Is CIE a good examination board

I always see aqa, and edexcel on here but never see CIE
is it an easy exam board for English literature?( as in level of difficulty,easy to prepare for and are questions consistent)
also,do people find the examinations fair and get the grades they expected?

cheers

CIE is not a domestic UK exam board so you don't see as much discussion about it. There are 5 domestic boards - AQA, Edexcel, OCR, CCEA (the Northern Ireland Board) and WJEC (the Welsh Board). Edexcel offers qualifications on the international market under the Edexcel name (it's all really part of the Pearson group) but CIE is the international arm of Cambridge Assessment which has OCR as its domestic board.

Some private schools in the UK choose to use CIE but until very recently it was effectively forbidden for state schools to use it.

Its considered to be an obsolete board and its papers are actually harder than edexcel. Its a fairly good system, i did CIE o'levels. Though the good thing about it is, its cheaper because you pay for the entire paper rather than for every module like in edexcel

interesting......that makes me feel like it will be very competitive. :/ it is seen like a normal a level?

that's good hmm i looked on their past papers and they looked easy-ish in that they seem fairly easy to prepare for and the questions give you a lot of time and a lot scope for you to write about compared to other exam boards. buut i dont know if the quality of other candidates will be really high.

i detest cie with a passion. Their exam papers are stupidly difficult and it really does get depressing when you do a past paper and just keep coming up against questions you simply cannot figure out. Also, cie maths apparently has some further maths in it which is something i had not bargained for; though it may be fantastic if you're great at maths and absolutely love it... It isn't so exciting if you're only decent at the subject and just want a good grade out of it. There's also the fact they do not have modular papers, so you basically learn the entire syllabus for each paper. For example, in as geography, there is only one paper and that combines both human and physical geography. If you completely flunk human geography but did great in physical, you will still have to prepare for both again as you have to retake the entire paper. Hardly ideal.

There also isn't a great choice for cie textbooks which becomes quite a problem when you have a textbook as awful as pure maths 1 as i have been having quite a difficult time finding an alternative which is written for cie and contains everything in the syllabus - be prepared to use books that may not be directly written for your syllabus, or indeed exam board. Which brings me to my next point, the textbooks available, and recommended by cie have frequently been written prior to 2006/4 sometimes even earlier, and are not for the current syllabus so often do not contain some of the things students need to know. If you are taking chemistry which i doubt you are, but for those who are, do yourself a favour and please do not buy the cie recommended textbook! A much better alternative would be the new cie chemistry coursebook with cd-rom which is actually dedicated to the current syllabus .congratulations cie for actually getting something right, Albeit a couple of years too late since the current syllabus was introduced in 2007!

Another annoyance i have with cie is their compulsive need to hide so much extra material from students. There is only one/two papers available for each subject and although you can get the papers from other places fairly easily, it is near impossible to find the grade boundaries. Other material such as examiners report that maybe useful to students is also kept under password lock in the teachers section which becomes a bit of an issue when your teachers are not in a hurry to hand over the passwords.

I realise this reads quite a bit like a rant, and it probably is, but the end message is if you actually have a choice, steer clear of cie. To answer your question directly, i do not consider it a fair exam board, a lot of the people i have met do not end up getting the grades they expected, and from students i have spoken to, english literature on cie is no walk in the park and considering the average difficulty of cie papers, i would highly doubt that it would be easier than uk exam boards.

All the best of luck

I detest CIE with a passion. Their exam papers are stupidly difficult and it really does get depressing when you do a past paper and just keep coming up against questions you simply cannot figure out. Also, CIE maths apparently has some further maths in it which is something I had not bargained for; though it may be fantastic if you're great at maths and absolutely love it... it isn't so exciting if you're only decent at the subject and just want a good grade out of it. There's also the fact they do not have modular papers, so you basically learn the entire syllabus for each paper. For example, in AS geography, there is only one paper and that combines both human and physical geography. If you completely flunk human geography but did great in physical, you will still have to prepare for both again as you have to retake the entire paper. Hardly ideal.

There also isn't a great choice for CIE textbooks which becomes quite a problem when you have a textbook as awful as Pure Maths 1 as I have been having quite a difficult time finding an alternative which is written for CIE and contains everything in the syllabus - be prepared to use books that may not be directly written for your syllabus, or indeed exam board. Which brings me to my next point, the textbooks available, and recommended by CIE have frequently been written prior to 2006/4 sometimes even earlier, and are not for the current syllabus so often do not contain some of the things students need to know. If you are taking Chemistry which I doubt you are, but for those who are, do yourself a favour and please do not buy the CIE recommended textbook! A much better alternative would be the new CIE Chemistry Coursebook with CD-ROM which is actually dedicated to the current syllabus .Congratulations CIE for actually getting something right, albeit a couple of years too late since the current syllabus was introduced in 2007!

Another annoyance I have with CIE is their compulsive need to hide so much extra material from students. There is only one/two papers available for each subject and although you can get the papers from other places fairly easily, it is near impossible to find the grade boundaries. Other material such as examiners report that maybe useful to students is also kept under password lock in the teachers section which becomes a bit of an issue when your teachers are not in a hurry to hand over the passwords.

I realise this reads quite a bit like a rant, and it probably is, but the end message is if you actually have a choice, steer clear of CIE. To answer your question directly, I do not consider it a fair exam board, a lot of the people I have met do not end up getting the grades they expected, and from students I have spoken to, English literature on CIE is no walk in the park and considering the average difficulty of CIE papers, I would highly doubt that it would be easier than UK exam boards.

All the best of luck