Do GCSE subjects need to be rethought?

Look, everyone on the thread says no. We value knowledge for its own sake, around here, looks like! And that is as it should be.

Shudders

I am confused, why does your DS teaches himself Japanese for the challenge of it, if learning MFL has no utilitarian use? If it has value for your DC, why not for the others?

Gnome, is your problem that Physics and German spoil the otherwise all stars GCSEs line-up for your DS? Surely the answer is better teaching, teaching through different methods and via different pathways. He could resit them in gap year?

Specific individual difficulties should not be the reason to disapply the whole generation?

What a scary discussion. Are you guys serious?

What use is education? Why teach any GCSE? None of the knowledge beyond infant school has any obvious use. The till tells the sum. Even reading is overrated, you can just push icons on your mobile.

Of all subjects Physics is one of those whales that underpins human civilisation. It is fundamental to develop the understanding of the world, the forces of nature, their balance and dynamics, why things work, what is possible, what is impossible and what it would take to make the previously impossible possible. (i.e. why things flow ‘naturally’ in one direction, but it is very hard to make them flow in direction opposite). Physic is the philosophy of real life, it provides models, frameworks to analyse and imagine ideas, events, systems, it underpins our thinking about everything. Think how broadly used in figurative sense are words like momentum, gravity, black hole, action and counter-action, conservation of energy, quantum leap, photon, a force field, a wave. And of course Physics underpins innovation, much of creativity and all of the technology.

Withholding access to learning Physics is no different to withholding access to literacy and indeed to any education beyond primary school. Teaching Physics is essential to develop an emancipated, rounded person able to understand and contribute to the modern world.

Questioning usefulness of subjects like Physics, logically, unavoidably, would lead to the question:

Why having universal free education at all?

would stay interested if they were able to study a functional course in a number of languages.

Pah! Who needs 'functional' language. Years ago DD went on a school trip to France for a bit of the old immersive. They were supposed to go into a shop and buy a baguette for lunch: lots of s'il vous plaît puis-je avoir... and merci beaucoup. Except what happened was that they grabbed a baguette from the shelf, handed it to the cashier who barcode-swiped it and pointed to the price displayed on the till. No conversation apart from teenage grunts.
These days they probably have some translation-thing on their phone!

I found learning a foreign language was great for understanding English. You pick up the mother tongue without thinking about it so when you have to grapple with a foreign language - learning verbs (regular/irregular), vocab, grammar, tenses, etc, etc - it really makes you think about your own language in more depth.

Probably not. I can’t remember which review of the primary curriculum it was, but it learning one language vs bits of multiple languages was looked at. The resulting guidance was that schools should very much pick one language and stick to it.

Learning the grammar of any specific language helps with understanding how grammar underpins language. You could argue that this is just another metacognitive skill that is of benefit to most people - thinking about thinking. Of course the grammar of Japanese is very different to the grammar of Russian (post positional, particles rather than word order to indicate grammatical function, very little variation in noun versus prepositional, case endings indicating function of words etc) but having learned one makes it easier to think about what languages need to do in order to succeed and the different ways in which they might do it.

But for most people GCSE languages are just a chance to be exposed to another language and grammar system, a chance to learn a bit about culture, a chance to decide whether this is something which you want to pursue, and, yes, a chance to learn how to order a beer or book a hotel room.

Yes, it helps. Learning one language allows the skills of recognising gist, cognates, acquiring vocabulary, understanding "near translation" and so on. And the earlier the better, with languages.

We might be able to order char siu bao - oh, and some flip flops!

Right, let's bin all knowledge that can't be used to purchase a small inflatable beachball and that bucket and spade.

Alternatively, we could use the time children spend in full-time education to teach them as many concepts and skills as possible.

By teaching them the mechanics of one language, we enable them to learn another. Thus, we foster development of the linguistic abilities that enable the rigorous study of history, the sciences, space, of international diplomacy, of cross-cultural sports collaboration - I could go on.

Where would we be, if nobody in China spoke English and nobody in the U.K. spoke Mandarin or Cantonese?

It’s not really surprising that the further maths students are finding the theoretical physics at ALevel easier is it? By and large they tend to be the most able mathematicians in a cohort. In addition to which they may well be covering some of the content in other lessons.

The only way you can even that out, would be to bring the ALevel maths and further maths content into GCSE. I don’t think that’s feasible. And you’d end up having to condense 11 years of physics teaching into 2 years.

Even A level Sciences are supposed to be accessible with only GCSE maths. It is possible to take A level Physics without Maths but in practice very few students do so because they are looking to take degrees in engineering for example which require both A levels.

OP there is a correlation between Maths ability and doing well at Physics. However if you take Foundation level GCSE Physics or the Combined Science equivalent rather than Higher then the amount of Maths required is lower.
The courses are designed to be co-teachable with the Maths GCSE syllabus and the new 9-1 courses more clearly set out the Maths skills required than the old GCSEs.
I regret the passing of Core science which is one GCSE and making combined science (equivalent to the old Double the new minimum).
MFL (and other languages e.g. Mandarin) GCSE results are badly skewed by native speakers and I think there could be a need to distinguish this in the way that the iGCSE does by having separate exams for first language and second language pupils.

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What I have suggested is that it could be better taught beyond a general science type course after an extended maths syllabus.

Which means that the vast majority of kids would do no physics ever.

That’s all very well gnome, but
A) so many children won’t get as far as physics if you start teaching it later
B) you can learn a lot about physics and how it works even if you never get the hang of the maths

For a start kids aren’t a homologous group and one engages and interests one child, might bore another to tears.

And any push to do 'engaging' really translates to 'make all the choices around the few who might disengage at the expense of the majority rather than broaden the horizons of all students and support those who are disengaged'.

I completely disagree with the OP’s assessment of Physics.

Physics is the first science that a child encounters, for example when they discover gravity as they drop Food off their high chair. They spend their first few years learning all about forces, and make progress to learning about energy.

Biology is the next science discipline that they can pick up.

Chemistry is very abstract, so not really suited to brains less that 13 years old. Yes, I know we do investigations into materials, but are just biding time.

Designing a curriculum which interests and engages students is not the same thing as asking students to design the curriculum.

i’m not sure putting engaging and interesting at the heart of your curriculum design is the best pathway tbh. For a start kids aren’t a homologous group and one engages and interests one child, might bore another to tears.

Secondly I suspect it’s a slippery slope from there to lessons/ activities that are engaging/interesting/WOW but not terribly effective. And that’s almost certainly quite counterproductive in terms of children’s wanting to study a subject further.

common view in education that FSM children aren't going to come from naice families.

Statistically they are less likely to come from naice areas and go to naice schools. FSM kids in secondary (not primary) are also more likely to come from families distanced from the job market for whatever reason. They are also way more likely to fail to get good GCSEs. It’s not a promise that that’s the case, just that it’s more likely.

The better-off families wouldn’t necessarily be sending their kids private but could get their kids into a grammar or build a ‘private style’ free school (see Toby Young) or ensure that their kid gets into the ‘academic stream’ by tutoring or whatever.

It happens in every system where there are vocational/practical and academic options.

Sorry just saw Noble's post, I agree actually, and a 3 is worth having, especially in MFL for example, tough exams this year. I guess I am being a bit flippant - but certainly there should be a place for some alternative, not for those who will get 2-3 maybe 4, but for those who will spend two years looking in fear at an inaccessible exam. There aren't loads of them but maybe all the more reason to think of them?

Steppemum great post about MFL