A level choices - too weak?

Yes. It's good old structural sexism. Many STEM jobs, particularly at higher levels, aren't particularly family friendly and the reality is the lions share of caring responsibilities land on women (whether by choice or otherwise). This can lead many to exit industry and academia and either move to other fields or to teaching. Well, as there's a shortage of STEM teachers that's good for society I guess...just not great for women.

I think a thing called childbirth may stop many women from 'cracking on'...

@Lassi You seem to think people have deep pockets for optional enjoyment. I’m afraid, in the real world, artists do certain things for free, as do journalists, musicians and loads of other people. They want to get noticed and have a go. Insisting on money is often going to work against them. Many set up their own business. They aren’t paid to do that. They take the risk. Nothing brings in money until it’s sold.

Where lots of people can do something it means the price is low. Where you have a name, the price is high. Of course. It still leaves loads of people with no work and needing a career rethink. Many trained for the stage for starters.

Most companies have a salary structure. I think women leaving and not staying for senior positions and not bothering to be Chartered Engineers holds them back. Just doing a degree is the start. No one is the finished product. Women could do everything if they crack on. Too many don’t.

@dinomirror Of course non stem grads can earn a lot. Definitely don’t need maths A level! There are other parts of the brain that need a workout to give a balance in society. Lots of the jobs mentioned on here don’t earn a lot either!

Also OP I realised that I never actually answered your question.
Your daughter wants a lucrative career.
She excels at the sciences but maths doesn't come naturally to her... Is she good at biology but not physics?
She's indecisive and doesn't have a set career plan.

I would strongly encourage her to take Maths A-level because it keeps her options open. That's all.

@JaninaDuszejko I completely agree about 16 being too young to choose, I know some parents prefer IB for this reason.

Of course some people have a clear aptitude and preference either way, but the majority don't, and so have to hedge. It's very normal to not have your whole life planned out at that age, you're still a kid and don't know who you really are, or who you'll become. It's especially important in our current world where very few have a 'set career' for their entire life.

Again, just my personal experience but I think it depends on what you mean by 'natural mathematician'.
Some people don't have strong enough logical reasoning skills for it. They wouldn't be able to do philosophy or anything else with rigid logic or scientific thinking.
Some don't have the capacity for abstraction, but can do it if applied. Of courses this means high level 'pure' maths will be impossible but A-levels should be OK.
Some (like myself) cannot keep up with all the variables, term etc. I have ADHD and could understand everything in plain English but by the time variables became involved I forgot what x, y z etc were supposed to stand for. I got A* with a lot of hard work and my excellent pattern recognition from doing last papers but Further Maths by hand for example would be beyond me.
Some others have processing speeds too slow to get good marks in exams even though they understand very well.
Also, some were never taught the foundations properly in the first place! Line graphs for example are very easy when visualised, but most of my teachers just made us memorise formulas without understanding what was happening intuitively.

As a Scot with a STEM career I think the following:

1. @dinomirror DD's A level choices are all academic subjects and perfectly respectable and intellectually rigorous. I think if people are sniffy about them that says more about them than it does about her choices.

2. The divide between science and the humanities obvious in this discussion is a symptom of the very limited range of subjects children in England have to choose for A level. 16 is far too young to have to make a choice between sciences and humanities and it is a big failing in the education system here, it limits their options far too much. My DD is also choosing A levels at the moment and we've spent ages looking at what is required for various degrees to make sure she doesn't accidentally close off any options that she's interested in. In comparison in Scotland I did Highers in the following subjects which meant all degree options were open to me: Art and Design, Biology, Chemistry, English, History, Maths, Physics (most people do fewer than this but 5 subjects with a mix of science and humanities is standard). I changed my mind at 17 about what I wanted to study from Architecture to Biochemistry. In England that would be a virtually impossible move to make, in Scotland it was easy.

My DS got all 8 and 9 at GCSE and does a very similar line-up of A levels. He's predicted A stars and is looking at Oxbridge options.

I have been helping him revise and they are not easy at all. I in fact find them harder than maths and stem in some ways because there's no right answer half the time. It's about laying out arguments, evaluating them and drawing some kind of conclusion. Plus a lot of background knowledge and quotes etc. I think they are tough and would be a good foundation for lots of courses in arts and humanities in uni

@Fluffycloudsfloatinginthesky @mondaytosunday
It's hard to say - an 'academic' degree will allow more options for things like policy roles or the civil service fast stream, consulting etc. however the animation degree may have some technical IT aspects that would be much better for a career down that route. Things like UI/UX design, digital marketing. Some animation degrees have enough mathematical content to do things adjacent to fields of computer science, like computer vision.
In any case she can pair her artistic skills with her sociology degree and find something that suits

I think that you have to have a flair for maths to do well at ALevel.
DD1 achieved an 8 at GCSE . She is not a natural mathematician . She had a tutor for a year and a half. There is no way she would have been able to cope with A Level Maths
DD2 achieved a 9 at GCSE and an A star at A level all with very little effort and without a tutor
No one should be doing A level maths if they aren’t capable of achieving an 8 or 9.

Finance is lucrative, but if she isn’t interested in maths this probably wouldn’t be an option.

There are 2 different things here

• 'STEM' jobs themselves
• Other jobs which prefer 'any STEM degree'.

Despite all the hype it's not true that all STEM jobs are well paid, as you stated lab sciences and even jobs like optometry.

However, a lot of well paid industries like finance, technology, consulting etc 'prefer' STEM degrees. Furthermore, there are more jobs that say 'any STEM degree', than 'any humanities'. So humanities graduates have more restricted choices. I find that jobs which require humanities degrees want a specific subject, not 'any'.

Personally I think it's not about the degree subject. It's about how you position yourself and your skillet, your way of thinking and relating to people & problems. and how this relates to the job requirements.

Some people will be very strong/and very passionate about something, and that's fine. Others aren't, and they have to find the right mix.

I don't think you quite got the point of my post. I wasn't saying that people should do Maths although they hate it so they can earn megabucks as an investment banker.

Rather, a quantitative element can be found in many fields which aren't traditionally associated with mathematics.
Furthermore, maths teaching at schools is often dry and boring. It can be very different with better, more focused teaching in university, when applied to a particular subject.

Teenagers don't usually know the ins and out of particular careers in detail, who they truly are and what they want from life. So IMO it's too early to write off 'anything involving Maths'. 'do what you love' well that implies that 'what you love' is something static and never changing. Untrue. A-levels are too shallow to be a good signal as to preferences.

Like I said, I too hated it and as a teenager never imagined that I'd work in a technical role involving mathematical thinking. But it was taught in a completely different way in university, I saw it in a different light, in a way I had never thought of before. Instead of something cold, separate and contradictory. It bolstered my strengths in Humanities subjects and gave me an edge over others.

A lot of people also change careers after finding out that their impressions of certain careers were different from the reality, and maths can help there too. And in 2024 so many professions are set to be disrupted by technology, layoffs, etc. Again, not talking about wanting to be the fabled 'high earner', but basic security like a home, food and work/life balance.

A little bit of discomfort at 17 is a small price to pay, in my opinion, for your future.

It also remains a fact that the gender pay gap is appalling in most STEM industries. Obviously this will only be fixed by more women going into those careers in the long term but , in the shorter term, many remain pretty misogynistic workplaces. Particularly engineering and lab sciences. Women with STEM degrees would often earn more by going into science or maths teaching, which probably isn't why many of them went into STEM in the first place.

@Opposum my DD is going to Durham to do Sociology. She got a 6 in Math GCSE (though 8 in Physics and Chem, so can do it). Psychology, History and Art were her A levels.
Her initial degree choice was Animation. She is just finishing her Art & Design Foundation. But she really researched graduate prospects and decided she just couldn't have the career she wanted without a heck of a lot of graft and luck, and even then it would not be stable. She thought an academic degree would lead to more options.

Stem degrees don't all attract high salaries anyway.., someone without both sufficient interest and aptitude is unlikely to flourish in them.

My daughter does English, sociology and psychology.

She loves the sociology and psychology ones far more then English which was her favourite up to GCSEs. Her school seems to have far more people doing stem a levels than classics, although not so much as the grammar near us which although being all girls is just totally stem orientated.

She got straight 9's in GCSEs and so could have done any a level, but humanities come far easier to her and she had to really work to get those results at GCSEs for sciences / maths.

She does look longingly at the predicted salaries for stem degrees versus sociology which is what she is looking at but she wouldn't be happy so it is what it is.

As an example, the mark scheme for the literature element of AQA German A level gives a list of points that the candidate could make as "possible content". There is no suggestion that these are the only acceptable points.

The top band of the mark scheme asks for opinions and conclusions that are consistently supported by appropriate evidence – so that is the criterion, but if your point is supported by the text and you can show that, happy days.

Aside from the fact these are hard A-levels (are people expecting her to be doing physics, chemistry, and maths as suitably hard options?!) I would say the following:

1. It’s no one else’s bloody business what she does.
2. I hope these are the subjects that give her joy and pique her interest - that’s what really matters
3. Maybe they are entirely relevant to what she may want to do in the future?
4. there are a million and one respectable careers, and very high-paying ones, that can fall out of these choices.

Very much agree with @Lassi that there is no way it is OK to suggest an artist work for free "for exposure". Why should they?

I offer my skills for free to friends and family if I wish to support them; but if a commercial organisation wants to use my talents (broadly creative I guess, tho not actually art) then they need to pay.

And yes @Piggywaspushed I also agree - mark schemes are vital but IME original thought is very much encouraged, especially if we are talking about a very able candidate. It's great if they can move away from a formulaic answer while answering the question well.

Most probably! I was replying to a different poster!

There needs to be markschemes. They are notoriously difficult to apply, their is no formula - and at the top end creative, imaginative and evaluative approaches are preferred- not writing to ordered frames.

I meant writing essays.

”Often artists like such commissions to get noticed.”
This is not true at all. Artists hate this. There are social media accounts dedicated to discussing the exploitative attitude of working ‘for exposure.’
As for why should companies pay for art, if they are wanting to benefit in any way from the creative industries, so for example their logo, the art on their walls, the staff uniform and so on, pay the artist fairly. They certainly should not suggest the work should be free ‘for exposure’ as if often the case.
Theatre tickets is an interesting point. I know that there are people paying £300 to watch a film star play Romeo in the West End. That in itself is hugely damaging. Some people are profiting handsomely while everyone else is struggling to pay their rent. The current state of film, TV and theatre is that it’s become a playground for the rich because working-class kids can’t afford to work in such conditions. Which brings me back to my main point. Value the creative industries!