Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) delivers exams for just under 900 syllabuses worldwide, including IGCSE. We caught up with CEO Ann Puntis to talk about growing demand in the exams market.
The PIE: Broadly speaking, what does CIE do as a company?
AP: We’re not actually a company. We’re a department of the University of Cambridge and part of the Cambridge Assessment Group, and we were set up to extend access to the benefits of education. The University sees this mission as a way of taking educational values it believes are important to students far and wide, beyond just those that study at the University.
So we operate in 160 plus countries around the world doing all sorts of things, not just examinations. We work with governments to improve educational systems, with consortia of schools to develop their curriculum programmes, provide support in bilingual education contexts, and help swathes of the word decipher what 21st century skills mean to their young people.
The PIE: What exams do you deliver?
AP: We have all together just under 900 syllabuses we set exams for. We have progression tests for primary and lower secondary level, ages 5-14. We have end of unit achievement tests for 11 year olds and 14 year olds. We offer IGCSE in 70 subjects plus IGCSE variants, O-Level in 45 subjects, International AS, A-Levels, and the Cambridge Pre-U. We also deliver Singapore’s exam system.
“For a long time we had very little activity in Europe, but that is completely changing”
The PIE: What countries do you see most demand for your exams? Where is most of the new interest coming from?
AP: There’s a very interesting development in the US at the moment, where a lot of states like our IGCSE. So the US is pretty huge at the moment. China too, of course, because they are developing English skills really quickly, and because they are looking to educate their young people for global mobility. Asia Pacific as a whole is really strong and Latin America is growing rapidly.
For a long time we had very little activity in Europe, but that is completely changing, driven by the growth of English medium education across the continent. That’s a very strong as a trend. Worldwide our growth rates are about 25% year on year. You could say we’re doing something right, but also the world as a whole is absolutely committed to the difference education makes.
The PIE: What are the biggest challenges in the exams market?
AP: We encountered a challenge a few years ago, because we invested in technology and social media and wanted to encourage young people learning across the world to share their experiences. But unfortunately [this was not a good idea] during exam time! So we’ve had to develop a system of having different papers for different parts of the world on the same day. This means delivering up to six different papers in different time zones for 897 syllabuses! It is a huge undertaking, and we’re lucky that we have fantastic logistics.
“The University of Cambridge’s mission is about extending access, not about closing anything off”
The PIE: Is the exams market very competitive?
AP: There’s always a different choice schools and governments can make, and while we’re thrilled when they choose Cambridge, we respect their decision if they stick with the national provision. A lot of our schools take the IGCSE then move on to the International Baccalaureate, and that also works. The University of Cambridge’s mission is about extending access, not about closing anything off.[More>>]
The PIE: You’re running a campaign to attract invigilators. Are they hard to come by?
AP: We invest heavily in ensuring our invigilators are the best they can be. At the moment they’re based pretty strongly in the UK. But with new technology there’s no reason why they have to be. One in seven schools in New Zealand take our qualifications, but teachers there didn’t realise they could be invigilators too. So we’re looking to ensure that wherever there are highly skilled teachers we can work with them.
The PIE: How many do you need?
AP: Each year we work with between 8,000 and 10,000 examiners and openings for new examiners don’t appear that frequently. But of course with growth new opportunities arrive. So we’re not working on the basis of a particular target, but we want to get to a position where schools overseas who want to understand what it’s like to be an examiner with us actually get an opportunity to experience that.
“Teachers overseas didn’t realise they could be CIE invigilators too”
The PIE: Can you tell me about your work developing syllabuses in Egypt? That must be very interesting right now.
AP: A few years ago we were asked to work on the development of academies in Egypt, where the government wanted to develop new model schools that would act as a catalyst for change. We developed a curriculum, teacher resources, assessment material, and it’s been very positively evaluated in Egypt. They now want to build another ten schools. So it’s been a story of success in a context of amazing political change.
The PIE: Has the political situation there been hard to work around?
AP: Egypt has a massive demographic of young people, and educational reform was deemed to be important even before the large scale political changes. But the events made it difficult at points to operate. During the most extreme period last January we were in daily contact with our staff in Cairo about safety issues.
But Cambridge has worked in many difficult places over the history of the group, and when we’re working on educationally significant developments we tend to be there come what may. We’ve delivered exams through two world wars!
“I think technology gives us the chance to be much closer to learning”
The PIE: Where do you see the exams market going? Are there any changes that lie ahead?
AP: I think technology gives us the chance to be much closer to learning through integrated curriculum and assessment models. At the moment the model we have is that kids learn, then there comes some fateful day when that learning is assessed in a formal examination. If you’ve been able to build a profile of student achievement throughout a course, you can be much more sensitive to the way in which someone is achieving.
