12 GCSEs

Yes, true! It takes up a lot of time throughout the year, though.

Although drama and art are usually out of the way before the rest of the revision really heats up.

DD did 12 including the FSMQ in Additional Maths. It was quite a lot but she was fine and did well. If your son is planning a practical subject like Drama or Art, like others have said you should be aware that this can include quite a lot of extra time spent on rehearsals etc.

And alternatively if he prefers humanities like my dd, I’m sure he can say no to further maths. Her class do a bit in class and also have an afterschool class. And as others say, a lot of it is just extending the knowledge so being taught it can help with the GCSE maths. My dd is top set and was asked to do further maths but said no and it wasn’t a bother.

Is it only set 1 that do the extra maths bits? You could probably discuss moving down a set before GCSE if you didn't want him to do that. I personally think it offers a good challenge to those who find maths easy.

@Thingsthatgo DD2 is not a mathematician but she is a scientist and she has found the further maths and statistics GCSEs useful in her degrees, for sure. Stats in particular proved handy in her epidemiology modules.

FWIW she got the same grades in the further maths GCSE and the Statistics GCSE as she did in her maths GCSE. She says it was more work volume-wise but only a little bit harder content-wise.

I would also counsel caution in terms of uni, if that's the likely future plan. Your DS will be compared contextually to the peers at his own school for the purposes of uni admissions, so taking fewer subjects than normal may compromise his position in the cohort. That's quite apart from getting into a wrangle with the school at an early stage which is never a great idea.

The curriculum as you describe it sounds completely manageable. 11 in Y11 and one of those is FM. I can't honestly see any problem at all for an able student.

I did 12. I don't think that's bonkers at all. I had 2 As and the rest were A*s.

DD2 went to a school where they did split GCSEs – maths, science x 3, ICT and PE (option) in Y10 then English Lang, English Lit, further maths, Spanish, history, geography (options), and statistics in Y12.

13 GCSEs, which certainly give breadth but unnecessary imo.

No, but breadth of learning is a benefit to students and unfortunately most schools won't teach subjects just for the love of it - there needs to be an exam at the end so they get some recognition.

i did 11 and it was fine

My daughter is in year eleven. She did two GCSEs last year and will do 11 this year.

You’re right, it’s not necessary but it is doable and if they’re bright enough it gives them some extra subjects under their belt (for example, my daughter HAS to take extra maths as she is top set but we’ve told her just to give it her best shot but l it’s a bonus one and not to sweat over it).

I completely agree with this - but if the school is set up for more and the DC can manage it, I think it's good to keep the curriculum as broad as possible. Not for the qualifications but just not narrowing their academic worlds quite so drastically.

11 is the norm for my son's selective school.

Stats in year 10 is easily doable. We recently found out that by the time some had done gcses as part of extra curricular clubs such as dance, Mandarin, Italian and even CompSci or IT as a club rather than a subject there was a good % who had 13 to 15 by the time they did A levels.

I can remember one head teacher saying to me that there is no need to collect GCSEs like charms on a bracelet.

DD did 11 in one sitting including further maths. They had about 6 x 1hr sessions after school to cover the trickier areas and taught themselves the rest of it - most of it was covered in the main GCSE syllabus, the further maths just took it ... further.

My Y11 is doing 12. Standard at school is 10 but he's doing ad maths, and Latin+Greek, which is two GCSEs (but taught in one timetable slot). It's honestly fine. Exam timetable is a bit bonkers but he'll be OK. There was no pressure from us or school to do the 'extra' two - he liked the subjects and wanted to do them. He's doing two MFL and no creatives, which makes it easier (for him) as there's very little coursework.

Personally, I would not be counting the extra Maths GCSEs as full extra GCSEs. It is just 3 versions of the Maths GCSE. So in my mind it is 10 they are doing and it is perfectly standard for top sets and grammars.

DD had friends doing more than that because they eg did Latin on the side or their own home language or music on the side.

The additional Maths GCSEs are a good idea for strong mathematicians you may end up doing Further Maths at A level. The jump from GCSE standard Maths to A level Further Maths is huge. That is why they let top set maths do this. They will also likely do Maths Olympiads type things.

DS1 did 13

triple science - all as seperate GCSEs
maths (taken early in year 10)
maths numeracy (taken early in year 10)
additional maths (taken in year 11)
English
English Lit
Welsh
Skills challenge
3 other choices - he did Spanish, Georgraphy and computer science.

My ds took 12 in one sitting in the first year of the new gradings - all the top set Maths took 12, most other sets took 11 (no Further Maths) and a few were allowed to drop a language and took 10. It was fine.

Do they teach GCSEs over two years or three? Our DC ended up with 15 (lower sets do 13 with no add maths and double instead of triple science). But their school taught over three years and they did a couple in Y10. DC did three maths qualifications and I agree with PPs that some of the content and a lot of the skills were the same for these. Plus they were taught add maths but could choose whether or not to do the exam, maybe this is also optional for your DC?

In any case I would expect the set up to be manageable, or they wouldn't do it, they have nothing to gain from putting DC in for exams with no chance of doing well. It's not necessary to have more than 8-9 GCSEs, but there's nothing wrong with more if there is a sensible way of doing it - at that age, the less the curriculum narrows the better imo.

DS did 11 in one go last summer. Further maths isn't a whole topic as such. My DS covered the work in about 6 lessons! The revision book is quite thin to give you an idea.
And the stats is in year 10. If he's good at maths and wants to do a-level maths this will all be helpful stuff.

*at least another 2 GCSEs in the time to do art!