The comparative difficulty of Higher Mathematics on the International Baccalaureate

Although the number of students taking the International Baccalaureate (IB) in the UK has increased in recent years (from 3081 in 2006 to 5114 in 2011) its students remain a minority when compared with the large number of A-level students looking for places at university. Universities have accepted that the IB provides a suitable preparation for Higher Education that is in some ways superior to A-levels (Mori, 2012) and have needed to place a value on IB point scores in order to make fair offers to IB students competing in a market dominated by A-level. There are two main areas of equivalence that are used in university offers—an overall score or specific subject grades. Often these two systems are combined. In 2006, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) commissioned an Expert group to consider the IB in comparison with A-levels. This group looked at the specific subjects of Mathematics, Chemistry and Geography as well as the course as a whole and concluded that a level 7 in IB aligned with a good A at A-level and a level 6 with the A/B boundary. An examination of school results in 2009 performed at two IB schools (Sevenoaks and King’s College) suggested that level 6 at IB higher was equivalent to A at A-level in all subjects except for Mathematics where a level 5 at IB higher was equivalent to A at A-level. This article considers the standard offers made by a selection of the most competitive UK universities to identify the translations between A-level and IB and uses existing data sets to show that there is evidence to support the Sevenoaks and King’s College thesis. It then examines the Mathematics results at a school that offers A-level and IB to investigate what might be an appropriate equivalence for universities to adopt.