Why a Tutor Does Not Transfer Between Curricula: IGCSE, IB and A-Level Compared

Quadratics are quadratics. Newton's second law is Newton's second law. Nothing about the mathematics or the physics changes when you cross from one exam system to another, and this is exactly why so many families assume a good tutor is a good tutor.

What changes is everything wrapped around the subject: what the examiner is actually rewarding, how the question is phrased, what proportion of the grade sits outside the written papers, and therefore what the hours should be spent on. Call it exam craft. Subject knowledge transfers. Exam craft does not, and exam craft is where most of the marks are won or lost once a student is reasonably competent.

The concrete version: a tutor who is genuinely excellent at IGCSE Mathematics and has never supervised an IB internal assessment is, at the IB, a beginner. Not at the mathematics. At the 20% of the grade that is not a written paper.

This article is what the hours actually go on in each system, where the mismatch is most expensive, and three questions that tell you in about ninety seconds whether a tutor knows your system or is improvising in it.

One disclosure so you can weight the rest: I teach IGCSE and IB. A-Level appears throughout because families in international schools compare all three, and because the Italian liceo comparison matters here in Milan, not because I take A-Level students.

This is the same student, the same subject, the same tutor, in four different systems. The column that matters is the third one: the thing a tutor from another system has never had to do.

Three features of the IB Diploma make it the system where hiring the wrong tutor hurts most, and none of the three exists at IGCSE.

The internal assessment.

In IB Mathematics the Exploration is worth 20% of the subject grade, and in the sciences the IA is a comparable share. It is independent work, marked against criteria that reward the *process*: a genuine personal engagement, a clear aim, honest treatment of limitations. Supervising one well is a distinct craft. The tutor has to push a student toward a stronger piece of work while touching none of it, which is a harder discipline than teaching, and the line is not negotiable. A tutor without IB experience tends to make one of two mistakes: helping too much, which is academic misconduct and can cost the diploma, or helping too little because they are frightened of the first mistake.

Command terms.

The IB publishes a defined list, and they are contractual. *State* means one line with no working. *Describe* wants no explanation. *Explain* requires causal reasoning and is where most marks are lost by students who write a good *describe*. *Justify* wants evidence attached to the claim. A student who does not internalise these leaves marks on every paper, and a tutor who has never taught the IB does not know they need to be taught at all.

Paper 3.

In Maths HL and the sciences, Paper 3 is a different exam from Paper 1 in kind, not just in difficulty: extended, investigative, unfamiliar contexts. Preparing for it with more Paper 1 drilling is preparing for the wrong thing.

Add to all this that predicted grades determine which universities make an offer at all, and are set well before the final exams. The IB rewards planning far more than the IGCSE does, which changes when tutoring should start, not only what it should contain.

The IGCSE looks like the easier system to tutor, and in one sense it is: the content is finite and the papers are predictable. That predictability is exactly what makes the difference between a tutor who knows the system and one who does not so visible in the marks.

Cambridge mark schemes accept specific formulations and reject near-misses. A student who writes that the current is "shared" in a series circuit has said something a physicist would let pass in conversation and an examiner will not credit, because the mark scheme wants the current to be the same at every point. This is not pedantry on the examiner's part, it is a written contract, and the tutor's job is to have read it.

The second thing an experienced IGCSE tutor does automatically is read the mark allocation as an instruction. A four-mark question is announcing that four distinct things are wanted. Students who write a beautiful two-step answer to a four-mark question are not being unlucky; they are ignoring a message printed on the page.

The third is board fluency. Cambridge 0580 and Edexcel 4MA1 cover similar ground and ask for it differently, and a tutor who prepares an Edexcel student on Cambridge past papers is training the wrong reflexes. If you want the detail on that, I have written a comparison of the two boards.

None of these three is subject knowledge. All three are learnable, and all three take a couple of years of marking to learn.

Families in international schools move, and a student who changes system mid-course carries a very specific set of gaps rather than a general weakness. The gaps are predictable enough to plan around, which is the good news.

Italian liceo to IGCSE or IB.

The algebra is usually ahead, sometimes by a year. What is missing is calculator fluency, statistics and modelling, and writing in English under time pressure. The common failure is a strong mathematician getting mediocre grades for a term because nobody told them the calculator is not cheating. I have written about what changes topic by topic.

IGCSE to IB.

The content step is real but manageable. The step nobody prepares for is independent work: the IA is the first time most students are asked to define their own question, and students who were excellent at being told what to do struggle first.

A-Level to IB or the reverse.

Breadth against depth. The A-Level student meets four extra subjects and an Extended Essay; the IB student meets a much narrower syllabus examined much more deeply, and finds that being good at everything is no longer the skill being tested.

In all three cases the honest first step is a diagnostic rather than a schedule of lessons. If you want a rough map before speaking to anyone, the curriculum transition assessor will give you one.

You do not need to become an expert in the system to check whether your tutor is one. Three questions do it.

"Which part of the grade is not a written paper, and how much is it worth?"

For the IB the answer is the internal assessment and roughly 20%, said immediately. For the IGCSE the honest answer is that in Maths there is none, which is itself a good sign: a tutor who invents coursework is bluffing. For A-Level Maths, none. A tutor who has to think about this has not worked in the system recently.

"What is a command term, and give me one that students get wrong."

An IB tutor will produce the *describe* against *explain* distinction, or something equally specific, without pausing. A tutor who treats the question as jargon has not taught the IB.

"Show me a script from my system that you have marked."

Not a testimonial, not a grade improvement claim. An actual marked piece of work with annotations. What you are looking for is whether the annotations refer to marks and criteria or only to right and wrong.

If a tutor covers your system, all three answers arrive quickly and specifically. If they hedge, that is not dishonesty, it is usually a competent person who works in a different system and would need a year to be equally good in yours. Whether you can afford that year is the actual question.

The rest of what to ask, including the questions that apply to any system, is in how to choose a tutor.