<sigh> GCSE Options - dd's school are oversubscribed with Art, so she now has to choose other options and hates all on offer

She will be doing BTEC if she is in the ATC. Good luck, hope it works out ok.

None would be hugely beneficial then, but the RAF look for breadth of interest and level of qualifications so I would go for the one she is likely to have the most interest in and achieve highest in. BTECs are well-regarded by them so that wouldn't make too much differene. Has she spoken to the subject teachers about the course content? Once she has I'd get her to go for the one she will struggle with least and enjoy more and make sure she is doing lots of extra-curricular/stuff outside school such as ATC,sports or something similar to make her stand out from the rest.

what does she want to do in the RAF?

Have you looked at H & S Care? There is a lot of written course work I think. I know a girl who took this and she hated it but we are all different!

I agree in the importance of business bonsoir - I went to art school, where we were forced to do a form of 'business studies' - almost all artists are self employed, so that stuff is really important, however at this stage I do believe that if you encourage a child to study what they love they'll fly, if you encourage them to study subjects which their heart isn't in you're setting them up to fail. If OPs DD is really against business studies then its best to let it go imo.

GCSEs do become pretty irrelevant pretty quickly, especially once you've done A Levels. A cousin of mine ended up doing 13 of them, but really all that any job application will ever want to know is if you have English and Maths (and possibly Science).

I don't really agree with the "negative attitude" to Business Studies. We all need to understand the commercial world, whatever field we end up in, and the sooner we start understanding it, the easier it is to read and understand the newspapers and get a grip on how the world works.

things aren't as hard if you love them though and tabs are a very valid form of notation
good luck to your daughter whatever she chooses, I remember GCSE choices being so hard to figure out, it feels like your whole future depends on making the right choices, I dread my DD getting to that stage (she's not 3 yet though so there's a while to go!)

I am very sorry for your DD, GetOrf, that she cannot do Art. However, I would encourage her to do Business Studies rather than nothing at all.

Don't you think she might learn to rad music whist studying it?

I guess the others are probably right about the amount of work involved in music, but I did music, drama and art alongside all the sciences/history/german etc and I found the amount of time I spent on Art far outweighed any of the other subjects. that's just the way it goes with creative subjects I guess - everything's more open ended so can eat all your time.

Robyn is right - you don't need to be able to read music but it is a tough choice with quite a lot of work.

Our school is similar to OP in that as it is a specialist college you have to take a tech subject - all of the tech options were of absolutely zero interest to my DD and there were loads of other subjects she would rather have studied.Hey ho.

just looked up the edexcel student guide to music GCSE and it makes no mention of having to read music -

www.edexcel.com/migrationdocuments/GCSE%20New%20GCSE/GCSE09-Music.pdf

Sorry to go on and on about the music gcse, but I got so much from music at school, would hate to think of someone missing out because they thought they needed to be able to do something they didn't

If she is that bothered by the presence of a BTEC, she could just miss it off her list of qualifications. She would still have 10 GCSEs (maybe 11 if she does Additional Maths?)

I'd do health and social care - hopefully she'd get first aid training in that, and it would be a much more interesting addition (if she is concerned about how things look in the future) than music tech.

I did music GCSE, and it was really hard work. There was a significant performance element too.

At least she is getting some light relief somewhere! Ds's choices on top of those listed below are Triple Science (so same as your dd: biol, chem and phys), Geography and DT Systems and Control (whatever that might be!)

I am edging towards the music tech now too, though for my ds that would be sheer hell and he can read music and plays an instrument too. But he would hate all that expressionism.

Is she not doing a modern language? Is that because of her dyslexia?

When I did GCSE music you had to do 3 'performances' on two different 'instruments' your voice can be one of those, so playing 2 things on the guitar and singing something would suffice. I played 2 pieces on my trumpet and sang a song.

Thinking more about the compositions, I think I only had to notate them because other people were performing them for me, if your daughter composed pieces on her guitar and performed them then I'm not sure whether there would be any need for notation at all.

I could read music, but didn't understand musical keys, or any other music 'theory' and was by no means any kind of musical whizz - my daughter asks me to stop singing if I start these days - and I got an A!

Paul McCartney couldn't read music when he was beatle, I can't imagine they'd fail him at GCSE music!

Music is undoubtedly the toughest of those, and business studies probably relatively difficult and dull if you're not interested in it.

Out of the other two I'd go for the BTEC if she has no particular interest in a caring job in the future, as it sounds more interesting. Why not call the dept she's interested in at Bristol and ask how they'd view a BTEC in combination with gcses?

If she wants to join the military Health and Social Care might be worth considering.

It would link loosely to humanitarian work I suppose.

My DD1 is only in Year 6 but I find it baffling how schools can limit their GCSE options so much. How on earth can they say "oh we know you want to do Art but can't because we can't organise it."