well that's how it was for my IB art course
IGCSE arts was strictly learning "how to draw", but that's because my teacher chose it to be like that
all we had to do was draw still life... we were allowed to use two or three kinds of medias, which were: mainly water colours, pencil, oil pastels and inks... my teacher didn't let us venture with oils or acrylics until we started our IB art course.
it was horribly learning how to draw pots and pans at the beginning! there was this booklet she gave us where we had to draw the most annoying things! and if they weren't perfect we had to repeat them
and our grade was determined from a final piece where our exam board sent us a paper with thigs we could chose from, like "poppies and daisies in a vase on a glass surface" or what I did for my IGCSEs "fruit in a bowl, with a curtain background" or something like that.. and we had to have preparatory work
oh God I'm so glad it's over;yes; and that was a 10 hours exam there, where we had to draw what ever it is we chose, and send it off... and that's only 50% of our grade
we had to have a 100 page research work book for the other 50% of our grade
it was hell
yea I think we've done totally different courses
but yea what you've done is exactly what we've done for IB