GCSE computer science: Daughter was refused a place

Honestly you had a lucky escape. It's a really hard boring GCSE in our experience.

I am sorry, but this does not really make sense. The OP’s DD has evidently been given a fair chance to study computer science. The barrier was not enough teachers and too many students. This was one faced by the boys and the girls equally. Random is the only fair way of dealing with this. Choosing someone on the basis of their sex is wrong.

Eh? The process doesn’t benefit anyone over anyone else. Each individual has the same chance as each other individual. A boy is not more advantaged than a girl. I don’t think you understand how probability works!

The reality is you don't even need computer science A level to do A computer science degree skills she isn't being prevented from doing it in the future as long as her maths is good.

I would push to make sure she does Additional Maths gcse instead.

Yes, it will. I quite like the idea of teaching STEM as a back up for DD. Her comp sci teacher did his PhD at Cambridge and is very enthusiastic, so I am very grateful he has chosen to teach, but it can't be common!

Honestly, I wouldn't be that fussed. If she is headed towards a career in IT, a GCSE in CS simply doesn't matter. She can do coding in her own time, and focus on maths, languages and music (a family member had a very senior IT career and said that languages and music graduates were always the strongest coders in his field!) and other, less vocational subjects.

Of all subjects, there is abundant material online for self-driven coding practice available to her.

ds2 is doing computer science for his degree - he has neither GCSE or A level in the subject and has managed absolutely fine so it is not a disaster if that is her long-term goal.

I actually wonder if women might find teaching STEM a nicer option post children for the lack of sexism and school holidays.

Certainly some of DDs teachers had taken that route. Some STEM jobs are particularly family-unfriendly, unfortunately- though some software roles should be among the most flexible forms of work possible. It'll be interesting to see how things develop.

What an odd comment? I didn't claim it was the same as a CS degree. I said he'd learned to programme in 6 months and that the lack of a CS GCSE or A level had made no difference.

To be honest most CS degrees don't require a CS A level

And also choose a low wage in comparison to what they would get doing the sector in a normal career - comp sci isn't a job with comparable pay to teaching.

I actually wonder if women might find teaching STEM a nicer option post children for the lack of sexism and school holidays. Thinking aloud here.

Given that teaching is nowadays a female dominated profession, the teacher shortage in CS (and other STEM) subjects will almost inevitably persist till more girls take up and continue with these subjects. (And/or more people retrain later in life)

Positive discrimination is a good way to increase under represented groups into specialist subjects .

increasing women in STEM means increasing take up at gcse level.

this is why single sex education is useful.

Picking up enough to be able to do the programming needed for engineering and science subjects probably isn't really comparable to doing a CS degree though.

And while teacher shortages mean there's huge gaps in availability of gcse and A level CS, the latter may not be a requirement for many if any CS degrees any time soon, this may not always be the case.

(I've had a long career writing scientific software, largely self-taught...I'm not remotely a "computer scientist")

Did you manage to find out the selection criteria the computer was programmed to use, OP?

sounds like they were as fair as they could been?

DS didn't do computing at GCSE or A level and seems to have picked it all up in the first year of his Engineering degree, so it won't matter long term if that's where her interests lie.

but the humanties dept with the same staff teaching history and RS or even geography is not at all unusual IME. Shouldn't stop history being engaging.

I think I worded that poorly as it was still a humanities department for our younger kids and their years ran history GCSE - it was more there was more than one GCSE being offered by that department and some of the other disciplines were more proactive approaching parents and pupils about doing their course.

OP waiting list are worth asking about because there can be fair bit of moving subject areas in early weeks and hopefully it won't close options down for A-level CS in your area either way.

I suspect there won't be enough girls applying to make up 50% of the numbers (there were 6 girls in DS's year with 56 in total).

So essentially that means if you are a girl you will get a place. I can see the argument for positive discrimination, but are the school wanting to take it on? And, if they do, they will also have to apply it in other subjects that are more girl dominated.

That only works if there are equal numbers of boys and girls who want to do it, AND there's an identical ability curve for boys and girls. I.e. assuming everything else is equal.

There's nothing FAIR about a boy losing his place to a girl who has a lower score in whatever criteria they have used, i.e. maybe Maths results.

I can't see why they can't assign 50/50 places to girls and boys to address the gender gap. That would be fair and probably lead to much better grades.

This happened to my son. We ended up enrolling him on an online iGCSE. Cost £300 for 2 years. Full online support with a tutor. Made sure it was the same CS syllabus as the school (think it was Edexcel?) And luckily the school agreed he could do the practical part of the exam at school when all the other pupils were doing theirs. Otherwise he would have had to have taken the practical part of the GCSE at a building specified by the course providers, of which there was only one on the other side of our city.

Every child who isn’t awarded their first options will have that, thats why schools typically ask for say 5 choices when they will actually only study 4.

It's likely history is rather different to CS because history is one of the 2 EBAcc humanities (or have they added RE now?) - anyway, I'd have thought it was much more unusual for a kid who wants to do it at A level to have not been able to take the gcse.

Hey @SmileyHappyPeopleInTheSun @RedToothBrush sorry that there was an issue with history A level without the GCSE. That's a bit bobbins. It's often quoted on MN that you can do it without the GCSE, alongside other subjects. I do suspect sometimes this is people trying to prove what cannot be so - someone once told me that A levels of (IIRC) biology, maths and history didn't close any doors bc you could still study English lit and French at uni without either at A level!

Anyway; I do personally know two YP who were allowed to take A level history without the GCSE but I agree it's not obvious and there would need to be a good reason along with evidence of an essay subject like RS at GCSE.

@SmileyHappyPeopleInTheSun it's very poor that no one was allowed to take history GCSE - but the humanties dept with the same staff teaching history and RS or even geography is not at all unusual IME. Shouldn't stop history being engaging.

Anyway @iloveteddies I meant to say before, and this backs it up, might be worth finding out if your DD will be able to take A level CS at her sixth form setting of choice with a good maths grade but no CS GCSE.

History A level is a funny one. If you haven't done learning core analysis skills and learning about sources at GCSE / don't have essay writing skills / general knowledge I do think it's hard to pick up.

At my school you weren't allowed to do History A Level if you didn't do it at GCSE.

They made an exception for me because I'd done those skills as part of media studies and geography instead, but they did stress it was an unusual case and I did really have to argue the case.

They knew me as a student which helped and knew I could do it and I did work hard. It's much harder to make that judgement if your don't know the student concerned.

Having done it myself I get the argument. It's not an easy A level. You have to be pretty committed to it really.

I didn't know that - I thought they were under independent (I seem to remember someone telling me their child had been refused to do a course at their school because they didn't get a grade at GCSE and acing it...was a few years ago).

I'm currently down a hole trying to understand the difference in GCSE's in Computer Science at my DD's school and Computing at another local school.