Starting GCSE in Y9: pros, cons, still frowned upon by Ofsted?

I would disagree.

DD knew she wanted to specialise in music from before she even went to school. She has never wavvered from that position. We should probably have looked into specialist music schools from a very young age, but I wanted a broader curriculum and for her to be able to change her mind.

Her secondary has one of the largest music departments in the country and iirc over 100 students sat GCSE music this year. There were extremely large numbers taking art as well. Plus if you didn't want to do GCSE there were more bands, orchestras and choirs than there was time in the week.

DD is now at a specialist music college... and delighted to have dropped everything else.

It wouldn't suit my sibling's children who have no particular fixed interest and are finding it hard to choose their GCSE options.

I used to feel the same as you, @MrsAvocet but actually the reality was all those non-core subjects were done in a rota at my sons school anyway. So he didnt lose a year of them, he lost at most a term of the ones he didnt carry on with or some only half a term . It booked down to missing about 12 hours of it, which wasnt as life changing as I first feared.

He still had opportunity through clubs to stretch beyond the curriculum too.

I didnt have a choice of school so I had to lump it, but it really wasnt the disaster I though it would be.

To be fair his school had really low ebaac so that wasnt a thing. People had more choice at gcse

I wouldn't have wanted my DC to go to a school that did this. I think the curriculum narrows too early in this country as it is. Asking 12/13 year olds to make decisions that may impact significantly on their futures doesn't seem like a great idea to me. I think that year 9 is too young to be making such decisions really, never mind pushing the decision making process back to year 8.
And it's another nail in the coffin for the teaching of "non core" subjects in secondary school adding to the damage already done by the EBacc. At this rate teaching of subjects like music and art will continue to deteriorate and ultimately probably disappear altogether. If you're the Head a school that's pushing the EBacc which inevitably decreases the numbers taking non EBacc subjects at GCSE and then you start that in year 9, employing specialist teachers for subjects you only teach for 2 years and then to a handful of pupils thereafter doesn't look like very good value for money does it? And we all know what financial pressure schools are under. I'm a scientist so absolutely believe we need high quality maths and science teaching in our schools but that should not be at the cost of a reasonably broad general education. Other subjects have intrinsic value too, even if they're not studied beyond year 9.
At my DC's former school I believe they did start the GCSE syllabi in Maths, English and the sciences towards the end of year 9 which seems sensible. If you've reached that point in the teaching anyway then naturally you're going to move on rather than wait to the following September. But no subjects were dropped until year 10, which is how I think it should be. I would have looked elsewhere if my DC had to drop subjects for year 9.

I suppose because of the options being picked early there may have been more sessions allocated to core earlier on as more timetable space.

Y9, DD had 5 hours of English, 4 hours of Maths and 4 hours of Combined Science.

Y10 was 5 hours of each.

Y11 was 6 hours of each.

Options were 3 hours for Languages and Humanities and 2 hours for the other subjects across all years.

They did an InfoTech course until Y11 which had no exam and was computer literacy rather than computer science.

RE and Citizenship ran until end of Y9 and then you picked one for Y10 and did the GCSE in the summer.

So in that sense, yes you would drop one of RE or Citizenship as you had done most of the course but didn't take the exam.

They didn't rush through Y9 content, the course was just designed knowing that all the kids in the Y9 class would be taking the GCSE in Y11 rather than only a small percentage. Pacing was designed to get to the right stage allowing for everything to be covered and then revised.

So for the core subjects, it was a Y7-11 course. For options it was a Y7-8 'taster' and then a Y9-11 GCSE course, rather than Y7-9 'taster' and then cramming it all into Y10-11.

DD's school did this and for us it was perfect as she had very firm likes and dislikes and was delighted to be able to specialise early.

They publish the curriculum for each year group on the subject pages on the website if you wanted to see how it works in practice (Kingsdale).

From what I could tell, it wasn't that they started GCSE in the way you would if it was a 2 year course, but everything was a bit more spread out and extra things studied, but you ended up with the course content all complete by Christmas of Y11 and then time could be spent on exam technique and practise papers from Jan onwards so it was less rushed and stressful.

The school had Maths, English x 2 and Science as compulsory.
Then 1 language from French, German, Spanish or Latin
One of Geography or History
One of RE or Citizenship (taken early in Y10)
One visual or performing art from Fine Art, Graphics, Textiles, Photography, DT, Drama, Music or BTEC Creative Media Production
Free choice from all the above plus things like Psychology, Classical Civ, Food Tech, CS, PE etc

So they tried to keep a very balanced curriculum, plus a huge choice of extra curriculars so if you didn't take a subject you could probably still find a club or activity that meant you could carry on.

Wouldn't suit every child but for those with very specific interests it works well NOT having to slog through another year of something you hate.

That sounds like a good approach. I bet that HoD hates the three year KS4 too 😂

At Dd's they did R&J as one of the books in Y9 but they are doing Macbeth for GCSE, so I think it's more about using the same themes and learning what is expected at the exam, just with wider reading. They deliberately didn't tell them which Shakespeare they were doing with the aim of keeping them interested.

I wonder if the 3 year thing is how so many more are doing 10-12 though. Dd is going 10 and I know most of her friends are, with several doing 12. I can see there would be time for that with the extra year and not as much pressure.

I’m Head of English at a comprehensive and I’d never work in a school that did this. Year 9 should be a broad and balanced curriculum that introduces and builds the skills they need for GCSE, not the content. I love teaching Romeo and Juliet but no class needs to hammer it for three years.

Interesting that most people are saying it's high performing schools that do this as the one near us that did it is definitely not high performing. I thought they made them choose early to accommodate poor attendance and behaviour so needed 3 years to do the 2 year course. In the last couple of years they have gone back to doing 2 years though. I agree with others saying it's a shame to narrow the curriculum so early particularly for non academic subjects, or ones you would do if you you had more options.

At dd1's grammar school, they all do triple science and they start that curriculum in Y9 as apparently there is so much to get through but everything else is in Y10. Interestingly at another local school, they don't decide who's going to do triple science until the start of Y11. They all do the same until then, and then the strongest students do triple and do 10 GCSEs while the rest do combined.

Ofsted don’t like it.

the last school I worked at did this.

it doesn’t impact maths English or science as they are compulsory but it does mean the year 9 curriculum is less broad than it otherwise would be.

it won’t stop a school getting outstanding on it’s own though.

DD's school does this for science only (reading their curriculum guides).
Which makes sense as everyone has to take science in some form, and there's A LOT of content, so they start some of the GCSE content in Y9. They don't do it for any of the other subjects though.

Ours do this a form of this too - it is good for option subjects that haven’t been studied before (eg Sociology for DS1) so they can give them a good grounding before they start focusing on the course specific stuff. Then they take English Lit a year early so can focus on language in yr11.
I’d be a bit worried if all of yr11 is planned to be revision in all subjects though - that does sound kind of dull.

My DC’s school did this but the flip side is that they do more GCSEs, so they narrow the curriculum a year early but not by as much. It suited mine, they both liked keeping more breadth to the end of Y11. They take some exams in Y10 so that exam season isn’t a complete nightmare with the extra subjects. (This is in Wales though, so not managed by Ofsted.)

My kids school does this, they compress KS3 into 2 years (y7&8 and would have been taught in y9). So they then have 3 years for the gcse syllabus and plenty of revision. They also can delve more deeply into the subjects that they want to take for A Level.

My main gripe with it is that kids narrow down section really early, as someone said upthread.

It is funny though if you think about it. They say levels are improving but can they really say that if a 2 yr course is now taken over 3? Surely all of our grades in the 90's would be better if we had had an extra year!

It’s awful.
ofsted don’t like it but it’s so horrendously narrowing - in English kids end up studying Macbeth for over a year for example.
revision dull as anything. Why anyone would love learning after that i have no ide

My girls grammar school do this. It’s because they work so much faster as a group due to the whole class academic ability from year 7 onwards, so are totally ready for it come year 9. It’s nice come year 11 as they do revision for most of it. 30% grade 9s.

I’m not a fan of beginning in year 9. My DS will not choose to take art, DT, music or performing arts at GCSE, but I think it’s a shame to stop learning so early. If you’re not taking a language then you’ve maybe only spent a couple of years learning a MFL. It all seems a bit limiting.
Having said that, my DC’s are predicted 8s and 9s. If they were predicted 4s and 5s I might feel that the extra year of prep is worth more than the breadth of study.

DS has just gone into year 9 at a selective independent which usually gets good results.
He has narrowed down his subjects and by doing this they are starting on the GCSE curriculum.
They all do English, maths, 3 science, and a modern language for GCSE. His chosen language is German. He could do 2 languages if he chose.
He continues History, Geography, R/S, PD, games in year 9.
He’s dropped music and art.
He’s continued Latin, DT and computer science.
He will chose his options Dec/ Jan and at the moment intends to choose Latin, History and Computer Science.

I don’t know and the kids wouldn’t know what was Y9 vs Y10 content. I think they cover Y9 content in Y9 and may start Y10 at the end of that year. They can’t miss it out as it builds on it in each subject. One of the English teachers explained it but I can’t remember precisely. Something about developing the themes for GCSE work in the Y9 curriculum. It’s a question for the schools.

Some of the schools around me compress the option subjects into one year. For instance PE is taught in one year to both Y10 and Y11 students and they all take the exam at the end of the year. They take three subjects at the end of Y10 and the rest as normal in Y11. The aim is to have a breadth of curriculum in smaller schools. The point is there isn’t one way of managing it,