It seems that nowadays a week hardly goes by without a flurry of news reports and some sort of hoo-ha about proposed reforms to the English education system. One week GCSEs are being ditched and replaced with O-Levels only for it to be back to GCSEs the next week; and coursework is in briefly before being axed at the drop of a hat in favour of summertime exams.

Whatever your views on the tinkering or wholesale reforms being carried out by the government at any one time (here at Leaving School we like to keep ourselves above such debates, thank you very much), it seems fair to say that the very act of continually calling into question the validity of qualifications as they currently stand can make students currently or about to sit those exams feel a bit in limbo. Why take a qualification if just a few years later the powers that be declare it to have not been sufficiently rigorous or educational?

It’s partly as a result of this uncertainty that some schools have taken the step of abandoning A Levels all together in favour of another qualification. When they do so, nine times out of ten they will be jumping ship to the International Baccalaureate (IB). Indeed, you may have heard of this qualification, either in the news or when leafing through university prospectuses.

But what is it, and if you’re currently finishing GCSEs would it be a good idea to take the IB Diploma?

The IB Diploma has been operating in some form or another since the 1960s, when it was first devised by a group of Swiss-based educators. The organisation that runs it, known simply as International Baccalaureate, offers its qualifications and curricula all around the world. So one of the first possible plus points of the IB Diploma is that it is a more internationally recognised qualification than the A Level. While British qualifications are taught at some (mainly wealthy) schools across the globe, the IB Diploma truly deserves the word ‘international’ in its title, with universities the world over understanding it as a currency with which to make entrance offers to students.

But the differences with A Levels certainly don’t end there. For one thing, any IB student must study six subjects, rather than the three-A-Levels-plus-an-AS model that most British students in practice end up taking. Of these six, three are studied to a higher level.

Now, if the thought of having to take six subjects sends shivers down your spine, this next part will make even more uncomfortable reading: you don’t actually have full control over which subjects you take. Rather, you have to pick one subject from six different groupings. At present these are ‘Language A1’ (ie. your native language), ‘Second Language’, ‘Individuals and Societies’ (this group covers subjects such as politics), ‘Experimental Sciences’ (Chemistry, Physics etc.), ‘Mathematics and Computer Science’ and ‘Arts’. In some cases students can take two subjects from one group and so only pick from five of them, but that’s about it as far as flexibility goes.

Mind you, some would argue that being able to take six subjects is in itself a much more flexible system than A Levels. Really it all depends on what your priorities are. If you’d hoped and prayed you could leave science behind forever after GCSEs, the IB might not be for you. On the other hand, if you hate the idea of having to restrict your education at the age of sixteen and want to keep your future study options open, the IB is a very enticing prospect indeed.

To return to the issue of the quality of the qualification–because there is obviously no point in studying for something that is regarded as worth less than the paper the results are printed on–the IB stands at least shoulder to shoulder with–and in the view of some is seen as a superior alternative to–Britain’s A Level systems. Certainly in no quarters is it regarded as less worthwhile. In fact, during the later years of Tony Blair’s government there were plans to make funding available to make sure every region of the country had at least one IB centre, but such ideas were then quietly shelved and aren’t likely to return any time soon.

Looking at it on balance, then, while A Levels will certainly get you into UK universities for the foreseeable future–and if that ever changes it’ll be because they are officially replaced with something else–the IB is certainly an attractive option if you are either looking to apply to university abroad or want to take more than four subjects. Sadly, though, in these strained economic times the difficulty can be finding a place that offers the costly IB curriculum in the first place.