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Original poster

How many GCSEs is your child taking?

78 replies

Alpacasoup · 30/10/2022 11:57

My DD is in Year 11 and is taking 10 GCSEs. She is a bright girl but does not have a great memory and really struggled with the retention of information for her Year 10 exams and is already worrying about January mocks. I'm hoping that the actual GCSEs will be easier in some respects as even though there will be more content to cover, they will have longer to revise. For the Year 10 exams they were getting homework and learning new information right up to the exams so it was really tough for her as she needs time to absorb it.

Anyway, I was wondering if 10 is the norm? It seems like a lot, especially if it includes the three sciences. If it gets too much I'll be tempted to persuade her to drop one so am holding that thought in reserve at the moment. She's on track to get 6,7,8s.

OP posts:
Original poster
Alpacasoup · 30/10/2022 12:37

@BananaDaiquiri I don't think that the school would allow her to drop one, and she would continue with the three sciences as she is doing well in those. I was thinking really that if it all got too much and too stressful she could unofficially drop one, i.e. make a decision to focus her revision on the 9 strongest and write off the 10th, and then never mention it again!

OP posts:
TeenDivided · 30/10/2022 12:33

DD is now y13, but at her school 9.5 was the norm, 10.5 if doing triple science.
Make sure she revises properly for mocks, and stays up to date with whatever revision notes she needs to make at the end of units. Relearning having properly learned for y10, mocks is faster than memorising for the first time.

BananaDaiquiri · 30/10/2022 12:30

At my daughter's school most of them do 10 (though they take RE in y10 instead of 11). Some do 11 if they choose to do Latin as well as an optional extra (for this reason my daughter decided not to do Latin). I think about 10-20 of them a year do Latin as an extra. A small number do less as they do a non-gcse qualification instead of a GCSE (for example Childcare). Another 20 or so will do an additional GCSE in their community language (Arabic, Japanese, Polish etc), so not studied in school but taken in school, so you could be doing 12 in theory if you took a community language and Latin, but this is single figures of kids.
So in summary, most do 10. Would she be allowed to just drop one if she is in target for good grades? Or do you mean she could be entered for double science instead of triple?