Home schooling GCSE Geography

[jt9998]

Good evening - I was wondering whether anyone had any experience of entering their child for a GCSE as an external candidate? My child has been studying independently and I am now looking to enter them for the exam - I was wondering whether anyone had any advice ? Many thanks

OP just checking as it hasn't been mentioned - has he done field work? It used to be required (although to be fair I've been a SAHM since the pandemic so don't know if the exam boards have nixed it for the moment!) They also used to have material for the third paper that was released shortly before the exam so you'd need whatever centre you get him entered with to provide anything like that should it be necessary still.

Could you suggest to DS's school that he sit a mock paper with them? If he gets decent results on it then he's a safer bet for them to enter and shouldn't impact their results negatively? And if he doesn't do well personally I'd encourage him to focus on his other subjects in the last few months before exams instead.

You can’t be an internal candidate and an external candidate at the same school for a subject the school offers. It would look like they were trying to fix their statistics by not including certain pupils. You will need to find a different centre.

I was going to ask about the fieldwork? DS did Geography last year and that bit was obviously dropped but not sure whether it had been brought back in

I did wonder whether it was a rule to stop schools entering students they expected to under perform as external candidates- so they would not show up on their stats?
Our school definitely did this! But I'm not sure if the children in question had to be entered as an external candidate for all of their exams, or just the subjects they were predicted bad grades in. (It was a long time ago, so no help to you.)

@KatieKat88

OP just checking as it hasn't been mentioned - has he done field work? It used to be required (although to be fair I've been a SAHM since the pandemic so don't know if the exam boards have nixed it for the moment!) They also used to have material for the third paper that was released shortly before the exam so you'd need whatever centre you get him entered with to provide anything like that should it be necessary still.

Could you suggest to DS's school that he sit a mock paper with them? If he gets decent results on it then he's a safer bet for them to enter and shouldn't impact their results negatively? And if he doesn't do well personally I'd encourage him to focus on his other subjects in the last few months before exams instead.

No - it’s not. A requirement this year due to covid