Non sporty child wanting to take GCSE PE

Yes, but this is an optional subject. If she gets a less than great grade, is that really awful?
Exploring subjects at this age helps them learn about themselves and about the world. Perhaps being more sporty is a version of herself she wants to try on?

I believe very strongly that children should get to make these decisions otherwise they often get to level 3 and are unable to. Decision making is a life skill. She has to take core subjects- the rest should be up to her.

Gosh I'd have thought she'd have enough on her plate just with learning Chinese from scratch and Music with only a year's playing. She really is making some odd choices. I can understand why you are worried.

I agree full of sporty kids who are good at sport and good at team games. Your DC will have a nightmare if she plays in a team and is clearly the weak link. She's going to do Science anyway so better to just do a bit of extra science.

She will not enjoy it unless she is at least a little bit sporty! I agree geography or history would be a better choice.

Is she being influenced by her friends and what they are choosing?

They probably wouldn't let her do PE at my DC's school. They expect pupils to be doing at least one sport fairly seriously outside school.
As others have said, the practical is a significant percentage and whilst the standard thay needs to be attained is nowhere near as demanding as it is for A level they need to be able to demonstrate progress over time in 3 sports, one team sport, 1 solo sport and one of either, off the approved list, and that can be quite time consuming. If the sports are all ones that are done in school it's not so bad as they'll be assessed in school but otherwise collecting the evidence does take time and effort.
That said, this is the opposite of the usual problem - our PE teachers stress the amount of theory as they get a lot of kids who are quite sporty but not very academic wanting to do GCSE but then being disappointed when they realise it's not the fun, easy subject they think. My younger DS used to moan about some of the kids in his GCSE PE class not taking it seriously. Fortunately now he is doing A level the class is quite different - mainly those with an interest in science who are also sporty. So I guess if she can do very well in the theory and is prepared to put in the work to get to an acceptable level in the practical it might be do-able, but if she doesn't actually enjoy playing sport it could end up being quite a hard slog.
Given she also wants to do music which is going to take her quite a bit of effort and is likely to need a fair amount of out of school work, personally I'd be encouraging her to do something different. It's true that they don't need to perform anything technically very difficult but those that who are at a higher grade already are at an advantage, both because they will find the performance less challenging but also because they'll already be studying music theory. The composition element is often the thing that pupils seem to find hardest if my DC and their friends are anything to go by and I do think already having a good grounding in music theory helps.
Neither subject is impossible to pass if you don't have a strong pre existing interest of course, but taking on 2 subjects where she will be playing catch up, plus what sounds like a challenging language, on top of all the other subjects just seems like she'd be making things unnecessarily difficult for herself. Personally I think I'd strongly discourage her from doing music and PE together in these circumstances and I'd expect the school to advise against it to be honest.

You need to find out which gcse pe curriculum your school offers, look at what is required and find out what your schools expects of its students.

Edexcel requires 3 sports (at least one individual, and one team sport) from a very long list which account for 30% of the GCSE. This rest is 60% theory and 10% coursework

Our school assesses a small number of sports during pe lessons (football, swimming, trampolining, handball, athletics) and you can provide video evidence for any of the listed sports. They don't insist on sporting prowess!

yeh I am sure that is doable. Just she needs to be prepared to spend a lot of time practising - I had honestly forgotten till DD reminded me how much work she did with her clarinet teacher on her exam pieces. She just more or less ditched all her grade work for what felt like a year. Probably wasn't that bad tho lol.

My sporty child didn't pick PE because of the team sport requirement. It will be bloody awful if she doesn't like sport.

Yeh I did do loads of videos of DS keeping goal and chucking a discus about, but more for his benefit tbh. We were never asked for them by school. This does seem to vary from school to school tho.

Obvs if you offer sailing or skiing then that's a different matter as those cannot be assessed at school.

My son did GCSE PE (ended up with a 9) and he took zero footage of two of his sports. Ask the school - if they do the sports at school you don't necessarily need video footage.

My DD did PE last year and is now doing Alevel, she’s very sporty (competes National level in1 sport), but we found it hard work getting video footage of competing in all 3 sports, you also have to meet the criteria of 1 individual & 2 team sports or 1 team & 2 individual sports. She found the theory ok as cross overs with Biology too. She’s also taking Biology AL too now. Personally I wouldn’t recommend it if your DD is not sporty.

Let her do PE. Seriously.
She is what, 14? This helps students explore. What is the worst that could happen here? She gets a chance to take it, and realises she doesn’t like it? Is that so terrible?

Also please let her practice making decisions about her life. This is a relatively low commitment decision, and letting them make this decision is good practice for choosing options beyond secondary.

Just quizzed DD (who took the old music exam with a letter grade - but as I say I think it is even more rigorous now) - she says all her GCSE music group had been having music lessons for a few years and done some theory in advance of starting GCSE too. The school did also offer music BTEC which people took who had less experience.

She says that her GCSE profile (excellent at theory, medium at performance, weak at composing) was not typical - a lot of people were better at comp but not so good at the theory.

She made the point that music GCSE involves a good deal of performing as well (I mean as well as drama) but ofc it's not speaking in front of people if that's the issue.

Her last thought was that it's crucial that your performance is good - it's less important in PE actually, as long as you show improvement and can analyse what to do better; but music to a large extent is judged on how good you are*. DD recalls virtually all of her year 11 1-1 lessons and a good deal of time in year 10 being spent working on her GCSE exam pieces.

*caveat - DD's intel is obviously a bit out of date as she took GCSEs in 2017 so mostly old-school. Her very musical mate took the exam a year later tho so new spec and she says much the same.

But I agree, your DD has time to practise and improve if she is motivated. It might be worth booking her some theory lessons - DD did hers as part of a Saturday music ensemble she attended.

That's a good point, she has a year longer to get to the level and it sounds like you can help her.

Fair enough then. I would ask her teacher too. I agree a creative GCSE is nice tbf tho I would kind of put PE in that category too. Or how about DT?

Re the music - honestly it’s unusual to take music GCSE (music BTEC is a bit different) without already being a musician.

Like I say, dd found it hard. She got a B (old school spec - but I gather it’s now more challenging) which was her lowest GCSE grade. She played from age 8 and was in lots of ensembles plus had weekly lessons.

Tbh the exam was fine for her, it was composing she found hard; it may be that your dd will excel there, not saying she won’t. But be aware that not having a musical background would be very unusual in any GCSE music class I have known (as opposed to, say, drama, which will certainly include students who don’t access it outside school).

See the post below from @Lifestooshort71

I'm also surprised they are allowing her to do music, I thought you needed to be playing at grade 3/4 before they would consider it.
Has she done piano grades?
I think PE and Music together are pretty time consuming - do they start their GCSEs in Y9? That might help, but seems unusual for a grammar school

Have a look at the sports. She has plenty of time to take up something like rock climbing, Kayaking or something that interests her. You video these so she can keep trying to get a good video!

My son was only good at one sport and even then developed a knee injury so was predicted a 5 - out of 3 x 20 (for the three sports) he got a 14 and 2 x12. But he studied hard for the theory and ended up with a 9 - GCSE PE is mostly science type stuff and it helps to be able to write essays. So yes I think she can achieve a 6 if she is bright. Really depends on the school I know of a girl who did trampolining and did not compete anywhere but school still gave her 18/20 for it.