Thread: I.G.C.S.E Courses in Thailand.

Originally Posted by Dan

For example, the IB score doesn't sound that great (32.7 out of 45 against an average of 29.6) but without knowing what the distribution of scores looks like, it's a meaningless bit of information.

From the IB statistical bulletin 2008 (latest one that I have near to hand)

ALL SUBJECTS TOTAL 291,021 students.

Percentage of candidates awarded grades 1= 3%
Percentage of candidates awarded grades 2=4 %
Percentage of candidates awarded grades 3= 13%
Percentage of candidates awarded grades 4= 25%
Percentage of candidates awarded grades 5= 30%
Percentage of candidates awarded grades 6= 20%
Percentage of candidates awarded grades 7= 7%

Mean grade per subject = 4.69%

and the bonus points.


Percentage of candidates awarded 0 = 32.45%*
Percentage of candidates awarded 1 = 45.28%
Percentage of candidates awarded 2 = 14.18%
Percentage of candidates awarded 3 = 8.09%

mean score from bonus points = 0.98


*They still have to complete the two essays mentioned, and pass, they just do not qualify for any of the bonus points available.


Generally any student who scores less than 24 automatically fails and those that score between 24-27 must satisfy several conditions to pass.

There could not be a better thread than today for this to be up. I tried my best to raise my kids the right way. For their Secondary education I put them in the best EP program in a great government school near where I work. For two years they flourished, but were never challenged. The A's just kept on coming in. But finally six months before the end of year two I realized they had no chance in the real world continuing to study like that. English, Maths, Science, and IT were taught in English, and the content was good but not challenging. The Thai side was a mess, no world history, no geography, no independent thinking.

They knew geography because we all love travel and they have always had a huge globe we study in their room. Their world history is okay because I tried to home school, but its not a subject they now take for ICGSE's. Here they had to know the name of over 50 monks and which cave, in which changwat, in which amphur was it located? That was the final straw.

They tested and recieved scholarships to Harrow, but as twins we are still paying a lot of money and thats where they are. Most of you know that I am a Yank, but I feel this is the best school with location taken into mind for my children and their future. It is all work and no play for this level of a good British education, I do actually believe in that now, as with a great learning experience at school you also have an incredible amount of homework. They seem to enjoy it, as do their friends.

Its been hard as so many of the kids have been at Harrow for their entire schooling, over half have been there at least 8 years. But today they had there first success. An A and an A* on a poem they had to analyse, critique, and state their opinion of. The papers were sent to England to Cambridge to be marked. Here is the poem. One proud dad let me tell you!!!

The City Planners
• Cruising these residential Sunday
streets in dry August sunlight:
what offends us is
the sanities:
the houses in pedantic rows, the planted
sanitary trees, assert
levelness of surface like a rebuke
to the dent in our car door.
No shouting here, or
shatter of glass; nothing more abrupt
than the rational whine of a power mower
cutting a straight swath in the discouraged grass.
But though the driveways neatly sidestep hysteria
by being even, the roofs all display
the same slant of avoidance to the hot sky,
certain things:
the smell of spilled oil a faint
sickness lingering in the garages,
a splash of paint on brick surprising as a bruise,
a plastic hose poised in a vicious
coil; even the too-fixed stare of the wide windows
give momentary access to
the landscape behind or under
the future cracks in the plaster
when the houses, capsized, will slide
obliquely into the clay seas, gradual as glaciers
that right now nobody notices.
That is where the City Planners
with the insane faces of political conspirators
are scattered over unsurveyed
territories, concealed from each other,
each in his own private blizzard;


Margaret Atwod.