English Baccalaureate Advuce Please

[Monkeysmum3]

Evening, I was hoping for some advice, my middle child is currently choosing his GCSE options, he thinks he might like to go to university but is thinking of not taking either history or geography, which would mean that he won't have the EBacc. I'm feeling quite confused as to whether this might restrict his options when he comes to apply to uni in a few years. Any thoughts gratefully received!

[Monkeysmum3]

Oops - advice not advuce! Long day!

[EvilTwins]

Will his school let him do that?

Ebacc is a (current) way to measure schools, not individual students. It's not something that DC should have to worry about.

What is he planning on taking?

[Monkeysmum3]

Thanks for the reply, he's chosen Spanish, Computer science and business studies, (he's also doing triple science) so he's thinking for his fourth subject he should take perhaps something like citizenship which he feels might be a little less revision heavy than history (he's not keen on geography)

[EvilTwins]

Is his school not pushing him to take Ebacc subjects?

You'll get a load of responses on here telling you that he needs to take a humanity. I think kids should be allowed to take what interests them, as long as the basics are covered.

[TheChimpParadox]

About to choose options for DS2. School does the EBacc which wasn't an issue for DS1 as he choose the required subjects.

DS2 doesn't want to do a language - his grades and effort reflects that - but loves and excels at history and geography. Will be interesting how school responds to his request. Our thought process on this is that he will get two good ( potentially excellent grades ) rather than one good and one poor.

[Monkeysmum3]

My eldest hasn't taken a language either, the school explains that at the moment the Ebacc isn't really required by unis, but that they don't know if it will be in the future, so although they suggest it might be a good idea to take those subjects they understand that doesn't suit all students and leave it up to them. My eldest doesn't want to go to uni at the moment so it's not a problem for him unless he changes his mind.

[Monkeysmum3]

That's our thinking too ChimpParadox - DS2 is concerned that the subjects he's chosen are too heavy to manage history as well and he would rather get a better grade in something like citizenship than struggle with learning history too.

[pointythings]

I don't think uni care much about the Ebacc, but Citizenship is considered a pretty lightweight subject compared to History and Geography so it might be frowned on in those terms. It does really depend on what he wants to do at uni though.

[Monkeysmum3]

I don't think he knows at the moment, likely to be in the business studies direction I should think, it seems to be what interests him most.
That's definitely something I'm concerned about Pointythings, but I do see his point about getting better grades in the other subjects by taking it.

[seven201]

I don't think uni's care about ebacc as its a school measure. I do agree that maybe they will see citizenship as 'easy'. But it's not a-level and in the grand scheme I don't think gcse's matter that much... I'm a teacher and the kids at our school have to do the ebacc which I really disagree with.

[cricketballs]

The Ebac was how schools were measured, if your DS is in year 9 his results will be measured for the school using Progress 8.

He will be steered to selecting history or geography or computer science or mfl for 'basket 2'. Basket 3 is then free choice (of the qualifications given the green light)

[seven201]

Cricketballs, different schools will have different approaches. The school I teach at insist that students do either geography or history and have to do IT, a language and the usual core ones leaving only one 'free' choice.