Dropping a GCSE subject in year 11?

[TattiePants]

Are any secondary teachers or parents who have gone through this able to advise?

DS will be sitting his GCSEs in the summer and we’d like him to to drop German. He has dyspraxia and his slow processing combined with poor memory recall means he is really struggling. Having read around the subject, MFL does seem to be tricky for some kids with dyslexia, dyspraxia etc. In addition to his SEN, he is struggling with his mental health and having regular panic attacks at school and at home. The SENCO managed to get him a CAMHS referral within 2 months and he has his appointments in school so they are aware of how difficult he finds things at the minute.

In his November mocks he got grades 1-3 and he’s in the middle of his final mocks and is likely to get similar grades. We could spend hours doing extra work (we’ve done no German revision for either sets of mocks) but that would mean taking revision time from either core subjects like English or subjects that he wants to do for A Level.

Can anyone offer some advise?

I did a calculation when DD was dropping Geography. One child's 0 bucket makes next to no difference in a cohort of 200 pupils.
Each pupil is only 0.5% anyway. 1 empty bucket is only 0.05% of all the buckets across the cohort.

I’ve had a very quick read of Progress 8 and if I understand it correctly, the first bucket is one English and maths, the second bucket could be a science, geography and computers and the final bucket would be the other English and science (he’s doing combined trilogy) and either business or possibly creative imedia which he’s already passed.

I would do it. I have dyspraxia and wanted to drop history. I wasn't allowed to and ended up with a G. If I'd been allowed to drop it I could have turned one of my d's into a c.

@TeenPlusCat you are right that it's a very small change - but one downside of progress 8 is that it's much easier for a child to get a big negative and very hard to get a big positive score. That means a few students who score lowly compared to their expected score can have a massive impact - so schools will try to tackle this.

Yes teen it is a small change but multiply that by the 60 requests to drop subjects and pretty quickly you have an issue.

It sounds like he's fine for progress 8 without German so that shouldn't be a problem. It also sounds like your school has supervision facilities.

Herc If a school has 25% of its cohort asking to drop a subject, maybe they need to review how they do things?

I do understand your point though, which is where my original third point came in (not advertising).

If there are clear SEN reasons I would hope a school would be flexible and work in the best interests of the pupil. For my DD1 dropping history which she clearly had no hope of passing enabled us to throw everything at Eng Lang (after the dept had badly let her down not noticing her struggling) and she scraped through.

It isn't just the one subject, but across the subjects! We get kids asking to drop maths 😂.

In this case the school should be flexible. We can't be, we have nowhere for students to go if they aren't in their timetabled lessons.

DS has dropped three subjects due to on-going health issues (physical and mental) which have been made worse due to lockdowns and his brother's cancer diagnosis. His school has been brilliant fortunately and realised he was struggling.

He has no idea what he wants to do after GCSEs and it worries him a lot. His dad and I just tell him to focus on getting through the next few months and things will fall into place after.

@Hercisback

It isn't just the one subject, but across the subjects! We get kids asking to drop maths 😂.

In this case the school should be flexible. We can't be, we have nowhere for students to go if they aren't in their timetabled lessons.

Dropping maths. Aah. (Better not tell you what I am about to write to DD's college about ).

When DD2 was picking her options I actually had a radical thought that they should build 'study period' into the options. So literally let the less able kids pick to start one fewer GCSE but instead all go and have supervised, timetable study period 5 times a fortnight. For my DD it would have been really helpful, it would have given her a breathing space in the day sometimes, she always came home at 3 exhausted.

Study period sounds wonderful but in reality would be a room full of kids who don't want to study bar about 2 of them. The staff supervising would have a battle on their hands for 5 hours a fortnight. Have you ever tried supervising 'revising' year 11 students?

Is your dd resitting maths at college? They won't let her drop that, sorry! We have enormous pressure for students to attend their resit maths lessons.

I am a teacher but am speaking as a parent. My eldest gave up French, a therapist treating her for anxiety advised us to push for it. She is now close to graduating. It has not held her back and really helped her.

My youngest is pretty academic. She felt overwhelmed in Y11 and told us she wanted to neglect a similar (highly valid, but not core) subject in the revision period. We supported her. Her maths grade went from 4 to 7 as she really cracked the books on maths. She ignored the other subject entirely but worked hard on everything else. They don't need eleventy million GCSEs and their stress levels can be very real in Y11 x

@Hercisback

Study period sounds wonderful but in reality would be a room full of kids who don't want to study bar about 2 of them. The staff supervising would have a battle on their hands for 5 hours a fortnight. Have you ever tried supervising 'revising' year 11 students?

Is your dd resitting maths at college? They won't let her drop that, sorry! We have enormous pressure for students to attend their resit maths lessons.

Yes, I realised that about a study period, still a shame though.

DD is resitting maths & English. There is a complicated back story and she has just got an EHCP. She isn't managing to properly access maths lessons at college and we are appealing the EHCP as it still doesn't give her the support she needs. I have a maths degree, I definitely want her to resit, but I don't think she is well enough yet..

Teen there may be a way around resitting maths at the moment and delaying it until DD is better supported and her MH has improved further. There is an exemption for students with EHCPs whose centre assesses them as unable to study towards GCSEs or 'stepping stone' qualifications such as functional skills. Information here. Even if DD is not exempt completely she could sit a stepping stone qualification rather than GCSE.

Imitating Thanks, that's helpful. (I am trying not to derail the thread too much. I was going to suggest she sits in Nov instead and I prepare her over the summer).

I can tell you, s someone who ‘taught’ several periods a week in Year 10 and 11, to a group of young people who had one less GCSE timetabled, that Hercisback is absolutely correct.

Theoretically, they were study periods where the students could spend time working on the subjects they were doing. In practice……a different story. Of course, there were some who used the time profitably, but they were in the minority.

Of course schools should aim for flexibility and I’m sure most do. I opened my department for various reasons, as often as I could, but it really isn’t as simple as offering a study period. It’s true too, that GCSEs in double figures are not necessary.

@Foxyloxy1plus1

Well that’s poor teaching then, it should be a calm productive learning environment and those who are ruining it should be removed

Final deadline for exam entries is today so it's not going to save the school any money by not entering him as they have already been done.

But more pertinently, what is your DS going to do instead of German lessons at school? There needs to be a plan for that. There might not be any staff available to supervise him doing something else.

[quote OnceuponaRainbow18]@Foxyloxy1plus1

Well that’s poor teaching then, it should be a calm productive learning environment and those who are ruining it should be removed[/quote]
Have you been in a Year 11 class made up of kids who have dropped/ been dropped from a GCSE? It is quite literally the worse of all lessons to be asked to teach or supervise. You will have maybe up to 30 kids in there - and at least two thirds will be there due to heir poor behaviour and constant disruption of the GCSE they have dropped.

You suggest removing them - where to? This is where they were removed to in the first place.

I wish there was a ‘like’ button for that post itrytomakemyway. If you’ve never done it, you can’t know what it’s like. If you have a class of students who have dropped a subject, they won’t all have dropped the same one. Nor will they all be needing or wanting to work on the same subject in the lessons.

I’d love to see you try Onceuponarainbow18. The evidence of my worth as a teacher is evident over a lengthy career.

@OnceuponaRainbow18

It's not poor teaching at all. Expecting different staff to provide resources is unreasonable and above their normal working load (which is high enough already). Students that drop subjects are usually disengaged in school for other reasons so a period of study is not productive.

I had to supervise something like this in an old school, I'd have had to remove 25 out of the 27 students. Until you've worked in a state school in a deprived area you have no idea.

@Hercisback. @Foxyloxy1plus1

I’m on my twelfth year teaching in the most deprived state school in my city, with a leading role on behaviour.

I can’t imagine many schools removing 30 kids from their GCSEs who all happen to be in the same subject block so need teaching at the same time.

There’s many kids, like OPs, who are hard working but struggle with doing 9 or 10.

Remove them for poor behaviour - you ask where to? Well where do the kids get removed when disrupting ‘normal’ lessons - a parked class, a SLT office, the HOD classroom or the isolation room…! We ever have a desk outside the heads office

@itrytomakemyway

is quite literally the worse of all lessons to be asked to teach or supervise.

Maybe the kids sense this from you

GCSEs are blocked by options so they all do options at the same time, therefore there would be 30+ kids if we allowed it. Hence why we don't!!

Good luck finding space for 25 out of the 30 kids to be "parked" to 😂. You've clearly never had to supervise something remotely like this. The best behaviour management in the world would find it difficult!

It's quite telling from your attitude how you view your staff.

@itrytomakemyway I agree with you. I'll take any cover lesson for going over supervising kids with no work and no motivation.

I have thirty two years of teaching experience, and yes when we got to April there could be a class of 30 students removed from option GCSEs who were all in the same 'removed from GCSE class together'. This was in an 11 form entry school.

No I did not want to be in front of them. I wanted to teach, not crowd control kids who were there with one eye on the countdown clock to leaving school. Those lessons were literally the 'remove' option. Our SLT did not have enough space (or, I will be frank, the inclination) to cater for all of those who were choosing not to take this time to study.

Did those students sense that I did not want to be in there with them. Probably , bu who would? I am not a martyr. It was the longest and worse hour of the teaching week.