Following the UK cancellation of alevels in 2021, international students are at an unfair disadvantage as their UK peers have cancelled their ALevels and IGCSE. There may be a high risk of inflated grades based on Teacher Assessed Grades, while us international students are left to write the exam. This will leave us an a disadvantage as we are also competing to enter universities also in the UK and UK students will have it easy as they sit back and relax with their biased teachers grades. CIE said that although they won’t give us an advance notice of topics or reduce our syllabus content , they will make sure grading is aligned with the Uk grading system but now, their exams are totally cancelled. This means it can no longer be possible for this to work.

There are also some UK students in private schools that write IGCSE rather than GCSE. Surely, if the UK government announces a lockdown and the closure of all schools, as well as exams to be cancelled , who is CIE or Pearson Edexcel to decide otherwise? They are simply profit motivated and are ignoring many opinions as many people share our interest of cancelling the exams since it will be unfair. 

In addition to the inequality in grades, CIE & Edexcel are not taking into consideration the state of students' mental health, difficulty of access to online resources, attention disorders, and overall motivation to fully grasp the material taught in this 2 year period. While having been in quarantine and undergoing online learning since Feb/March 2020, many students are faced with the challenge of fully understanding the curriculum whether due to technical difficulties, an incredible decline in the teaching quality, or the mental state of students. Online learning has imposed a large variety of issues in a student's daily life, and it would be extremely unfair for CIE & Edexcel to not provide the same treatment to UK students and international students by grading us the same way.

We understand that COVID-19 cases vary from country to country, but we must address other issues regarding the fairness and comparability of this 'standardised' testing, student's mental health, education inequality, and the risk of being exposed to the virus. We ask for CIE & Edexcel to not act upon discrimination and provide the same treatment to their UK and international students by using the same teacher assessments grades for IGCSE and international A Levels for the May/June 2021 session as a 'student friendly board'.

There is a complete lack of judgement from the the exam boards, as they have cancelled exams for UK students, who will enter University most likely based on predicted grades and mock results, which are said to be wrong 4 out of every 5 times, and won't have to sit those exams International students will sit as long as quarantine restrictions are lessened by then, which due to the absence from school and quarantines, puts them in a disadvantageous position. International students are expected to prepare for their exams from home with very basic support and reduced online learning, in the best of cases.
Many Intl. students will attempt to enter UK universities, and now have an uphill battle against students who, due to not having to sit exams will in most cases be awarded grades they would not necessarily get if they were to sit exams, and as such it puts International students at a competitive disadvantage.
We, IAL students around the world, are pleading to the UK government to reconsider their decision and make the same call they have for the UK students, as to preserve the interest of students and maintain equal treatment internationally.

Please sign the petition as this whole thing has had a negative impact on our mental health and CIE plans to go ahead with exams, regardless of if we are the only ones writing it.