in thinking that DD will get nowhere with these GCSE options...

[PosyPanther]

DD is 13, so, in my opinion still a child, she changes her mind about pretty much everything daily, school shoes, whose her best friend, her favourite colour, you get the picture...

She has just had the first leaflet from school about GCSE option next year and want to pick health and social care (double award)human health and physiology instead of additional science, child development, psychology and sociology. She says she wants to do social work or primary teaching (or win the X factor )

I think she's mad. She's in the top set at school, level 5 across the board at primary school and is working at solid level 7s now. I would much prefer her to take at least two science GCSEs, history and geography instead of psych and sociology and a language with one choice left for whatever she fancies (but I'd prefer a second language or triple science.)

I can't see that having History, geography, french, german, separate science would disadvantage her in applying for ANY degree/career pathway? How do I convince her that some subjects actually are better than others? Her teachers are insisting all GCSEs are equal but I can't see that sociology is as hard as German or Physics? I'm worried she's going to close doors at 13...

I was actually apologising for referring to your husband as MrMcQueen, not MrLeQueen.

I really don't understand why your husband spends so much of his time looking CVs of recent graduates in any case. Either he runs a tiny company with very few management staff or he is a bit of a control freak.

Requiring applicants to complete standard application forms is a much more efficient way to identify people with the qualifications and skills that you need. I've done lots of recruiting and where a candidate got their degree is very rarely high on the list of what I'm looking for. I'm much more interested in whether they have the experience and aptitudes I need for the role.

masochismtangoer you are right, measuring the effectiveness of campaigns (whether public health or any sort of marketing) is very difficult because whether or not someone's behaviour changes as a result of a campaign or some other factor is hard to decipher. And yes raising the price of cigarettes has shown to be very effective (although beyond a certain point the black market becomes very active) and you can plot some good correlations of smoking uptake and price however that's rather more tricky with food, and much resented for alcohol. I don't think the the last government did a good job in public health to be honest. Too many intitiatives pulling in different directions, and very few evidence based.

The NHS concept was originally much more focused on public health (originally the idea was that once basic care and standards of living rose demand for services would drop) but it has become very hospital dominated over time.

whyamIbothering that sounds incredibly frustrating. One of the reasons why I moved schools at sixth form was for more subject options, my academic but small girls school just didn't have the staff to offer many choices (although they were all solid traditional subjects). I suspect it was somewhat easier when most children only took the three A levels though.

So how come he regularly has 500 CVs? That doesn't sound like a good weeding unless he has quite vague criteria. Although I've found with using agencies that they have a tendency to send you any old rubbish, often totally unsuitable, so perhaps that's it.

Posy
This is a huge and very interesting thread. I am glad that you and your DD have reached a compromise.

When I was 13 my parents allowed me to pick the subjects that I wanted to study. I ended up with a useless bunch of "qualifications" that have been no use to me whatsover.

I was educated in Scotland so took O Levels -
English
Arithmetic (why on earth did my teachers/parents allow me to do that - I was and am not good at maths but would have scraped through an O Level, I think)
Anatomy, Physiology and Health (instead of Biology, totally useless)
Modern Studies
History

There were two others, but I seem to have blanked them from my memory. I do know that I got 3 Highers - in English, Modern Studies and Fabric and Fashion (FFS, what was I thinking??)

I agree that it is good for children to study some subjects that they enjoy and show an apptitude towards, but to allow them to so seriously limit their potential at such a young age is shameful.

wwell in some areas you do get loads of CVs. Someone with a first from King's in a good subject wrote to me today to work for nothing. Great candidates are fnding it very hard. Most employers in ceratin types of jobs will look at the where the degree was from and often the A level results too even years later. It's ust a filter so students need to know that if their CV is littered with media studies and soft GCSEs and has little of the standard maths, rnglish lit, english lang, 1 or two languages, 2 or 3 sciences, history and geography (in other words the GCSEs the good schools do and those subjects which comprised School Certificate before O levels and GCSEs which are probably the core subjects it is good if children learn) they will find that a burden in many careers even a decade later. Left wing teachers in comps often choose not to tell them this apparently.

"Also not always wise to let teenagers go where they think they want to go without some advice. Also put them in a school where 100% go to great universities and they will follow that herd. Put them in a school whre most people fail and they will follow their peers to the dole or the call centre."

Not necessarily. A highly intelligent friend of mine spent his adult life bumming around in order to show what he thought of his father who forced him into a high achieving private school that he hated; the only jobs he would touch were badly paid ones that required nothing of him and a lot of the time he did no work at all.

I would certainly advise my children, but I would not force them into something they hated if it could be avoided: I don't want them to end up like that. A good school is only good if it is doing you good. And people are individuals: some are sheep, some are not.

I've certainly never forced a child to pick a career. I would say 80% of children as teenagers are hugely influenced by peers and not parents. One hopes by their 20s when they emerge from the mire of teenage hormones their early influences begain to win out again but don't underestimate peer group adn if 100% of peer group goes to Oxbridge/Russell group then it's more likely the teen in that class will. If 80% leave to be hairdressers or go on the dole or have babies at 15 then that's more likely yours will too.

I don't think sociology and psychology are crap subjects - in fact psychology is very hard and lots of kids I know who have taken it aqt A level have regretted it - they find it difficult and a bit boring. But I agree - always better to stick to the core humanities subjects. Contrary to what they tell you at school, universities DO take notice of your GCSEs, and there is definitely a heirarchy of subjects. I would avoid the health/social care one like the plague.

I think this thread has probably answered all of the OP's questions, but for what its worth....

I have one DS at a Russell Gorup uni doing physics and DD1 just applying to Russell Group unis for English.

For the most part, these unis are only interested in candidates with the right core of GCSEs - the competition is really tough to get in this year and you dont want to have a raft of GCSEs and then A levels you have to make excuses for to just get your application considered.

Playing the percentage game - stick with the core subjects at GCSE and then think again at AS level if your DD still leans towards the 'different' subject options....

I agree. it's a perception issue. AlthoughGCSE sport or psychology might be hard the 40 - 60 year old who may be glancing at your CV for 2 seconds 10 years later in his or her day may have just done the core subjects I mentioned so why take the risk of annoying him when you could do those core subjects instead?

I used to mark A level law papers (it used to pay for our summer holiday) No one does it who is likely to be a lawyer because it is an "easy" subject. The papers were atrocious, answers the average bright 13 year old could write except with much worse spelling. Yet I bet some students or their parents or even the odd teacher will be thinking ah you do A level law if you want to be a lawyer. So it's an information issue and being stronge enough to resist inaccurate bad schools' propaganda about subjects they plug but which are really perceived by others as useless.

I do actually agree with you to some extent, Xenia (though I can't help noticing that my family is in the remaining 20%: dh got scholarship to high achieving private school and failed his exams through sheer laziness, I went to bog standard comp and worked myself up precisely because I didn't want to be like the others and have their lives).

I am certainly making sure that dd has all the information about the possible future effects of her choices that her school might easily miss, because I know her better than they do, and even if I am wrong about her, she should still have any information that is out there. And schools can be very careless about what they bother to find out.

I was very put out when we visited a local secondary with ds and they only talked of vocational courses/subjects. Yes, as it so happens, that may well be right for ds, but it is not their call to make and it should not be decided before he even gets there. I couldn't help feeling that the only reason these children were being fed this particular line is that the school's main intake is from the local council intake- so they have given up on the pupils before they even get to know them.

Otoh we visited another state secondary in a very similar catchment area and I thought they were positively inspirational in the way they recognised all the different needs that pupils might have.

At dd's school (another state school, with a mixed intake, but mainly working/lower middle class), they do insist on a fairly full range of core subjects (including a modern foreign language) which leaves a modest space for the less heavy ones: I am very happy with this, because it does keep more options open.

typo, "intake is from the local council estate"

Though I absolutely would not hope that dcs' early upbringing will keep them from being hairdressers if that is the career they have an aptitude for and would be happy in. All I want at the moment is to keep options open- and that would include the hairdressing option.

Yes, PE is another one. My son opted to do this against my wishes, and he regrets it now even though he is very sporty. So much of the theory is actually quite hard (and he's a bright boy) and it leans heavily towards physiology and biology - and scince is not his thing at all. They have now said that you cannot do PE at GSCE id you are only taking foundation English and Maths at our school because you won't cope with it. It is seen as a soft subject but it isn't easy. The worst of both worlds!

DH and I have this conversation all the time about recruitment.

It may well be that a photography A level is very hard. Looking at the photos I take, it would certainly have been useful, but we are instinctively biassed against it towards candidates with more solid qualifications.

So pupils should be given accurate information when they are making their choices.

13 is not too young to understand about implications.

It is a balance though, isn't it, Litchick? One child may actually have a real interest in photography and never forgive the parent who insisted that they should be steered away from it to impress the kind of future employer the parent had in mind.

My parents let me spend time doing more foreign languages than I could ever fit into my final report, which meant less time spent on science and maths. They could see that I had a talent that was a little unusual and might involve slightly unusual career choices. This of course could have been a totally wrong choice if I had ever been in a position where I needed to impress the kind of employer Xenia has in mind. But I never have.

More to the point, dd wants to do drama as a GCSE, which is generally considered a soft option. And then she wants to go on to do drama A-level. Dd is somebody who imho might well be Oxbridge material. But then again, her one dream is to work in the theatre- and I believe she does have some talent. I am going to let her go for it. But at the same time keep telling her that her other options should be such as to keep other paths open.

But surely cory's daughter's better chance of making a success in theatre will be if she can get into Cambridge Footlights etc, not doing drama GCSE and A level. or I suppose RADA - not sure what you need for that. Also it's virtually impossible to make al iveing at that so why not read Engluish at Oxford and do a load of drama and make connections in the drama world there?

RADA (and several others) on audition only. And not funded like university.

cory - I think there's a balance to be struck.

In an ideal world all options should be left open.

I was having this same conversation recently with family members. Their view is that not everyone wants to work in the city/become DG of the Beeb/editor of the Times.

Which I accept. But I wish doors were left open just in case.

Drama is a difficult one. DD 11 is utterly in love with acting and would dearly love me to allow her to start auditioning. But I hold her back because I want her to pursue her academics so no doors are shut.
Perhaps I shouldn't.

Sigh.
Tricky.

Litchick, auditioning for jobs? Or schools?

Well they virtually all fail at acting, we all know that. Choosing acting means you will be serving in bars until you're 35 and give up. Obviously you can do it part time but look at even the Harry Potter actors - they took their A levels and not in drama and then some of them at least went off to universities. Same with models - that girl with red hair - she went to Cambridge. There's nothing to stop someone talented at acting going to Oxbridge and it can help their acting or modeling or whatever it is career. A lot of people make their connections in those sorts of industries at univesrity - Stephen Fry I think and presumably loads of others, Mr Bean etc. I bet "Borat" went to univesrity after Habs boys school although I might be wrong. In other words I'm saying most of the ones who make a success of it are the clever ones who also got proper A levels and went to do a good subject at a good place.