GCSEs in England: which subjects / how many are compulsory? What can each school force kids to take?

The difference is that the maths papers have other more challenging questions. The retail paper, in my view, does not

It does. The initial questions are ‘identify’ questions. Questions move on to ‘describe questions, ‘explain’ and ‘discuss’ type questions. The end of the paper also includes ‘analyse’ and ‘evaluate’ questions.

I mean the DfES does not greatly approve of it. I'm not sure whether there are guidelines on it, but academies can do what they like.

I agree with @Phineyj that setting is not that common in comprehensive schools apart from for maths,at KS3 anyway.

Some schools set for science in KS4 with triple groups; my dcs' set for Englush as well.

Streaming is a really bad idea IMO so I'm glad you don't see it much.

If I were you @ItalianParent I'd avoid any school that streams tho setting is fine.

Setting and streaming are rather out of fashion in the UK for better or worse. There might only be setting in Maths.

Yes I agree that the maths paper has harder questions, but tbh I could answer them all on a F paper (and I have not studied maths for many many years). OTOH the business paper has questions I could certainly not answer, or at least not being confident that my answer would gain a good mark.

So does that mean that the maths GCSE is actually easier? No, surely not. What it means is that I was good at maths at school enjoyed it, and have retained the information (and in fact use maths in my daily, ordinary life). I never studied business and don’t actually know the answer to some of the questions. That doesn’t mean that I couldn’t learn how to do well on that paper (and there is a good deal more to the qualification than simply that exam paper); but I think it’s perhaps not helpful to say that GCSE x is objectively easier than GCSE y. Tbf tho maths GCSE does have a greater value than the business qual you have flagged, as maths is one that everyone needs to try to get a grade 4+ in, and that is specifically looked for by employers.

Is the business qual you highlight offered at schools you are looking at? That’s the only reason I can think of for going into the schools’ offer in such detail (as far as I can see, finding out the detail you have would involve a lot of study of spreadsheets). If so, well your DC does not have to take it. They can choose subjects they would prefer.

Depends what other subjects at L2 are available in school and whether they are more relevant to the jobs being aimed for. It's unlikely to be the most useful

I know, I was referring to the demise of the Food A level.

For university? Maybe not
For a job or course that needs five L2 qualifications... yes it will.

Comprehensive schools need to cater for everyone, not just the top children

I think sports is only really worth doing as a GCSE. I don't think the lower qualification opens any doors and is likely to be seen as a filler or soft choice of last resort.

I agree that the first few questions in that business exam paper are not challenging; but then the F maths paper last year for AQA began with the question Write down the next number in the sequence: 1, 4, 7, 10. That's fairly straightforward (and rightly so as there need to be questions a L1 candidate can answer).

I am not an expert on that business award (are there really schools where a third of students take it? Not any school I know of but obvs that is a limited number) but I do think that the notion of “academic” subjects is unhelpful.

For one student, French GCSE may be a breeze. Another may find PE a real struggle.

We are busy looking at schools at the moment - some offer the choice of BTEC Sport or GCSE PE. I did GCSE PE a million years ago and there was lots of human biology involved.

Food Tech GCSE definitely exists (Food & Nutrition), but there is also a BTEC in Food and Hospitality. It may be that some schools only offer the latter. (OTOH, we only offer the GCSE.)

Not everyone has to be "academic". A builder or acarer is just as vital to modern society as a lawyer or doctor.

I did A level home economics in 1977. It was hard. We had about 11.5 hours of exams - a practical planning one, a practical (I cooked 7 dishes in 3 hours), a 3 hour general paper and a 3 hour food and nutrition paper. To get a grade B in an A level in 1977 was quite an achievement.

@clary when DD was choosing her GCSE options all the pupils were given a little booklet describing the syllabus. The GCSE one started with "If you dislike essay writing PE is not for you". I think people who were good at PE thought it would be an easy option and mainly practical. There was as much theory as actual sport.

The PE academic syllabus is basically applied and practical Human Biology and is a perfectly respectable science subject with a surface veneer that makes it feel accessible to kids who are more alienated by the learning environment where the more traditional sciences are taught. You can learn stuff just as effectively in the sports building as you can in the science block.

Grrr an A-level is an A-level!

A colleague told me the Food Tech one got deleted some years back. As if cooking isn't a noble and important thing. And difficult to do well.

Yes and let's not start on PE GCSE and PE A level – accepted by many very popular universities as a science subject, and yet frequently decried on MN and elsewhere (I know bc DS took it) as some kind of easy, non-academic A level.

A lot of it ultimately comes back to the social status of subjects and the endless, unhelpful idea of "academic" and "vocational".

So if a subject has low social status teachers who specialise in it will be keen it is a GCSE but teachers of the high status subjects will be keen to gate keep theirs.

I think it does explain why music is a GCSE. Even in today's world where the Proms are doing tributes to Dolly Parton (no offence intended to the great Dolly) classical music is high status.

I saw business studies described in an academic paper as "acceptably academic but vaguely vocational"!

yes I agree; it's tricky not to make a distinction between the value of certain subjects but it is not helpful. The students do it too sadly – recall a year 11 saying to me in disdain (about herself) "oh miss I'm not in the science GCSE exam, I'm Btec!"

It's important that the alternative quals are accepted by unis and colleges as equivalent to the more well known ones but it is a hard struggle.

I will own my error.

I'm not sure about vocational GCSEs. They tried vocational A Levels, before that you had GNVQs.

I also think for people my age that is going back to the O Level / CSE split. CSEs were supposed to be in more practical subjects. Some were e.g. my school taught CSE typing but then they started offering CSEs in maths and physics, hardly practical subjects.