History
In 1988, O-level qualifications in the UK were replaced by a new system, the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE); previously, the O Levels itself had replaced the School Certificate over thirty years ago. This meant that the final O-level examinations were taken in 1987, while the curriculum for the new system was introduced in 1986. However the O-level is still used in many Commonwealth countries, such as Bangladesh, Mauritius,and Singapore . Some British schools also reverted to exams based on the O-levels. The Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination was also benchmarked against the O-levels for comparable subjects. But it has switched to benchmark against the IGCSE.
O-levels continue to thrive as well respected international qualifications for students in other countries, who use them for preparation for advanced study in their own country and/or access higher education overseas. In June 2005, 12 million candidates from more than 200 countries registered for O-level examinations across the world. Institutions that offer O-levels include Cambridge International Examinations (CIE).
In 2012, it was revealed in leaked documents that Education Secretary Michael Gove planned for the return of the O-Levels in England and to scrap the GCSE's. The leaked documents suggested the plan could be that students in England sit more traditional O-Levels from 2016 onwards, with the papers set by a single examination board.
Read more about this topic: Ordinary Level
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.”
—Henry James (1843–1916)