DD wants to drop a GCSE subject

Is there another subject she could drop? People in my school only did 8 GCSEs or 9 if they did Maths a year early. Music and Latin were in the same block. I did Music and regretted it from day one.

If I had a TARDIS, it's the one thing in my life I would definitely go back and change, I'd have changed to Latin. Don't know why I didn't given I knew it was an error on day one.

beau Do they have an 'inclusion unit' he could go to? That's where DD1 used to go.

DD1 found Latin a huge amount of work, despite having found it easy pre GCSE. As a pp has said, the vocab is the easy bit, it's the grammar and huge chunks of literature to learn and translate that are tricky. If she has a good selection of other subjects and isn't planning on classics I'd say you should listen to her.

Tell to grow up
How do you propose she grows up any quicker than she is?
There is a limit to how much pressure is effective when piled on kids. And you have to remember that they are still kids!
12 GCSEs is unnecessary. 10 As are better than 12 Bs

Apparently the library is being used as a classroom while some building work is going on so he can't study there. I live close to school and would happily have him come home (and I would make him do homework) but school don't seem keen.

Our school does GCSE latin as a twilighter.Every year about 75% decide it is too much effort and drop out.

beaucoup, why can't they let him study in the library? Could be set work that could be checked. Surely him failing/getting poor grades is worse than him dropping it for the school sats?

DD did 2 languages and found them a bit confusing - if he's got no interest or inclination, definitely better to drop one and focus on the other stuff IMHO.

He's supposed to do a controlled assessment. Tbh he's got no interest or inclination to carry on. He does 2 languages, one is compulsory and he says he gets confused between the two. In his mind he has given up on it already, and I think he would be better just concentrating on everything else. He is having extra maths tuition at home and been entered for 2 resits following yr 10 exam results, so I can see why he wants to drop this one.

Beaucoup - if he does have to carry on with it, could he just coast - do the minimum - or would he still be stressing about the exam?

I am having this issue with my ds at the moment. He is in yr 11 and wants to drop a language. He is at a C/D borderline and feels the level of work needed to raise his grade will affect his ability to do well in his core subjects. The head has said no - I think because they have nowhere to put him during lesson time and because it affects their stats. My question is, who has the final say, parent or school?

I too think 12 GCSEs is unnecessary, unless they are predicted a* in all and it's done to keep them occupied.
However I think Latin is a really good subject, therefore unless her other subjects are all equally important, I'd look into dropping something else.

I dropped Physics O level after the mocks - I had really struggled with it all through the O level course, and when I tried to revise over the Christmas holidays, the combination of not understanding the work, and the stress and worry of the upcoming mocks left me in tears.

I talked it over with my parents, and we felt that I was doing a decent array of O levels without physics, and that it would be better for me to drop one subject that was causing me real stress and anxiety and to concentrate on the other subjects, than to keep on struggling with physics, and risk it dragging all my other subjects down - so we decided I would talk to the school about dropping it.

The school were not particularly happy with this plan - I was in top sets for everything, and I think they wanted every good result they could get - if I dropped physics, that was one less result on the school's record, if that makes sense. I was told I should sit the mock and see how I did - so I failed the mock on purpose. I did a whole question we'd been told not to do, and tippexed it out, and made no effort at the rest. I got 29% - my lowest ever mark - and was told I could give up the O level, but could do the CSE if I wanted to - and I refused.

I have never been more relieved by a decision in all my life - I am sure it was right for me, and I got a slew of decent O level results, got decent A levels, got into nursing, and eventually went on and did a degree - losing that one subject has never held me back.

Only you and your dd can know what is right for her, but if this subject is causing her real stress, I would say let her drop it. She could always do it as an extra subject later on, if she wanted to - and all the Latin she has learned will still be of value to her. I did Latin for fun, at VIth form college, and I love the way that I can use that knowledge to see latin roots to words, and to help me work out meanings of words I don't know, for example. No learning is ever wasted, even if it doesn't have a certificate attached.

No that is not true Autumnsky.

The school has to use the grade from the first attempt in its performance tables, but there is nothing to stop them entering students for some subjects in year 10, or year 9 or year 8 etc.

Go and talk to the head of year and the form tutor. Someone with experience. Get another opinion, I would. You need more advice.

Is it correct that from this year 10 children, the GCSE exams have to be taken in the Year 11 together, you can't take some subjects earlier? If this is true, I think 12 GCSE is too much. It's not about the 450 vocabulary, but about the overall work for all the subjects. I would suggest OP to review all her DD's subjects together to decide to drop which one.

My DS1 only take 10, he didn't choose Latin , despite he is very good at it. He always get very high marks , as he said it is a very logic language. He get it very easily.However, as he is going to go down science/engineer route, the curent latin knowledge is already sufficient for him. So we dicided that he drop it.

Another one saying (as were the place settings in Sleepless in Seattle) 12 is too many. An A sounds like a nice prediction but if she she is struggling she needs to think about whether the time she needs to spend on it to get that A will have a knock on effect on her other grades. I think you are right to worry about it.

I agree. 12 GCSE's is ridiculous. And who decides whether a subject is 'important' or not - the child, the teacher, the parent? Everyone will have a different perspective. I'd let her drop it, in a few years time it won't seem important.

12 GCSEs are utterly unnecessary.

The literature passages are long. But actually it's not a really, really hard exam, by and large, if you can just memorize stuff. And it seems to have fairly stable marking and boundaries over the years, which is reassuring: people seem to get the gradesthey expect, if they put the work in.

Are there other GCSEs she could give up?

Agree with Bertrand, 12 GCSEs is ridiculous.

My DD did Latin GCSE. If your DD is with AQA it's not just the vocab you have to take into consideration (agree that the list is not insurmountable). She will also have to learn the passages for the Literature paper (which are long) and any part of which she will have to be able to understand and translate accurately in the exam. And she'll have 11 other subjects to revise for.

Unless she loves the subject and/or it is helpful for her A Level choices I'd be inclined let her drop it.

12 GCSEs is utterly ridiculous. Why do schools do this?

Get her onto Memrise. Both mine learned their Latin and French vocabulary quickly and easily that way. In fact, the youngest's school were so impressed with the tool when she showed them the language teachers have pushed it out to everyone.

450 words is a hill not a mountain. She will probably already know over half these words as they'll have already been in past work - I really can't see it being a list of new words they've not seen before! The problem is that the list looks huge and impossible, so break it down into manageable chunks.

My son got a list of a couple of hundred Latin vocab words as revision to learn a couple of weeks before his end of year 8 end of year exam and went straight into panic mode, but I took it away, scanned it and converted into an excel document which I then split down into 10 lists of 20 words. Gave him one list (20 words) per evening to learn in bed and then tested him the following day, he knew most of the words on each list, so I edited the excel document and created a couple of lists of only words he didn't know, which he then learned in bed for the final 2/3 nights before the test.

In the big scheme of things, this is a minor hurdle, especially as she clearly has an aptitude for Latin if she is aiming for an A grade. Grab the bull by the horns and work through the list with her. She's already done a lot of the groundwork in the past few years so it would be a great shame to waste it now.

Way back when, I took 12 GCSEs ( I got Bs and Cs 20ish years ago) I had to do two subjects in afterschool classes as there was not room for 12 on the timetable.

If your DD is taking 12 within school hours then I would think that is too much and she should drop whichever non core subject she enjoys least.
If as I did she I taking extra then she should only have the option to drop the extra subject