Textiles or astonomy gcse?

[WoodenReindeer]

My daughter is in yr 8 and has to choose options early as they have a 3 year gcse. Her experience of secondary school so far has been covid affected so choosing options is a bit tricky! She hasn't used a sewing machine as that had to be demonstrated from the front at the time etc.

She is interested in both astronomy and textiles. They are pretty much polar oposites aren't they?

Does anyone know anything about either course that could help her decide? Its her final choice so the "extra" but she is aware either would take a lot of time. Textiles because of the coursework presumably and astronomy to get to grips with the maths/physics.

From googling it looks like there is a difference between textiles art and textiles tech. This is the tech one where half the course is the same as graphics it seems.

My DCs school choose options at this stage ie start GCSEs in year 9 but at the end of year 9 there is some wiggle room if you wanted to swap or change one. Might that be the case at your DDs school?
I think even at the end of year 10 she could have changed from triple science to combined if she wanted (I think she was considering that but stuck with the 3 separate sciences)

It's written in the stars, it has to astronomy!

Astronomy is quite a rare GCSE so I'd choose that one as it'll look great on a CV

DD does textiles and absolutely loves it and her teacher says she's really good and gives her 9's

So back to this....

She isn't top set maths (but is at a grammar so maybe she would be in a comp but not the top table?)

Would this make astonomy harder or would the astronomy help reinforce her maths....?

She's finding it so hard to decide. She doesnt want one subject to take over whatever she does.

She hasn't really spoken to anyone doing either (v shy) and has a different friend choosing each one.

Hello!

What did you decide in the end? My child is deciding between these 2 too and can't make up their mind. The option blocks may be the deciding factor!

So she went with textiles.... but is now choosing to drop RP in favour of astronomy. I was googling to see if this was possible and found my old thread!

She has found history and RP less fun than she'd have liked but enjoying science and maths so textiles AND astronomy it is. Given its a 3 Yr course I'm hoping she can catch up the first 6 months.

I am having a mental block, but what's RP? Religious ...?

As I said before, I am baffled how they can make astronomy into a three year course. It's a one year course really, not even two. So I'd say she'll definitely catch up easily!

Glad she's enjoying everything else 😁

RP is Religion and Philosophy

That's great she'll be able to catch up. Any GCSE can be a 1 Yr course - I teach psychology in a year to adults and I know we offer biology and maths similarly.

The 3 Yr GCSE model isn't popular and I think her school are changing it for future years. I think they mainly do foundation type stuff in the first year for some subjects (like music) then the "real gcse" in 2 years. For science they've been told the subjects they're covering are the gcse syllabus.

She's asked around and 6th form friends that have done it haven't said it's their highest grade, that it isn't easy but it's a really lovely class and she'd love it (helps that it's smaller). I imagine the matsh/physics side of it might be trickier for some but she's good at maths . Or it might be that those that do the gcse nationally are already the super bright ones so it sqews the results? It doesn't seem like an "easy" gcse though so the extra time will be good!

RP was one of her highest scoring subjects and the school gets excellent results so we may be sacrificing a grade for something she enjoys better. But they do 10 subjects and it's a grammar school so I am expecting reasonable results overall.