GCSE options hell

[Unusualusernames]

Please don't flame me but AIBU to let my 13 year old daughter choose her own options even though they might limit her.

She's academic but also really good at PE. She says she wants to chose PE, media studies, geography and french.

My mum's a retired careers adviser and says media studies is useless but I know my daughter would find it really fun.

At 14 my mum basically imposed her choices on me and I ended up choosing subjects I wasn't necessarily great at.

75% of me thinks it's better to let her just do whatever she wants, even if PE and media studies aren't highly regarded. Then 25% of me feels bad for not being one of these tiger mums who ensures her child is a success academically. I'd feel bad if it meant it really limited her university choices (if she wants to go to uni , I wouldn't force her)

Please help

Having had two go through GCSEs I don't think any of them are 'fun'. I think History can be just as much 'fun' as Drama tbh, and Drama can be as dull and stressful as History. I think if you want 'fun' then keep up with your hobbies out of school. That's what I am advising dd3 anyway. I guess 'fun' happens if you really enjoy the subject.

They sound like a good balance to the drudgery of the more mainstream subjects! PE is valuable - they do anatomy and physiology in much more detail than biology gcse as well as looking at sociological aspects of sport and obviously getting to do some more exercise in the practical sessions. How can that not be a good idea?! And media studies may be written off as a mickey mouse a level, but alongside a crop of solid gcses to me it shows balance and an exposure to jtdeas whcih are a little bit outside the box. We have a huge creative industry and understanding even a little bit what power the media holds in our society has got to be useful education. My view is go for it! I have three bright kids and their options included textile art, computer science, p.e and sociology. As long as they ha e the core subjects at gcse most a level options remain open. You no longer have to do what your mum tells you, so free your daughter to follow her interests xx.

Medical schools tend not to specify GCSEs (some may) but they definitely do select using them. For most careers choice GCSE options make no difference- for some they do and medicine is the most extreme case.

Do you have any evidence for this?

Oxford are pretty clear about their shortlisting process and it does not depend on GCSE subjects: www.medsci.ox.ac.uk/study/medicine/pre-clinical/statistics and I am 99% sure that the final ranking algorithm doesn't either. Medicine is very strict and formulaic about its process.

Of course I can't speak for all universities.

I do Oxford admissions for another subject, one which follows a less strict formula (and puts a lot of weight on entrance tests) GCSE subjects really only make a difference to the extent that, if someone has an odd low grade at GCSE it will probably be discounted if it is in a less academic subject, but could matter if it is eg Maths (especially if no A-level in the subject). Otherwise I couldn't care a hoot what subjects the GCSEs are in beyond the basics. So in that sense it may actually be in your favour to take some GCSEs where the grades won't matter so much!

I speak to other College tutors in other subjects about these things quite a lot. I'm pretty confident that what I say is generally true.

Katy123 my DD did PE GCSE along with other academic students at her school. I remember helping her revise for the written exam and it was difficult- and required a very high mark in the theory exam to get a decent grade overall. I understand the new curriculum is even more challenging.

She is certainly not "thick". She studied a design/ engineering based subject, graduated from a top uni with a first class honours bagged a brilliant job and is now smashing her masters degree with distinction marks across the board.

Quite frankly making uninformed comments about something you clearly know very little about is what comes across as rather " thick" ( your choice of word not mine)

Op- your DD will be doing all the academic core subjects of Maths, English and sciences. If she is also taking a language and a humanity ( geography) then she will be doing all the e-bacc stuff. I see no problem with taking her other two choices.

Re medical schools' GCSE requirements, they stipulate grade requirements but I'm not aware of any specifying the full set of subjects. So they might say you need a certain number at grade 7 or higher, or might calculate a score from the grades for the best seven GCSEs, but they won't list all the subjects that have to be included. Some will specify a minimum grade in particular subjects - maths and English language, and possibly sciences - but won't say you have to have done history and geography rather than media and PE. PE is a very useful subject for prospective medics to study; even more so for physiotherapists.

The exception used to be RE. Until a few years ago all students in maintained schools had to do at least a short-course GCSE in RE. Because this was only equivalent to half a GCSE it generally wasn't included in calculations. A full GCSE in RE would be treated just the same as any other, of course.

your DD will be doing all the academic core subjects of Maths, English and sciences. If she is also taking a language and a humanity (geography) then she will be doing all the e-bacc stuff. I see no problem with taking her other two choices.

I'm not aware of anyone in universities paying the slightest attention to the "e-bacc". It only exists as a misleading measure of school performance. It has nothing to do with students' academic abilities.

And geography isn't really a humanity, whatever Michael Gove might think. www.ocr.org.uk/qualifications/gcse/geography-a-geographical-themes-j383-from-2016/specification-at-a-glance/

My mum's a retired careers adviser and says media studies is useless but I know my daughter would find it really fun.

@Unusualusernames
Tell your mum that the world has moved on since her career advising days and in this current climate of fake news and big data, media studies is about to come into its own.

I had no idea that some parents pick their kid's GCSE subjects, that's awful.

Struggling We didn't pick for our DDs, but we did steer.

However we did it based on information not outdated perception. Both my DDs were 'young for their age' and had limited ability to really assess their own skills.

We steered DD1, confident verbally, into doing a 2nd MFL rather than food tech (dyspraxia, burned herself regularly, and restricted on what food she liked).
Equally we steered DD2 towards RE as she was doing well, and the vagaries of timetabling mean she would get more lessons in it than other options which suits her processing issues. We and Dance teacher steered her strongly away from Dance as she has balance problems so it really wouldn't have worked for her.

Posted too soon. We wouldn't steer away from PE or Media on the basis of no actual knowledge of the content of the course.

Media studies is percieved as a soft option but who cares, it's GCSEs. She's already doing a bunch of traditional academic stuff including the foreign language which is possibly the hardest of the lot. (It was for me).

With the massive emphasis on health and fitness nowadays I'm not going to argue against PE either.

Dropping the history GCSE may rule it out as an A Level option, but that in turn has relatively little impact on university choices.

Leave her to choose herself.

I feel your pain . Maybe try and get her to actually check the whole course content as it may not be as fun as she thinks .
That said depending on how many other subjects she is doing it may not matter so much as I think they now look at the 8 best ? In fact some schools only sit 8 rather than the 9-11 that seems more common .

Media is great for analysis so it also helps with English GCSE too. If that’s what your child wants to do then let her. Why make her spend years studying something she’s not interested in because her grandmother says she shouldn’t. She has to enjoy it if you want her to put the effort in. Granny may have been a careers advisor but you say she’s retired so perhaps she is a little out of touch and besides it’s a GCSE not a degree.

@katy1213 I’m sorry but you don’t sounds very pleasant.

OP - please let your daughter choose, give advice by all means but she will be working hard enough and she must enjoy it. My best grades at school were in the subjects I loved.

If she wants to do journalism or marketing then media studies is a fine subject. Worth also noting that demand for good marketers is predicted to continue to grow whilst jobs in other fields will decline as a result on automation.

PE is pretty scientific so not useless at all.

OP I had a similar dilemma, we compromised, I’m glad I’ve let DD do two creative subjects she really loves, she’s still going to have 8 ‘academic’ GCSEs.

PE is excellent. There is a lot of anatomy !

So much biology in the PE syllabus now, it’s something like 70% exam!
My goodness, all these subject snobs need to chill out!
Post 18, GCSE’s are hardly even glanced at.

She has a while lifetime of forced drudgery ahead of her, let her choose subjects she enjoys, is good at and will get out of bed each morning and look forward to learning for learnings sake.

I would let her choose. They don’t seem like bad options to me. If she loves the subjects she’s likely to get better grades in the ones she has an interest in rather than those she thinks she ought to take

Yes, no one at degree really cares what GCSEs you did however you need to look at the sixth form prospectus of your school. GCSE choices will limit what you can do at A-Level.

Sounds like a fair range of choices to me. I encouraged mine, both academic, to do one “fun” subject - one did Art, one did Music. PE is not just an easy option & Media quite current. Sounds like a good set of choices to me.

Let her do what she wants my Mum and aunt heavily influenced my choices telling me I needed to do certain things if I wanted to get anywhere and I've regretted it ever since one subject I dropped and the other I hated so much I did the minimum.

There are no easy GCSEs, especially since the update to specs - any GCSE that is now available are tough (as is any vocational as they have had to really toughen up to be cleared for state school study).

As a 6th form tutor I have never seen a student not given an offer due to GCSE subject choices- offers are subject to L3 subjects/predicted grades.

A large number of L3 subjects do not require a GCSE in that subject if the student has sufficient grades in core subjects.

One of my A level Media Studies students got a place at Cambridge yesterday partly due to one of her articles on the media I teach Media and English and to be honest Media Studies is more relevant in the world today than a lot of subjects. New career programmes place marketing , digital convergence etc as growth industries. So please ditch the idea that it's just a fun, easy subject. 23 years of teaching and I would choose Media over English any day.