal time.
I have routinely taught students IGCSE or AS English Language in 3 or 4 months rather than the usual 12. I have had and have colleagues who do the same in the sciences. Once this is taken into account it becomes apparent that merely to look at an hourly rate in isolation oversimplifies matters greatly.
Where Does This Leave Us?
It is vital never to forget the big differences in standards and intellectual emphases between the NSC and Cambridge International. I urge you to think about all of the following:
- The ability of those who will teach your children to equip students to work much more rigorously than they have had to before;
- The ability of teachers to deal with more demanding subjects matter and syllabuses than will be encountered in a local grade 12;
- The ability of teachers to enable students to understand concepts and apply the in new ways to new material;
- The ability of teachers to customise what they do for different individuals, especially vital in accelerated programs in my opinion.
- The administrative know-how of the relevant organisation;
- The history and track record of those you deal with;
- Avoiding the trap of prioritising cost above all else.
We wish you well in your Cambridge International journey. But buyer beware.