GCSE Options

[GCSEnoob]

Is PE really a compulsory subject as my son’s school seem to be suggesting? DS has zero interest in pursuing anything related , so would prefer it if he could choose another subject instead.

Is it also the case for your child’s school that one option involves having to choose between
RE, health & social care, or enterprise?

in my son’s options, languages have been put together with humanities, which seems bizarre. Does that mean the school think he’s not really clever enough to manage a language?
it is possible to do both, but would need to be at the expense of the IT/design/engineering/food option.

I’m concerned that he is not being given the option to choose the subjects he really wants.

PE is an optional subject for GCSE that they can choose. My DS has and its practical and theory. There is an exam at the end.

They also have to do core PE which isn't optional. That's an hour or so a week and is just PE as in the PE they've had for years. There's no exam.

RE was just a subject that could be chosen and was optional. However DS's girlfriend had to take it as her school is RC.

Languages were separate - French or Spanish. As part of the (meaningless) English Baccalaureate they had to choose a language and a humanities subject. DS bitterly regretting Fench now.

It’s compulsory to do some PE but not to take it as a GCSE. At our English high school, students taking PE gcse have 3 or 4 PE sessions a week, and those not taking it have one.

We definitely don’t have to choose from RE, health & social care, or enterprise. RE is just one option you can pick or not. No idea what enterprise is. And I don’t think they offer health and social care. I have heard that RE is compulsory at some schools and indeed is compulsory in some way at KS4, but our school don’t do this. Maybe they fit the compulsory bit into “citizenship / life pathway” type lessons that they have once a fortnight.

Surely PE is not optional, everyone does it, but it is optional whether to take a GCSE in it? I have never heard of it being a core compulsory gcse subject before

Does he have to pick from that block as well? RE, health & social care, or enterprise, and I don't even know what enterprise is. Are there two tracks at your son's school? One is usually the more academic and the other more vocational. And no PE for a GCSE option is not normally compulsory it is an "option" hence the word.

It might be worth looking at other schools for their option subjects and whether they have a place. What year is he?

Pe is compulsory but not necessarily as a gcse. Each school organises it option blocks differently, probably based around timetable, classroom time and staffing.

The only compulsory PE at our school is 1 lesson (1 hour) per week, which is primarily for exercise, there's no exam although you can do a PE GCSE. You need to take RS or a language here.

Everybody at our school does a PE qualification. The very sporty kids do GCSE while the others do a BTEC type qualification.

It used to do compulsory RE short course but not any more which is good.

I don’t know what Enterprise is- our school offers Business Studies which might be similar ?

Has he been offered GCSEs or vocational courses? Languages or humanities sounds like he might be on a vocational track but if it’s a level 2 qualification then it’s treated like GCSEs for uni etc

Only home educated kids get totally free choice. The blocks will be arranged depending on how many hours a week of study is required as well as staffing.

I do think it is stupid that they classify history and geography as both being 'humanities' when the physical element of geography has far more in common with the sciences.

My son’s school has different streams so the top stream does ebacc and have to have a language, history/geography and 3 sciences.
Another stream has the option of btec catering, sport etc and no language.

PE isn't a compulsory GCSE at my dd's school. If you choose not to pick it as an option then you still have to do one compulsory lesson of PE a fortnight.

PE is voluntary in my daughter's school, but everyone has to do games.

No one is forced to choose RE or similar kids can choose more than one language. Equally, no one is forced to pick a language.

However, it's a private school and a lot more flexible about GCSE options than most other schools.

At DD’s grammar school RE is compulsory right up to GCSE and you have to have a compelling + well documented reason to be allowed not to study it! Madness in this day and age when there are so many more useful ‘real life’ subjects out there..

At least one language is also enforced which I do believe is a good thing though

PE will not be compulsory as an actual GCSE subject, there is no way that your son’s school would be forcing that however according to the national curriculum they must still do practical PE lessons which I assume is what they mean.

All schools organise things in a slightly different way. Usually there are a few compulsory subjects (English/Maths/Science which can be as many as 5 or 6 GCSEs), then 3 or 4 "options" which are arranged in subject blocks to make timetabling easier. The key is to try and pick things that your DC enjoys, and also keep as many options as possible open for later study.

OP - can you tell us how many options your DS will get to choose and what's in the blocks? It sounds as though GCSE PE is compulsory and one block is only RE/Health & social/enterprise, but are there 1 or 2 other blocks?

Thanks everyone

in addition to core English, maths, science and Core RS & PHSE….

Option A
RS, health, enterprise

option B
geography, history, French, german

option C
vocational sport, core PE, GCSE PE, sports leadership

option D
Art, textiles, business, computer science, IT, DT, drama, engineering, food, geography, history, health, music, RS

PE is compulsory as a subject but not as a GCSE. If he doesn't want to do a GCSE in PE he cam choose core PE.
Schools can put subjects in blocks as the choose, I think, though it is very unusual ime to have humanities and languages in a single block.

Not sure about different tracks, there is an information evening for parents, so just thinking about what I need to find out then.
I understand about the PE now.

But if everyone has to do an hour of core PE I don’t understand why that has been presented as a PE option. If you’re not doing GCSE PE why not choose another GCSE instead?

Each school can decide for themselves what rules/constraints to place on options. Each school has different challenges to balance a fair amount of choice with available staffing levels. If they know from experience that given the choice of X option only 8 students a year will choose it and they don't have capacity to offer class sizes that small they need to narrow down the options to a range that will mean a reasonable class size for each group.

Understanding the constraints on gcse choices was one of the things to research when choosing a school. It's not unusual for religious schools to make RE compulsory as a GCSE. At my DCs school all the kids not taking it as a GCSE choice have to do an hour a week of a non-exanined RE lesson and all the kids not taking PE as a GCSE choice still have PE lessons but I can imagine some schools wouldn't have the staff capacity to teach some of the cohort the GCSE syllabus and some an entirely different set of content.

That's an odd way of organising the option blocks

But if everyone has to do an hour of core PE I don’t understand why that has been presented as a PE option. If you’re not doing GCSE PE why not choose another GCSE instead? because those doing the others in that block will use that timetabled lesson for that, not core.

Ours do 4 options. One of them has to be history or geography. Then the other 3 are chosen from lists. They recommend a language and then you pick your favourites.

That seems really weird to me. Very restrictive and oddly focussed on quite niche things. Have you had an options evening or anything with the school / a chance to hear from them in person? Have they got a huge staffing problem? (I know plenty of schools do). Is this what they offer every year? Got to say I really wouldn’t be happy with this.

I have to say I wouldn’t be happy with that range of subjects either, to be honest I’d be looking at moving schools. No actual science subjects in this day and age is not OK and really shuts his future options down

In contrast, here’s our options. It’s quite a big school with 8 classes in each year group. They generally manage to work everyone’s choices but they have to pick a couple of reserve options in case too many people go for one thing and they can’t manage it (eg if there’s only one teacher for a particular subject).

Aside from these, they have eng lit & lang, maths (plus statistics and further maths options for top set if they want), and sciences (combined trilogy or triple. Also an hour of PE and a citizenship / PHSE lesson per fortnight. They have special days once a term to cover more PSHE type stuff.