Tell me about Citizenship GCSE. Which is apparently compulsory at my DD's school. She doesn't want to do it.

How many GCSEs will your daughter actually get to choose?

For my DD she was only able to freely choose 2 options. I understand your frustration at the situation, and I also offered my DD the opportunity to switch schools in Year 9 to give her more freedom, but it's not unusual, it's just a case of different schools choosing different compulsory options.

You can say virtually any GCSE subject outside of English and Maths is irrelevant depending on your child's interests and aspirations. I don't think for one minute, for instance that my DD is ever going to find a use for being able to calculate the gravitational potential energy of football, but shit happens and that's the box she has to tick because science is a compulsory subject.

I work in a secondary school and as frustrating as this stuff is from a parental POV I cannot even begin to describe the amount of thought and work that goes into designing the GCSE programmes offered, and don't even get me started on the timetabling...it takes our Deputy Head around 6 months to finalise it every year.

They don't put these parameters in to make life difficult for students or parents.

That said, you seem to be determined to dig your heels in on this one, despite various posters stating that in any schools there are limits to what options are available.

Citizenship GCSE is not a 'guaranteed A grade' for the non academic or those that can't be arsed. It's a GCSE with the same intrinsic value as any other subject at the end of the day, and it will be as beneficial or otherwise as the student taking the subject makes it.

The constant whining about Citizenship being and 'easy' and worthless subject is also pretty offensive. There are plenty of girls, including my DD, in her Citizenship class who are top set across the board with multiple A/A* predicted grades, who have chosen the subject with aspirations towards Oxbridge and a future career in politics or law.

For reference:

www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/citizenship/gcse/citizenship-studies-8100

Some schools do a 3 year KS4
Some schools have a higher base of skills and allocate less time to core subjects.
Some schools have longer tutor times and cover it there or in assemblies.
Some schools set more homework.
Some schools go at a faster pace so allocate less time across all subjects.
Some schools do less core PE.
Some schools no doubt ignore the requirements.

All schools look to do the best they can for their own cohort of pupils within the constraints of what teachers they have available to them and what the government & ofsted expects

We could do with some KS4 teachers on this thread.

I don't recall DD having to do computing in years 10 and 11.

Schools are different. They have different length days, different hours allocated to core and options.
IME schools with stronger incoming cohorts devote less time to core maths and English and use this to create an extra option block.

IME most schools now offer 8 GCSEs.

We have Life Skills and an RE lesson rather than Citizenship

@bellinisurge

We have off timetable days where they do citizenship for a whole day...

Our school doesn't make computing and citizenship compulsory at ks4. (That's GCSE right?) they offer qualifications like Computer Science and iMedia but don't make it a requirement

www.gov.uk/national-curriculum/key-stage-3-and-4

During key stage 4 most pupils work towards national qualifications - usually GCSEs.

The compulsory national curriculum subjects are the ‘core’ and ‘foundation’ subjects.

Core subjects are:

English
maths
science

Foundation subjects are:

computing
physical education
citizenship

Schools must also offer at least one subject from each of these areas:

arts
design and technology
humanities
modern foreign languages

[quote bellinisurge]@Murmurur , please look at the first response to my thread. That is the "suck it up" I am talking about. Which several posters seem to think was ok.[/quote]
My mistake, it didn't occur to me you were still referring to the first reply you had.

No, your assumption that it blocks a slot is an assumption as has been explained to you over and over. You say there is wiggle room for 10 so why not just do that?

I would argue it's not terribly relevant what everyone else does. You know that some schools make RS compulsory (I didn't know that!), or Latin, or "an art" whether they have the talent or not. Some have to choose their GCSE options at the end of Y8 so they lose a whole year of KS3 curriculum in the rest. Others don't get the opportunity to do triple science at all, or only at considerable cost (my friend's child dropped MFL at the end of Y8 as the only way to do triple science). Most students have some constraint in their choices and I don't think your daughter's is any worse than others. Especially if she can do 10 anyway.

Ginfordinner

“Nope. DD took it in 2016”

That’s interesting. Still not an option at their old school (in College now).

Making a GCSE compulsory is blocking a choice

No it isn't.

Those hours would be spent in citizenship lessons regardless of whether she gets a gcse in it.

Thats like saying compulsory PE blocks a choice; it doesn't.

OP The point that people are making is that all GCSE subjects aren't taught for the same number of hours per fortnight. So if your school dropped Citizen (2 hours per fortnight), that wouldn't be enough for an extra option which is taught 3 or 4 hours a fortnight.

Basically neither you nor your DD wants this as a GCSE option, but there are other swaps that she can do - business studies or DT.

The whole point is that IT ISN'T A GCSE SLOT!!!!
Every school has hours on a TT allocated to something called citizenship/phse/life skills. These lessons are compulsory and do not effect GCSE options. Your school has chosen to use the lessons they will study anyway as a chance to get an extra gcse.

I think it's great that you are questioning this rather than blindly 'sucking it up' , which clearly some people would do as it's the easy way. Sciences are a far better option, I agree. I don't have any words of wisdom as mine aren't into GCSE phase yet, but hopefully it will work out for her.

I wasn't doubting that some households wouldn't discuss some subjects - just wondering out loud if our school's Life Skills lessons were called Citizenship in other schools.

Having read your other posts OP I would drop Business. It's not required to study it at A-level or degree level and is generally taken by the less academic students. (Academic students would be pushed towards Economics which can also be studied at A-level and beyond without the GCSE)

Our youngest is in Year 13. I’d not heard of this until this thread, presumably only introduced last year?

In Life Skills they've talked about life issues like drugs, smoking, sexting etc

These are covered in Citizenship, hence my comment saying that some households may not want to discuss them.