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

Hi @bellinisurgeBellini, I haven't RTFT as it looks a bit contentious but recognise you from another board. We're going thru Options now too but funnily enough decided on double science and Citizenship as an option, so kind of the opposite of what your DD wants!! I feel generally the same about RE but when we looked at the syllabus for citizenship, it looked interesting and relevant to a modern education. We were conflicted about triple versus double science but if your DD really wants to do Science at A levels, I can understand that she'd want the stretch of triple. Anyhow hope your DD gets the subjects she wants and I personally think no harm in asking the school what is possible as a solution.

Having read a pp I wonder if Citizenship is what our school calls Life Skills? My kids have never mentioned democracy and government- they covered the political spectrum in GCSE History when communism and Russia starts appearing in the syllabus. In Life Skills they've talked about life issues like drugs, smoking, sexting etc

It's not compulsory here. Schools used to force kids to do 0.5 GCSE RE but that was before they reformed GCSEs. My dd did Combined Science then A-level Biology.She's predicted an A so not taking triple hasn't hurt her A-level chances.

[quote bellinisurge]@Coronateachingagain , I work in an area which requires "Citizenship " knowledge so DD isn't short of exposure to it.
As for "suck it up" , is that genuinely how you respond to an adult who has a question about a subject they don't know anything about and who asks about it on a parenting forum? In the secondary education topic ?
What a strange thing [/quote]
That's an inappropriate response to @Coronateachingagain 's perfectly civilised, adult-to-adult post.

If your OP had been simply about citizenship in isolation then you might have got different responses. For all your patronising sighing about repeating yourself, you've steadfastly ignored any challenge of your central assumption in your OP that it's depriving your DD of another option. And that is surely highly relevant to whether this is a problem or not.

I don't see how taking citizenship would mean she can't do triple science if the school offer triple?

Legally every school will be covering citizenship content. Not all will make it a GCSE but many will.

I think the questions you need to ask are:

1. What content does Citizenship cover?
2. How many hours per fortnight does it take up?
3. What can your DD do to make sure she can take triple science?

Also, while you may cover Citizenship issues in your house, I suspect they won't be covered in many households. Given your point about non UK households it could be that some of the topics covered in Citizenship may not be considered suitable for discussion in some homes.

I also think that managing your daughter's expectations is a good idea.

Yes, the citizenship lessons and GCSE are compulsory. It doesn't take time from anywhere else, they'd still have to do the lessons.

We do it as GCSE. The students have to have it on their curriculum legally, so makes sense to get a qualification.

Eg from a 25hr a week TT
5 maths
5 English
4 science
3 option 1
3 option 2
3 option 3
2 PE
2 citizenship

Those 2 hours of citizenship she will still have to attend. Not doing the GCSE doesn't mean there is time for another option.

But can you not see that having to have the classes anyway means it wouldn't free up time for another option?

My problem is blocking out the option of doing another academically more meaningful GCSE.

Thing is she wouldn't have the option to add another GCSE. If she's being taught the legally required citizenship for say 2 hours a week, those 2 hours still need to be taught whether or not she takes the GCSE, just like PE. So there would be no timetable space freed up for another subject anyway.

Like @TeenPlusTwenties has explained to you multiple times. Every other teenager has to face these choices. Your dd isn't being hard done to. Nor will her school be able to accommodate her wish for no citizenship but extra French.

DS went to a non faith academy, that was run by a MAT with a faith ethos. So although it wasn't a designated religious school, RE was compulsory at GCSE which DS didn't mind, he found it interesting. They also made PE compulsory though at GCSE which meant he couldn't do Business and Hospitality and Catering together - he wanted to be a chef at the time and do both subjects. I queried the PE aspect because they were doing the statutory practical lesson anyway, it was just the theory part added on for the GCSE firstly they told me it was a legal requirement, and when I pointed out that the GCSE itself was not, just the practical lesson, they said I was wrong and the DFE had changed it recently. Which I knew they were lying about. I then found out the truth - as a school in special measures, they had a good PE teacher who got more passes than some other subjects so they thought it would be a good way to improve their Ofsted rating if they had a cohort with good grades in one subject.

DS didn't do GCSE PE. It was the lying and trying to take me for a fool that made me complain rather than anything else, I might not have taken it further if they had been honest from the start (although I would have questioned their half-baked plan, I would have told DS to suck it up and do night classes at college).

It would annoy me, too, having a valuable GCSE option space used up like this, when only 9 are on offer.

If I'm honest, the ideology behind this choice would annoy me, too. Yes, there are communities that are becoming increasingly alienated whose young this is most likely aimed at, (cf the Life In Britain citizenship test....), but I bet their local comps aren't making it compulsory!

I'm not opposed to the concept of 'Citizenship' as a class, but it should be one lesson a week, not examined. We did a thing called PAL in that way, back in the 70s at my grammar school, Preparation for Adult Life. But we didn't have to 'ditch physics', as it were, to do it!

Just on the double vs triple science thing - this is obviously a long time ago, but I did double science at my local comp where it was that or single science for those that really struggled. Then instead of going to the sixth form where everyone else went, I ended up in a school where triple was the norm. I did phys & chem A levels and the first couple of terms making up the difference was bloody hard. Wouldn't recommend.

(It worked out in the end - I got my 11 GCSEs with lots of variety inc music, geography, DT, and am science educated to PhD. But if you're going to do A levels after double GCSE, pick a sixth form where that's the norm!)