Year 9 - 2022/2023 Support Thread

@icanbewhatiwant although doing PE/games once a week is mandatory at all uk schools, the GCSE probably won’t be. But you’re right that still leaves a fair few. I’m surprised you’ve heard nothing whatsoever - has your DC? Most schools ask for gcse choices in Feb/March.

Our options evening is on 13th Feb, choices to be in the week after half term. Ds can take 9 or 10, I’m advising 9. He’s confident about his choices, I will be interested to get the teachers opinions.

I've heard nothing about options yet. I've heard that last year there were only 3 choices along with the compulsory subjects. My older ds's had 5 subject choices. But now they've made language compulsory as is citizenship. So that leaves 3 subjects choices. So that will be 12 GCSEs if you include English as 2 (eng lit. and eng language) triple science, maths, French, PE (I'm sure they have to do pe at our school) citizenship plus 3 chosen subjects. That seems a lot.

I think they have to take 10. The usual core ones, Maths, English Language and English Lit, Sciences, RE , either history or geography and then 3 choices from a creative art, a technical, MFL, sports etc
DS doesn't really know what he wants to go in the future, I wouldn't expect him to right now but he has no strong ideas yet. He was mentioning Mechanical Engineering yesterday, but then asked me what that entails!

How many subjects do they take @DataColour?
DD’s school do 10 normally, can drop to 9 if any learning issues or increase to 11 if top set to include further maths. She’ll hopefully be doing 9. Hers have to be in by 10th Feb so not long now. She’s quite unsure. She can’t decide between German v Spanish; double v triple science. Or if Food & Nutrition will be too science heavy and not as fun as she first thought. The only one she’s sure if that’s not compulsory is History.

Hi everyone, how's your year 9s getting along?

Our options evening is early Feb and choices have to be in by the 1st of March. We haven't had much info at all yet about how the options work and whether they have much free choice at all. I think DS might do triple science. RE is compulsory. He seems to have a knack for geography, so that's definitely an option, along with music and PE. I thought he'd do comp science, but he doesn't seem to like it and he's not doing well in that subject which has come as a surprise to us as he's pretty good at maths.

What options are your DCs thinking of?

Thanks. I looked on our school Facebook page and last Feb. people were asking when the info eve would be. They were told early March. It was online last year. Hopefully it'll be back to normal this year. I'm not that bothered about the information evening though. I'll go if Ds wants to go. I've been to 1 with ds1. Ds2 didn't want to go.

February for ds, they have an options evening at the beginning of February, we meet all the teachers for the different subjects with ds. Then at the end of the month they make their choices.

It's January for ds2

I was only asking Ds this morn if he has any idea when they pick options. He said nothing mentioned about it at school yet. I expect it'll be near Easter.

Ooh that’d be very useful if it’s accurate (ish - no accounting for a bad day etc).
@AmyandPhilipfan sorry that made me laugh - doing what’s needed but no extra. I have always told my 3 girls that you absolutely do not need to give 100%. But I think some girls can be perfectionists.

Hi, May I join please? My younger son is in Year 9 and I also have an older one in Year 10.

My older one has dropped his foreign language this year. I asked over the last 3 years if this could happen as he isn't very academic and I thought focusing more on maths and English would be of more help than doing a language he was probably never going to pass an exam in. I was told this wasn't an option but he came back on his first day in September and said a group of them have been removed from doing the language. I'm not sure what will happen with my younger one. He's slightly more 'able' than his brother but equally as lazy so would probably be happy if he does get to drop it!

We've had target grades since Year 7 (my 2 are both targeted as mainly 4s with the odd 5) but then on reports it gives marks 1-4 relating to attitude and effort so it's hard to know how they're actually doing. Mine usually get the mark that relates to 'doing what is required but no extra!'

@MrsBungle I have always told my dc's to do the subjects you enjoy. Not the ones you are better at. Ds2 has just started university. He had considered doing business at uni. He finds it easy but boring He thought it would lead to a better job than if he studied history, which is his favourite subject. Anyway..,he is studying history, I'm sure it has to be better to enjoy what you are learning. I'm sure others would disagree though.

@NotDonna on our report it says target grade is the minimum grade they should get if they continue to work at the level they are now.

@QueenMabby interestingly it was always latin where my dd1 got the lowest predicted grades in lower years. The teacher taught all the language first before lit and culture and wouldn’t predict on the rest- it might be the same thing but it really stood out.

we’ve not had predicted grades for dd2 based on GCSEs yet but I’m ready for them not to make much sense until end of year 10.

no options columns at her school- a state comp- but it is very big which gives more options and they bent over backwards to give dd her very odd options choices (though one has to be after school). But lots near us are more rigid.

Hello. I’ve just found this thread, may I join?

I have a dd in y9. I find it all doubly confusing as I went to school in Scotland and now live in England and it’s all very different!

dd seems to be getting on fine but options toward the end of this academic year and I’m not sure she has a clue. Some of the subjects she particularly enjoys are not her strongest subjects.

Are target grades same as predicted? We don’t have them so I’m a bit confused.
@QueenMabby is your DD at a selective indie? It seems that a lot of indies don’t have the columns for options.

@QueenMabby Sounds very similar to ds school, except no compulsory language. They aren’t being given GCSE target grades yet though, although that may come in the summer I don’t know.

Our school do a target range from year 9. So that is the target grade to aim for. Year 10 and 11 they give a current attainment grade too, so that would be the grade if they sat a gcse now. For ds1 target grades were very accurate for gcse and A levels. Ds2 didn't take GCSEs due to covid. The target grades were near enough the grades he actually received. He kept saying in some subjects he'd have had better grades had he sat the exams. I didn't take much notice, we couldn't change the grades and they were good enough for him to take A levels. So we just moved on. Then target grades and final predicted grades for A level were ABB. but his actual grades after A levels were A*AA so the predictions were wrong and maybe Ds was correct in saying his predicted GCSEs were wrong. But there's no point dwelling on it. Though he may have aimed for a better university if he'd known that would be his grades. He's at Sussex uni where he needed ABC.

As for options. There's not much point thinking too much about subjects yet at our school. Because for ds1 and ds2 they had to choose one subject from each of 5 columns and most subjects they liked were in the same 2 columns. So they couldn't do them all. They had to do either history or geography. I remember them getting to the 5th column as there was nothing they wanted to do in that column. So I guess it'll be similar again. So we will just wait and see.