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I am a high school mathematics teacher, in our school students take the Cambridge IGCSE 0580 exam. After IGCSE our school offers the IB Diploma programme and I am thinking about proposing the management of our school to move to the IGCSE 0607. The reason for this is the investigation exam paper and the use of the graphic display calculator.

Comparing the syllabi I do not find a big difference and I think that introducing the graphic display calculator earlier can be an advantage in the IBDP. However, I do not want to propose a change that can be overly challenging to the less motivated/interested students.

I would be interested to hear the opinion of those who have experience in teaching both syllabus. We do not have the resources to teach both, so it would be especially interesting to hear opinions of those who moved from 0580 to 0607. Do students find the 0607 more challenging? Did you see a change in grades on the exam?

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  • $\begingroup$ Yes I was talking about the extended content. Offering 0607 at both core and extended may be a good idea, sadly I do not know much about 0607 core. Also what IB levels do you offer? SL/HL AA/AI ? $\endgroup$
    – Vivaan Daga
    Commented Mar 2, 2023 at 18:12

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This answer assumes that both 0607 and 0580 are being considered at the extended level

0607 is definitely a more challenging curriculum, primarily this is because it expects students to be extremely familiar with a GDC, especially for paper 6–investigation. As far as the move to IB is concerned it depends on the type of math the student wants to take, if they want to take IB AI which is very stats based then 0580 is fine, if they want to take AA HL which is very theory based then 0607 is recommended. I suggest instead of moving from 0580 to 0607 you instead offer both.

(I realise that this advice is probably very hard to follow, but hopefully it at least a little helpful)

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  • $\begingroup$ This is indeed helpful, thank you. Before I accept this as the best answer, I wait for other opinions who have experience with these at the core level. I am not really concerned about students who would take IB at HL. My concern would be about the least interested/motivated students. Are there any students who would get a reasonable grade at the core 0580, but would not be able to complete the core 0607? If yes, would these students be able to get through IB AISL? After all, IB AISL is also heavily graphing calculator based. $\endgroup$
    – Ferenc Beleznay
    Commented Mar 3, 2023 at 22:23

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