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...

ragged you can do GCSEs and A-levels at any time of life, but if you at 17 decide you want to go to uni to study x subject, only to discover that at 13 you chose the wrong GCSEs, then you have to spend time rectifying that choice. For some people this is fine, I know several people who stayed in 6th form for 3 or 4 years before then going to uni and changing their minds 3 times and re-starting courses thus spending 5 yrs or longer there, but for some people, this isn't a choice they can afford to make.

A lot of people (and a lot of parents) quite reasonably expect that in general, young people will be out working and living a more independent life by the age of say 22-23ish. It's fine if you can afford not to be doing this until 26-27 etc. but not everyone has that choice.

I know my Mum & Dad couldn't have afforded for me to redo a year of uni or 6th form, and although I worked in the holidays and part time in term time, it wasn't enough to pay for everything.

D

ragged
I am a foreigner and totally don't understand GCSEs, so correct me if I'm wrong about the ONCE AND FOREVERness of the choices OP's DD makes now re GCSEs. I understand you can't do A-levels after the age of 19 (that's what it seems to say in my Journey to UK Citizenship book, anyway).

You can take A-leveles at any age - but you have to pay and find a provider, college or home educator, and do the work presumably when you are already or could be doing other things.

Studying with OU while working and now with DC to look after is harder then when I did my first degree when I just studied. People I know who went to study full time at uni later in life think it would have been easier to go earlier in life.

I think a lot of it is bad advice LeQueen. They're encouraged to take them by teachers who never point out that they might not be well regarded by unis.

I think they also get ahead of themselves ie I'm interested in working in tv/radio in the future and here is a course that teaches me about that. No-one ever tells them that the course won't help their goals and may actually hinder them.

It's like the private vs. state debate, MNers seem to think it's so important to get the choice right NOW like it's all set in stone what will happen as a result of decisions made NOW. I don't understand this attitude at all, but I don't know if that's because I am a foreigner and I can't begin to grasp the hidden massive gulfs of opportunity in modern British society as a result of decisions made early in my child's life between seemingly rather similar educational options .

Actually, I do understand sort of when you're talking Eton/Westminster vs. the county seat comp, but I remain rather unsure about other such possible divides.

I mean, I suppose the parents of John Prescott, John Major, Alan Sugar, Gus O'Donnell and Philip Greene agonised over these decisions and only let their boys study the hardest subjects and take the hardest exams at the best schools for as long as possible, and that's why those guys are so successful today, right... or is it?

Sorry Elinorbellowed, I know it's about tables and attendance but there are teachers- at sixth form colleges in particular- who only get paid if they get enough bums n seats to justify teaching the course.

Sort of true, narky (work in school, btw!).

But there are also a lot of 'my child is going to study law at Oxford'-type misguided ambitions from parents. It's amazing how many parents have ambitions on behalf of their child that do not match up to that child's capabilities and /or interests.

Any good careers advisor or teacher will encourage a child to take the subjects that will a) give them the best package of qualifications that they can possibly achieve, and b) that will give them the broadest range of subjects, so that their options are open.

I'd advise the OP to talk to the subject teachers at the open evening (you should have one next term, I'd assume?), and get a really good dialogue going. It would be silly for your DD to drop more academic subjects that she could achieve well in, but it would also be counter-productive to force her to study subjects which she has no interest in.

narkypuffin
I think they also get ahead of themselves ie I'm interested in working in tv/radio in the future and here is a course that teaches me about that. No-one ever tells them that the course won't help their goals and may actually hinder them.

Same with Unis though. Forensic degrees are not wanted by forensic employers who want chemistry degrees and post graduate qualifications, media students not told journalism usually want English degress, computer games degrees when computer games companies hate those and want computer science degrees ect...

If she wants to work in Social Work when she's older then I'd try and persaude her to do other subjects. A Health and Social Care degree isn't a "soft" subject ) (I'm doing one now).

I went to school in Scotland, so got the benefit of having more subjects at a higher level than GSCE - which automatically gave me greater options.

However, if I had to list the subjects which I didn't take but feel would have made my current degree easier for me it would be

History, Psychology and Science (probably Biology?)

On the other hand you don't want to force her to take subjects that she really hates.....

That's a hugely sweeping statement@LeQueen.

Education in the UK does have a treadmill feel to it. Always running to keep pace and terrified of falling (behind). Decades of politics stomping into the classroom and the ghost of secondary moderns.

They're qualifications. You can retake them, and retake them, and change, as much as you like. But it all takes time.

Studying additional GCSEs and A-levels part-time in the evenings (2 hours teacher-contact per subject, per week, maybe), and working at home while keeping paid employment, and having a family life is more difficult, than taking advantage of the opportunities you have as a schoolchild.

Good point@masochism.

The forensic science one is so very true

The slagging of Media Studies is a bit OTT, imo, though. It has become a bit of a cliche.

No, hard news journalists generally won't have studied 'Meejah Studies' at university, but I worked for a well known broadcaster for years in entertainment/music and shitloads of us had either journalism or media/cultural studies degrees.

I wish that my parents had given more direction around this sort of thing, or even tutors at school.

DP's parents were more active in telling him what to study (are both teachers) and pushing him to do harder subjects/options as they knew it would benefit him.

From what he's told me, in France you choose a subject "set", and that's it (this is for Bac. level). The "French literature" one is considered the softest, and the hardest is the "sciences" option, which includes maths, additional maths, physics, chemistry etc. They pushed him to do that (also pushed him to do German which meant you would go into a higher stream or something), as this was the choice which gave him the most options. This is what doing the "traditional" subjects does in the UK - as much as people don't like it, admissions tutors and employers look on the traditional subjects as more challenging ones, and therefore rate them more highly. Having them as a child's options (of course if they're able to do them) vastly opens up the opportunities they'll have in future. Particularly as very, very few people actually know what they want to do for the rest of their life at 14 (I mean, I'm 29 and I still don't know).

Now she wants to be a social worker, but maybe in five years she'll decide that being a family barrister or something will be a better way to achieve what she wants. Also, what 14 y/os know what jobs actually entail?

It's not a bad thing for a kid to do some research in to their chosen path. So easy now with the internet.

Also, lots of schools will no longer pay for re-sits. And I heard somewhere that only the first result will be taken into account for admission purposes anyway (although that might be a rumour), But re-sits are not considered the answer.

The new White Paper is introducing a certificate called the English Baccalaureate - which you can get if you study and pass 5 academic subjects. It is worth noting the new government's priorities in terms of how things might change in the next few years.

Altinkum the only requirements are maths, science (as little as 1 GCSEs worth) and english.

Dolittlest
No, hard news journalists generally won't have studied 'Meejah Studies' at university, but I worked for a well known broadcaster for years in entertainment/music and shitloads of us had either journalism or media/cultural studies degrees.

Good to know. I know they have some of the highest employment rates but worried they were all working in call centers .

ragged, actually I see it as being the opposite, it's actually about parents not wanting to set things in stone now. Some choices, even at GCSE, could limit opportunities later on. Other choices, leave a much wider range of opportunities available to you. It'a about not narrowing your opportunies and closing doors at a young age, not about crow-barring a child into a specific path/career that the parents want.

Nobody is saying she shouldn't go into social work and that she should do x career instead, just that if she makes the wrong decisions now, she might not be able to go into (or find it much difficult to go into) e.g. law or a science-focussed career, which at 13 she might not yet realise could be something she might end up liking.

D