Please or to access all these features

Secondary education

Connect with other parents whose children are starting secondary school on this forum.

GCSE Options - opinions and experiences please.

53 replies

CompleteMadness · 05/04/2023 18:13

Looking for opinions, experiences and thoughts on choosing, the subjects themselves and which combinations are good or even which are don’t go there combinations.

Narrowed down to the following and he has to choose 3. (Deadline is 17th April so we have a few weeks).

GCSE Music
GCSE DT: Product Design
BTEC Engineering
GCSE Food and Nutrition
GCSE History^
GCSE Geography^

Will also do:
English x2, Maths, Science x2/3*.

^Must choose at least one of these, he’s leaning towards geography.
*Top set will do triple, the rest do double and it’s decided by the Y9 exams (he’s bounced between set 1 and 2 throughout Y8 and Y9 so it could go either way).

I don’t really mind what he does.

He’s really into music, spends a lot of time each day playing the piano or tinkering with it. Has achieved; grade 6 piano, grade 5 theory and grade 2 composition. All of which he asked to do and wanted to do. He pushes himself in his music.

He’s also into fixing things. He’s always tinkered with cars, some electronics and things around the house. He wanted to try and have a go at fixing pianos so we bought him a cheep £40 battered one that we found in a charity shop about 2 years ago and he’s half way through restoring it.

He likes food at school because he gets to make a lot of different foods he isn’t exposed to at home. Due to several different allergies in the house we have a very restrictive diet so I like the idea of him continuing with food.

He likes geography because he just does. He liked outdoors education which he’s done in Y8 and Y9 so geography seems to be the closest.

Histories on the list because he seems to think he should do history because he likes music and he likes music history.

Unfortunately, he can’t do them all and we need to figure out how to get it down to only 3.

OP posts:
SquareRootOfAllEvil · 05/04/2023 18:53

Music should be quite easy for him with those qualifications.

Definitely check the history syllabus as some of them are deathly dull.

Product design might be interesting and useful depending on what he wants to go on to do - it’s becoming more relevant for a lot of different industries, some of which you wouldn’t necessarily expect.

Elisheva · 05/04/2023 18:43

Music should be a breeze for him with what he has already achieved. The coursework is composing and performing, which he can already do so won’t be a problem for him.
Have you looked at the curriculum for History and Geography to see what each course covers? My ds enjoyed the physical geography but not the social geography so much.

SertralineAndTherapy · 05/04/2023 18:16

The only advice I'll give is that if he takes more than one "coursework heavy" subject, it's a lot of extra work (especially in Y11). From that list, I know that Music and DT involve coursework (sometimes now called 'NEA', Non-Examined Assessment) but I don't know about the BTEC or the Food & Nutrition.

Swipe left for the next trending thread