GCSE "compulsory" subject. DS doesn't want to do it.

Why is it useful to do that in French and not English?

The ICT one that was often called “computing” to differentiate it from “comp sci” around here was a pretty awful GCSE. The poster was saying how useless “computing” was as none of the young graduate coders they know had it, so I naturally thought that must be the ICT gcse they were talking about as the computer science gcse is really good for aspiring coders.

Rubbish. He’d be much better off doing Computing and going on to do coding - much better employment prospects in the UK right now and far better paid.

@ErrolTheDragon
I just meant that learning to treat words as grammatical components in a sentence that can be organized and expressed in different ways is a helpful exercise if you’re interested in coding.

I have one relative exactly like that- he currently teaches at MIT in the USA.

OK some boards (just WJEC?) offered it until last year but very few schools had it as an option. I don't know any schools that have taught it for GCSE since about 2015. My teacher-ICT-mate was very relieved to stop teaching it in favour of CS.

Sorry, I disagree and I have tons of degreed relatives who work professionally in the field who only know computer languages and their minds cannot learn foreign languages.

I used to work with an absolutely genius scientific algorithm developer who hadn't had a hope in hell of a language o-level (back in the dim and distant past when some 'top' unis required one - none do now, thank goodness). He'd barely scraped a high enough grade in English because of dyslexia. He had a hell of a time writing his thesis but his code was brilliant.

That could be a dangerous game to play, depending on school options locally. I know if I'd tried that approach at my DC's school I'd have been cutting my nose off to spite my face. The school is very over subscribed and the reality is they could replace any one of my children before their seat was cold whereas the probability of me finding a place in anything like an equivalent school locally is close to zero. The only roughly comparable state school is equally oversubscribed and we're not in catchment and the nearest 2 independents are even more restrictive on subject choice. Changing schools is often anything but an easy answer.
I can sympathise OP as our school also insists on more or less every pupil capable of passing the EBacc qualifying subjects doing them, which I don't altogether agree with. My younger DS was very opposed to doing an MFL (coincidentally it was DT he wanted to do instead too) but it was non negotiable. It wasn't a hill to die on for us as in more or less every other respect the school is ideal so he had to suck it up I'm afraid. In the end he got an 8 for French without a lot of effort and he ended up with a broad range of GCSEs at high grades which gave him lots of options for A level and hopefully shows him off as a good all rounder on his current University applications. This is a fairly new policy at our school so my elder son has a very STEM heavy set of GCSEs. He has continued down that route thankfully, but had he changed his mind later he might have regretted those choices made at age 13. Keeping things broad does have advantages. And I don't know about DT, but at our school you can definitely do computer science A level without having done GCSE so it might not be as big an issue as it first seems. Of course talk to the school and make his case, but if they won't budge it's unlikely to be massively detrimental to his future career plans so I'd encourage him to make the best of it. If he is good at French even though he doesn't like it, he can probably still get a good grade for it, and a set of good results across a range of subjects is never a bad thing.

@TrailingLoellia
I’l not saying it’s essential. Of course you can learn python without knowing French. But it’s not a completely pointless exercise either. It’s more like how learning music can help with maths or art can help with history.

Sorry, I disagree and I have tons of degreed relatives who work professionally in the field who only know computer languages and their minds cannot learn foreign languages.

Absolutely nothing to stop him learning it later in life if he wishes. I have functional German and Italian now and working on my Spanish. Didn't learn a word of any of these at school.

We all did gcse French in my day (late 1990s) regardless of your working level. I'm surprised kids have a choice these days not to take a language. Can't say I enjoyed it but we all managed OK.

Python? C++ ... those sorts of languages, sure.

French? Hum... in about 40 years writing software, I think I've once come across a comment written in French but nowadays google translate would have done a lot better than my very rusty o-level

Having working French is pretty useful in aviation when you consider which country in Europe has the largest aerospace industry and is home to the biggest civil aviation company in the world. Sure, the working language is English but if you are spending any time at Airbus or any of its myriad subsidiaries then some functional French is extremely useful, if only for socialising.

We had the same at my Son’s school. He would have only had one choice if the school had made him take the MFL. I phoned the school daily to make a nuisance of myself until the headteacher would speak to me. He tried to bluff that it was about encouraging students to achieve when really it was all about league tables and the EBACC. In the end he relented and allowed him to drop the MFL and take a subject that aligns much better with his future career plans.

ETA, high attaining students were being forced to take a MLF while the lower attaining students were allowed to choose other courses, I pointed out that this was clearly being used as a way to manipulate the statistics. The head also claimed to the EBACC students gained an extra certificate when it’s actually a measure of the school.

They cannot make him do a GCSE he doesn’t want to do. what are they going to do -exclude him for not taking French? I don’t think so.

Just go to the head of year and say he won’t be doing it and to please programme him for computer science. It can’t be a timetabling issue if this is only imposed on the highest-attaining pupils. It must be about league table position. if it were a timetabling issue I’d have all the sympathy but it really isn’t in this case, it’s about performance measures.

throw around a few buzzwords like centering the child, meeting the gatsby career benchmarks and facilitating progression or some such ;)

That number being 1? It ended in Summer 2022 and the poster I was talking too was talking about recent graduates with Maths/Econ degrees.

@TrailingLoellia
I disagree. I think learning that there are multiple possible ways to express a relationship between two things, which is an essential part of 2nd language learning, is helpful for coding.

Also D&T is amazing to do. One of the most genuinely engaging classes/studies, it cover a broad church of technical and aesthetic design and he should definitely do it if it calls to him.

you can do French anytime, it’s not going anywhere

Pretty sure they will mean CS as there is no ICT GCSE and hasn't been for a number of years.

Can he not do 1extra gcse if he’s in top set? French gcse isnt too hard and I had to stay behind after school to do my religious gcse for an extra hour.

but really if he’s good/fluent it doesn’t matter about the gcse.

Don’t do GCSE language= no A Level language, no getting by skills travelling there, no ebac. Fewer opportunities to pick up a language via short course at university. Lots of aptitude tests for careers are vocabulary based, so any knowledge of any language puts you at an advantage.
Don’t do GCSE computing = nothing closed to you. You can still do A Level computing and onwards for a career in computing or coding.

It's not compulsory. Only maths, English and science are. The school are making it look like it's compulsory as they get judged on how many kids they rope in for the ebaac. My DD was told she needed to do the ebaac subjects as she is in top set. She flat out refused to do a language and so she didn't. She just chose another subject instead and the school can't do anything about it....as it's not a compulsory subject end of. The ebaac means absolutely nothing to the kids and it's literally just for the school.

What an embarrassing reach.