To think that this is terrible news for my children's education?

[ICameOnTheJitney]

Axeing of Soft GCSEs to hit Drama and PE

Exam board insiders confirmed this weekend that subjects such as law, media studies, drama and PE were at risk of being culled from the list of about 58 GCSEs. One source said that as many as 20 subjects were under scrutiny

Why the arts? And surely PE is a VALID subject...not all children are academic and we NEED PE teachers and drama teachers and actors ffs!

Please tell me why, if this happens it's a good thing?

I completely agree wordfactory. I think it is more disgraceful that there are many so called comps that offer only one MFL, no separate sciences and no classical language and yet still call themselves comprehensive when they are not providing an education which maximises the potential of every child. Instead they have introduced masses of soft subjects, often as BTechs, at the expense of those who would benefit from an academic education and who have the potential to go to Oxford and Cambridge and other leading universities but have had the means to get there stripped from them in the name of "dumbing down". That, in my opinion, is where the problem lies.

Lmao at Law not being an academic subject!

What on earth would this governent have to gain by discouraging young people from studyinh law?!

Lewisham Hospital, anyone?

Wrong Friday, live in the North on an underachieving borough & every school I know of offers this.

It is not for the universities to lower their expectations and standards.

Well they need to be honest that they only want state school pupils who look and have been prepped like private school ones, because that's what the admissions statistics are telling us.

Right from the start they are exclusive. UCAS deadline for applications is 15th Jan. Oxbridge, 15th October. A lot of kids have just started getting their heads around the requirements info and UCAS forms and bam, they've already missed the application deadline. Yes I know Oxbridge have to deal with lots of applicants blah blah.

My own experience of an Oxford interview in 1995 was awful. I really got the impression of a closed shop, not for the likes of me. I'm sure things have changed since then, but bloody hell they needed to. Is it still gowns for dinner?

Withredwine Law is indeed an academic subject.

GCSE law doesn't even touch the sides! It is almost dangerous in its flimsiness!

too many pupils have been conditioned to sit placidly, waiting for everything to be spoon-fed them

Oh come on. This is very easy to say for those from strong academic backgrounds with a tradition of university attendance.
For families (like mine) who knew nothing of the university system let alone Oxbridge it is another language - baffling and intimidating and elitist.

LaQueen - IME it is hard to get DC to focus on making a plan for university unless the environment encourages them to do do. Environment may be parents, school, peers, older siblings - and is likely to be a combination of those factors. Lots of DC wake up too late to form and execute an ambitious HE strategy.

But noble every school in the land should know about the early deadlines.

There is no excuse not to pass this on to pupils! Just as there is no excuse not to pass on information as to which subjects are viewed as robust and which are not!

There is simply a resistance to engage with this in some quarters. You yourself are admirably showing some!

If 17/18 year old's can't get the form in on time for Oxbridge then they aren't going to cut it when they get there I might respectfully venture to suggest. In any event, presumably their teachers know the deadlines and should be discussing them in the lower 6th, not the first three weeks in the upper 6th.

Any 17/18 year old who is serious about Oxbridge should be preparing for their personal statement in the summer holidays. My DS read "The Rape of Nanking" quite a lot of Plato and various other bits and pieces to prepare for his.

Oxford gave him an unconditional offer on the basis of his interview; the other RG universities to which he applied gave him rather stiffer offers.

Laqueen you have completely missed my point that Oxbridge is apparently trying to widen access to state school kids but cutting them off before a lot of them are even getting into the system.

I'm sure private schools and superselectives don't expect their kids to do all the work. They'll probably have systems set up to funnel the kids in at the right time.

A state school where maybe one person applies is expecting far more of that person.

I think all schools should be engaging with pupils about these subjects way before sixth form.

It should all start being highlighted as soon as options for GCSEs are underway. Because it's at this point that doors begin to close.

If comps were working noble there wouldn't be the fight there is to get dc into the few remaining selectives.

Wordfactory, passing on the info is very different to prepping for Oxbridge that other schools do.

And if kids are only thinking about applications after seeing their AS results, which is reasonable, that gives them a few weeks to turn the whole thing around.

Married, if there are selectives, then the other schools aren't comps. Not true ones. You can't have a comp where the top 20% are sent elsewhere. And if the top 20% routinely go elsewhere, then of course the other schools aren't going to be geared up for Oxbridge. That's just obvious.

If schools can't tell whether a child is Oxbridge material before their AS results noble then frankly I think Gove might as well switch off the lights in most of them and wait to quietly shut the doors as the last pupil leaves.

wordfactory many schools don't even have sixth forms. Why would they have any expertise in university admissions procedures?

As an aside, my most recent crop of sixth formers were concerned about whether they could even afford to go to uni. A few, with good results who previously would have gone, decided it wasn't worth it and found jobs with training prospects. Who wants to be prepping kids for uni from a young age only for the government to turn around and slap a large price tag on it at the last minute? The mood for these kids is shifting.

Right from the start they are exclusive. UCAS deadline for applications is 15th Jan. Oxbridge, 15th October.

Ditto for medical schools and dentistry. This may be the "city where a majority of school pupils are from ethnic minority backgrounds" influence, but given the, ahem, popularity of applying for medicine even if you have no chance whatsoever of being interviewed in some communities, the de facto UCAS date in some schools here is already 15 October. The Oxbridge applicants ride on the back of the massive interest in medicine.

You can access all the information you like, but digesting it requires meaningful conversations with other interested parties.

TBH Oxford are fairly open about the fact that AS results don't interest them too much. For them it's all about the GCSEs.

Bristol and Warwick have both said the same.

Waiting til the AS results to engage about universities is just daft.

Pupils ught to start thinking about it at option time (option for GCSEs btw).

Then it ought to be regularly highlighted, until L6, when discussions really kick off. Students in L6 ought to have regular meetings about university entrance. Old students should come back to chat about their expereinces. Staff could chat about their own (especially the young 'uns with recent viewpoints). No one should be left in any doubt about the procedure and the deadlines!

many schools don't even have sixth forms. Why would they have any expertise in university admissions procedures?

If they don't have a sixth form, then they don't even have a Y12. The sixth form college can put the issue on the table 13 months before the UCAS deadline for Oxbridge admission.

noble it makes no difference if there isn't a sixth form.

A school should still be preparing its pupils for their future.

I've been to schools without sixth forms to talk about Oxbridge!

If schools can't tell whether a child is Oxbridge material

Go on, what is Oxbridge material? Because it isn't just good results, is it? There's always those kids with strings of A*s who were rejected. And the kids I teach in Y12 are more thinking about whether they want to study at uni, and if so, what, than they are thinking about where. They are only just getting to grips with their A-level subjects.

Friday, the sixth form thing was for people suggesting that teachers should know all this come GCSE options time, not about the application deadline.