Your child finished IGCSEs with a set of strong grades. Ten weeks later they start A Levels, and by half term something has changed that nobody warned you about.

This is what actually happens between those two points, in numbers rather than adjectives, and which parts of it you can usefully influence.

The timeline, on one page

For June series candidates the calendar is fixed and short.

• Mid-June: last IGCSE papers.
• Mid-August: Cambridge IGCSE and O Level results released.
• Late August or September: Year 12 begins, usually within a fortnight of results. British international schools across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the wider Gulf tend to start in late August, while UK sixth forms usually begin in early September.

That leaves roughly nine or ten weeks, of which the last two are consumed by results and starting term. November series candidates get a compressed version: exams in October and November, results on 14 January, often after teaching has already begun.

The decisions that matter cluster at the two ends. Subject choices are made before or just after the exams, and readiness work has to happen before results rather than after, because there is very little time between results and the first lesson.

What changes in the workload

This is the number worth knowing, and it is published by Cambridge in every syllabus.

An IGCSE is designed around about 130 guided learning hours per subject. A full A Level is designed around about 360. An AS Level sits at about 180.

Set that against the change in subject count:

• Before: eight or nine IGCSEs, roughly 130 hours each.
• After: three A Levels, roughly 360 hours each.

The totals are not far apart, which is exactly why the change is easy to miss from the outside. The timetable does not look heavier. What changed is concentration: each subject now demands close to three times the time it did, and depth is far less forgiving than breadth.

Across a school year of about 36 teaching weeks, 360 hours over two years is roughly five hours a week per subject of taught time. Three subjects is about fifteen hours weekly, before any independent work at home.

What changes in how the work is marked

The second shift is in what earns marks, and it is smaller than the folklore suggests.

Cambridge publishes assessment objective weightings for every subject. At A Level:

Subject	Knowledge and understanding	The rest
Biology 9700	40%	Handling and evaluating information 40%, experimental skills 20%
Economics 9708	35%	Analysis 40%, evaluation 25%
Literature in English 9695	20%	Analysis, personal response, communication and evaluation, 20% each

The honest part: this was already true at IGCSE. Cambridge Economics 0455 runs 40% knowledge, 40% analysis, 20% evaluation, so the shift into 9708 is five percentage points rather than a new discipline.

What changes is the length of answer expected and the standard applied. A recall-heavy answer could still collect marks at IGCSE. At A Level it meets a longer question and a mark scheme where most of the credit sits elsewhere.

Why the first marks look alarming

If one thing in this guide is worth keeping, it is this.

A Level mark schemes are written for the end of a two-year course. When your child answers a question in week five, it is marked against that finished standard. The number therefore measures distance from an end point they have not reached, and in week five that distance is supposed to be large.

An IGCSE report card measured a syllabus that had ended. The two numbers are not comparable, and treating them as comparable produces a conversation about effort when the actual issue is scale.

There is usually a second cause worth checking. Every A Level syllabus names what it assumes students already know, and none of it is retaught. Mathematics 9709 assumes IGCSE 0580 Extended or O Level 4024/4029, plus simple manipulation of surds and the shapes of graphs of the form y = kxⁿ. Economics 9708 assumes a mathematics course rather than an Economics one. A student missing one item finds week-three lessons incomprehensible for reasons unrelated to the new material.

What a report card does not tell you

A grade tells you how your child performed on a syllabus that has finished, in the format it used, on the day.

It does not tell you whether a skill is fluent enough to survive being step two of a longer question about something else. A child can hold an A* in 0580 and still stall for thirty seconds on surds, and thirty seconds is the difference between following a week-three lesson and spending it catching up.

Those are different measurements. The grade looks backwards at a finished course; readiness looks forwards at the one starting. The second is the one that determines the first term, and no report card reports it.

The costs, honestly

Two kinds, and the first is larger than the second.

Time. Fifteen hours a week of guided learning plus unscheduled independent study, sustained for two years. Families underestimate the independent half because nothing announces it. Three subjects instead of nine leaves gaps in the timetable that used to be lessons, and those gaps are the course, not free periods.

Money. Optional, and worth being sceptical about. Tuition before the course has started is rarely necessary. Preparation in the gap is genuinely useful, but the version that works is small: about twenty hours across a summer, targeted at a page of assumed knowledge per subject. That can be done free with the syllabus and a textbook if your child will work unsupervised.

The honest filter on paying for anything is whether unstructured study actually happens. For some children it does. If every previous holiday plan dissolved by week two, what you would be buying is a schedule, and that is a reasonable purchase rather than a failure.

The AS checkpoint, and why it is worth asking about

Most parents do not know this option exists, and it changes the shape of the two years.

Cambridge designs an AS Level around about 180 guided learning hours, half a full A Level, and it is a qualification in its own right. Schools can enter students for AS components at the end of Year 12 and complete the A Level in Year 13, carrying the AS result forward.

The appeal for a parent is straightforward: a real, graded result after one year instead of a two-year wait, and a checkpoint that tells you something before it is too late to act.

Three caveats worth knowing before you raise it.

The grade scales differ. Candidates following an AS route are eligible for grades a to e. A Level candidates are eligible for A* to E. There is no A* at AS.

Carry forward has conditions. Cambridge states that AS results carry forward subject to rules and time limits set out in the Cambridge Handbook, administered through the school’s exams officer. It is not indefinite and it is worth confirming rather than assuming.

One subject has a trap. In Mathematics 9709, the Pure Mathematics only route, Papers 1 and 2, is available at AS Level only and cannot be carried forward to complete the A Level. A student who sits that combination intending to continue has taken a dead end.

Whether the staged route is available depends on the subject and the school’s policy, which is exactly why it belongs in a September conversation rather than a June one.

If a subject turns out to be wrong

This is the decision parents most often get the timing wrong on.

Changing a subject in the first few weeks of Year 12 is usually straightforward. Schools expect some movement, and the material covered by then is small enough to catch up. Changing in Year 13 is a different proposition, because a year of a 360-hour course sits behind the class.

So the early weeks are worth treating as information rather than as a settling-in period during which complaints get discounted. If your child says in October that a subject is wrong, that is the cheapest possible moment to test the claim.

The distinction to draw is between a fixable gap and a genuine mismatch. A student struggling because an assumed skill is missing has a problem that closes in a few hours. A student who finds the subject itself uninteresting has a two-year commitment they will do the minimum for, and at A Level the minimum shows in the grade.

What actually helps at home

Most parental help at A Level fails because it targets content. You are unlikely to be able to help with Pure Mathematics 3, and that is fine, because content is not where the gap is.

Useful:

• Ask specific questions. “Which bit of that lesson lost you?” produces an answer. “How’s it going?” produces “fine”.
• Read the syllabus prior-knowledge page together. Ten minutes per subject on the Cambridge website, and it converts vague worry into a short list.
• Protect the structure, not the hours. Regular short sessions beat long weekend catch-ups, because the material is cumulative.
• Treat early marks as information rather than verdicts. Ask what the mark scheme wanted, not what went wrong.

Less useful:

• Comparing A Level marks with IGCSE grades.
• Adding tuition before anyone has identified what the actual gap is.
• Pushing a fourth subject as insurance. Each one costs roughly five hours a week of taught time and comes out of the three that offers depend on.

The decisions that are genuinely yours

Four, and they fall at predictable moments.

Subject choice, before Year 12. The reliable method is to look up entry requirements for two or three real courses your child might apply to, rather than relying on general lists. Mathematics is the single most enabling choice for quantitative degrees.

How many, before Year 12. Three is standard and is what offers are built around. A fourth is worth it only if it is genuine surplus capacity.

Whether to prepare in the gap, in July. A short, targeted piece of work, or nothing. Not a whole summer of revision.

Whether to intervene in October. If the first term goes badly, the question is which of three things is wrong: a missing assumed skill, a study method built for breadth, or unfamiliar exam conventions. Each is specific and fixable. “Working harder” is none of them.

Questions worth asking the school

Short list, one conversation, ideally before Year 12 starts.

1. Which exam route do you enter students for in each subject, and is there an AS checkpoint at the end of Year 12?
2. For Mathematics, which fourth paper do you enter, Mechanics or Probability & Statistics 2?
3. What are the entry requirements for each subject, and are they the school’s own thresholds?
4. How and when will we see the first assessed work?

The last one matters most. Knowing when the first real mark arrives lets you interpret it correctly instead of reacting to it.

Next steps

For the student-facing version of all this, the gap between IGCSE and A Levels is the place to start, and what changes in the first six weeks of A Level covers the term where most of the surprises land.

If the first term has already gone badly, why the first term is a confidence problem works through the three fixable causes. If you are weighing paid help, should you pay for tuition before A Levels includes the cases where the answer is no.

If you want one concrete thing to do before September, Pre-A Level Mathematics covers the maths handover into 9709 and reports back on which skills are still slow. That report is the readiness picture a report card cannot give you.

Frequently asked questions

How much harder are A Levels than IGCSEs? +

Mostly in volume rather than skill type. Cambridge designs an IGCSE around roughly 130 guided learning hours per subject and a full A Level around 360. Your child drops from eight or nine subjects to three, so each one demands close to three times the teaching time it used to.

How many hours a week do A Levels take? +

About 360 guided learning hours per subject across two years works out at roughly five hours a week of taught time per subject over a 36-week year. Three subjects is around fifteen hours of guided learning weekly, with independent study on top of that and largely unscheduled.

Why did my child's grades drop after starting A Levels? +

Early A Level marks measure distance from a two-year standard, not ability. Mark schemes are written for the end of the course, so an answer in week five is graded against an end point your child has not reached. A low first mark is expected and is not comparable with an IGCSE grade.

What can I actually do to help with A Levels? +

Ask specific questions rather than general ones, and help with structure rather than content. The most useful single act is reading the prior-knowledge page of each syllabus together, because it names exactly what the course assumes and never reteaches, and it takes about ten minutes per subject.

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