If you're a teacher who advises students on their A Level options ...

Not many of my colleagues have physics and maths backgrounds. I do, and it is an advantage, but it's an aptitude advantage rather than a CV advantage. It definitely helped me into my first graduate job with an IT consultancy, but nobody cares about it now (unless they have a similar background and want to bond over a conversation about physics 😁). For second and subsequent jobs, employers only care about the professional skills and experience you've built up.

Parents, teachers and some (in my experience) careers advisors tend to be very aware of traditional professional roles like doctor, dentist, teacher, engineer, accountant, lawyer, but have much less awareness of modern professional roles like the ones listed in the link above. Graduates, apprentices and school leavers in entry-level jobs do still evolve into these career paths, but if they knew about them sooner they could evolve faster.

@inthisvehicle this is a good resource: https://ddat-capability-framework.service.gov.uk/

My job role is one of the roles in the left hand menu. Unless you work in IT you might not have heard of many of the roles listed, but they are all needed to build and maintain the digital systems that underpin our modern lives. Some or all of these roles exist in every medium and large company, organisation, or Government department, so they are very transferrable skills.

The naive stereotype of computing graduates as "coders" is analogous to the developer or engineer roles in the list. However, the engineers are not simply "writing code" they are applying their analytical skills to develop and maintain systems.

Some of the roles are very accessible to people without a coding background - many colleagues in my IT department started as administrators who were front-line users of business systems, but then developed interest and skills in system development and maintenance. However all the roles need to communicate with each other clearly and unambiguously, so the best developers/engineers have an interest in and understanding of business requirements, and the best business relationship managers have an interest in and understanding of system architecture and development lifecycles.

@arcticpandas Economics is another subject that is complementary to maths. Both my DCs did it at A Level alongside maths, though in both cases it was a toss-up between that and MFL. My eldest ended up doing Economics at uni. My DC2 was less keen on it - some days he would come home saying it was "really dull", but on other days, when there was a big economic news story that interested him (usually related to Donald Trump) he would say something like "economics should be a compulsory subject for everyone!", so he appreciated the knowledge it gave him. He'll be doing an engineering degree, but I know the Economics has given him a good grounding for understanding the world around him, just as his humanities GCSEs did. They're all useful in their own way.

@arcticpandas I'm an IT Professional, in an analytical role. I currently work in the HE sector, but my role is common to most sectors. It's a role that didn't exist when I was at school. I did a science degree, learned to code in one module (which I enjoyed), got my first graduate job in software development, then evolved from there. It's been a winding road, but it's suited me.

I'm also a parent and a school governor.

I think it's worth you thinking about why he doesn't particularly like Physics, Science, History and Geography. They're all interesting, but sometimes indifferent teaching can be offputting. It's really common for students to choose subjects based on which teachers they like or don't like. I know I did. But a change of school at sixth form might make a difference.

If not, then Maths & MFL are a really solid combo. He could look at professions like Data Science, which is an area that the Government has been investing in.

Might he consider Computer Science? It goes well with maths.

@LovelyVase The Ebacc was introduced as means of encouraging a broad and balanced curriculum as a good foundation for life. Dropping the MFL component won't impact future prospects of going to uni, but dropping the humanities component might. For relatively academic students I'd encourage replacing the MFL with a second humanities subject rather than a vocational subject. But it obviously depends on how many option slots you have.

Schools don't normally let students drop MFL without replacing it with something else, but you'd need to talk to your own school about it.

"If anyone asks (and apart from my tutor group very few students do) at GCSEs, go broad. This is a good time to have 1 maybe 2 subjects for ‘fun’ as they still have 8 other subjects. Look at the coursework load as this can be heavy eg Art needs a lot of time, and if possible deadlines so you don’t end up with 2 courseworks due at the same time."

Yep, I agree with this, so long as you have the ebacc subjects as a solid core (ideally including a language but I know not everyone finds MFL accessible).

I remember being a bit sceptical when my DC1 said he wanted to do Food Prep & Nutrition GCSE but it turned out to be a fantastic course. He will use the knowledge and skills for life. It was a lot of work - he had to practice fileting fish, deboning chicken, making meringue, etc - but at least we could eat the products, and he did also have to learn how to clear up after himself too (its a key part of the timed assessment). 🙂

UCAS is publishing Government data, which is available at source on the discoveruni.gov.uk website. They only publish Graduate Outcomes data if the universities get sufficient responses to the official survey that is sent out 15 months after graduating.

@enoughtomakeasailorspairoftrousers you can see Government data for the course you asked about here but, as a pp said, it does seem to be generalised to Computing: https://discoveruni.gov.uk/course-details/10007160/ULH10F0001U/Full-time/#-6

UCAS has only recently added the "Grades held by accepted students" to its website, so they do need to be flagged to parents and students who are researching courses. Hopefully teachers (not just careers advisors) are flagging them.

.*I meant Birmingham City (not Bristol City) in my pp.

.. UCAS also says that the most common grades accepted for the Birmingham City Civil Engineering course are BCC and the lowest grades DDE.

That's not the full picture though, as its also possible to access the course via a foundation year. The grades accepted for that are as low as EEE.

@TizerorFizz your DH might not employ graduates of this course, but there are clearly many companies that do.

According to UCAS, 70% of Bristol City graduates from this course were in paid employment in one of the most common types of civil engineering-related jobs 15 months after graduating.

This excludes those in part-time or unrelated jobs and focuses on “most relevant” roles.