GCSE Higher Tier Math Test Prep Course

What is the GCSE Higher Tier Test?

The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private schools in Scotland may choose to use an alternative qualification.

Each GCSE qualification is offered in a specific school subject (e.g. Mathematics, Science, History, Geography, Art, Design and Technology, etc). The UK government has drawn up a list of preferred subjects known as the English Baccalaureate and the Progress 8 benchmark metric is calculated on the results in eight GCSEs including English, Maths and Science. Studies for GCSE examinations take place over a period of two or three academic years (depending upon the subject, school, and exam board), starting in Year 9 or Year 10 for the majority of students, with examinations being sat at the end of Year 11 in England and Wales.

GCSEs were introduced in Sep 1987 to establish a national qualification for those who decided to leave school at 16, without pursuing further academic study towards qualifications such as A-Levels or university degrees. They replaced the former CSE and O-Level qualifications, uniting the two qualifications to allow access to the full range of grades for more students. However the exam papers sometimes had a choice of questions designed for the more able and the less able candidates. Upon introduction, the GCSEs were graded on a letter scale, from A to G, with a C being set as roughly equivalent to an O-Level Grade C, or a CSE Grade 1, and thus achievable by roughly the top 25% of each cohort.

Initially, the mathematics papers were set in three tiers: Higher; Intermediate; and Foundation, to cover different mathematical abilities. The Higher level corresponded to grades A-C; the Intermediate level corresponded to grades C-E; and the Foundation level corresponded to grades E-G. However, it was later realised that nobody who sat the Foundation level had any chance of passing the subject at grade C, so this arrangement was replaced by a two-tier arrangement where the Intermediate and Foundation levels were merged. This brought the subject into line with other subjects that typically had foundation and higher level papers. This meant that somebody who sat the new Foundation level could now achieve a grade C, which was considered the formal pass level.

With the introduction of numbered grades, the Higher tier provides grades 9-4 and the Foundation tier provides grades 5-1.