Blogs by Tom Benton

Director of Assessment Standards

Tom's expertise lies in statistical and psychometric analysis of educational data and his previous research has included:

• Investigations into various methods of determining grade boundaries in GCSEs and A levels.
• Looking at volatility in schools’ exam performance over time.
• Evaluating the reliability of tests and ways in which this might be improved.
• Analysis of large scale surveys including international surveys such as PISA, PIRLS and TIMSS.
• Examining the impact of government programmes and other factors on pupil happiness, aspirations and achievement.

This blog by Dr. Tom Benton, Principal Researcher at Cambridge’s Research Division, examines the complexities of comparing GCSE subject difficulties using Ofqual’s interactive grade distribution data.

We’ve been taking a look at our data to see how well our Cambridge IGCSE students do after completing their Key Stage 4 studies. We wanted to see if there was any evidence that, as some have suggested, IGCSEs are 'easier'?

In response to a suggestion that International GCSEs (IGCSEs) are 'easier' than reformed GCSEs, our researcher Tom Benton looked into the methods used in the original research by Datalab.

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Tom Benton

Director of Assessment Standards

I reviewed all 866 of Ofqual’s subject pairs visualisations (so you don’t have to)

Looking at the future performance of Cambridge IGCSE students

Are IGCSEs easier than GCSEs? – A response from Cambridge Assessment