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Original poster

how many gcses do most children do ?

79 replies

Piffle · 05/09/2008 13:40

am a little anxious as ds1 -although very gifted in all subjects, seems to on the face of it have mega courseload

They are doing some this school year- maths stats, IT and ds1 is doing mandarin as twilight (after school course 1hr per week only)
But his are all academic subjects listen to this fgs
Double English lit and lang(2 gcses)
Triple science(3)
Now bumped up to dbl tech course (2gcses worth)
Geography
Half RE
Engineering
Art
Plus silver arts award extra quals
French

It seems a hefty load even for bright children?
Anyone any experience of this kind of load?

OP posts:
DoNotAnnoy · 05/09/2008 14:21

I did 11, but 12 years ago.

9-11 was the normal range then for a standard state secondary. The privates were doing 12-14.

I did science (*2)
English (*2)
Maths
A hmantities subject (Geog)
Integrated humanities (think general studies0
Anoterh choice (home ec)
2 languages (most only did 1 language)
Art

mustrunmore · 05/09/2008 14:15

well, I did 9 (many moons ago!) and altho I found them all fairly easy, it was incredibly time consuming. I literally didint do anything else except go to school and do homework. I didnt mid acually, but you do need to be focussed to manage it ime.

snorkle · 05/09/2008 14:07

DS came back from a sailing course last week where he'd met a lad who had just done 16 (!). DS said he was clearly very bright but really, really nice with it. Oh, he got all A*s too!

10 is standard in ds's and many other schools; 11-12 in some. My opinion is it's not really worth doing more than 10-11 unless you're so bright that you can do them without it impacting on your quality of life (ie: you can get away without doing some/all of the homework and still do well). My reasoning for this is that when you do university apps that's all they seem to expect & they'll be more bothered about your A levels anyway and you're only young once, so best to make the most of it & do extra curricular stuff & lounge about with friends while you can.

Original poster
Piffle · 05/09/2008 13:41

he just began yr10 sorry !

OP posts: