UWCSEA's first cohort without IGCSEs finishes IB Diploma level with GCSE peers

United World College of South East Asia (UWCSEA) in Singapore said its first pupils to skip International GCSEs have finished the IB Diploma with results almost level with classmates who sat the exams, Tes reported on 20 October 2026.

The not-for-profit school has two campuses, Dover and East in Tampines, with more than 5,600 pupils between them. It replaced the GCSEs in Grades 9 and 10, the equivalent of Years 10 and 11 in England, with a programme it wrote itself.

Nicholas Alchin, the head of college who led the change, told Tes the two groups came out of the Diploma "almost exactly level". Staff are cautiously optimistic that the new course prepared pupils better to learn on their own, he said, but one cohort is too small to settle the question.

"We will learn more as further cohorts come through," Alchin said.

The school began designing the course in August 2021 and let families choose from August 2022. Take-up was 55 per cent in the first year, 59 per cent in August 2023 and 87 per cent in August 2024, when the school decided to stop offering the GCSE route, Tes reported.

A letter from Alchin to families said the (I)GCSE would not be offered on either campus to pupils entering Grade 9 from the 2025/26 school year. Universities had told the school the qualifications were not critical, even in the UK, and were not needed by pupils moving to another school for Grade 11, the letter said.

Alchin said the main gain was time. Mock exams and the exam season from late April to June used to take about 10 weeks, or a quarter of the school year.

"We want time in the classroom, that's what parents are paying for," he said.

Pupils now take 10 courses instead of eight GCSEs. Some courses run for a single year, so a pupil can take history in Grade 9 and geography in Grade 10. Assessment includes performances, interviews and oral exams. Written exams remain, held in two-week clusters.

Damian Bacchoo, high-school principal at East Campus, said the change needed a stable staff, a supportive board and money to release teachers to write the course. "Huge amounts of money were spent on teacher release," he said. The school ran both programmes side by side for two or three years.

Bacchoo said dropping GCSEs would be harder at a British school. UWCSEA was an IB school with a British stage in the middle that parents often did not understand, he said.

The same letter said that from August 2024 the school would add a second IB Diploma route, swapping two Standard Level courses for study tied to its mission, such as peace studies or sustainability. The IB had offered that option only to UWCSEA and UWC Atlantic, the letter said.

UWCSEA charges S$55,092 (about US$43,100) a year, all in, for its oldest year group in 2026/27, up 3.5 per cent on the year before. That puts it among the dearer of the 17 Singapore schools Prospectus lists. Singaporean citizens need Ministry of Education approval to enrol.