To think a school can’t just cancel a GCSE/A-Level course halfway through?

[ChocBanana]

This is on behalf of a friend who’s not on MN.
Her children have gone back to school today, one into Y11 and one into Y13. Both were taking the same subject, one at GCSE and one at A-Level.
They have been sent a letter today saying the school has dropped the subject with immediate effect and they won’t be able to take it this year.
They have said they will meet with each student “over the coming weeks” to discuss how to move forward. There was absolutely no prior notice and the teacher is still employed at the school. He only found out at the inset day on Monday.
I can’t find anything online to this effect to confirm or deny, but surely there is some kind of legal requirement to finish what they have started? I can almost understand not starting anyone new (my son was down to do the subject but is happy with the alternative because they have moved the timetable around so he can now take something he had to drop before).
But my friend is distraught and her 17 year old is frantically looking at his uni options because he doesn’t know if he will get in without this course.

Does anyone know whether this is legal/illegal and what law it come under? I’m going to help my friend to draft a response (English isn’t her first language).

Any ideas or advice?

A local private school has a scheme where it enters students for exams in their native language exams if their own state school doesn’t offer it as a subject. I think they do assess the kids to ensure they’re on track and do some Saturday teaching to keep them on track (as part of their charitable status I think)…so benefits everyone

They have said they will meet with each student “over the coming weeks” to discuss how to move forward

I think you do need to listen to what their suggestions are before you do anything, though I agree with @ZadocPDederick : the students and parents need answers this week not “in the coming weeks”.

Mandarin is notoriously hard - how did the cohort perform this year? I wonder if they’re not achieving good enough grades.

I'd be shocked if this was illegal/against any law, as there is no legal requirement for children to sit exams in the UK.

You should look at using a private tutor and/or an online or college course to finish the rest of the syllabus. Then they can sit the exams as an external candidate at an exam centre, this will cost anything between around £150-£250 per paper.

I've heard of schools pulling this crap before.

Pretty sure it’s not illegal. Definitely the school should be giving an explanation as to their reasoning and agree this is a crisis and they need to be meeting now to decide what to do next. I’d be furious if this was my child. Fair enough to not start any new students but to abandon ship halfway through is awful.

I’d be really surprised if this is just about the cost. The bad PR of pulling a subject halfway through is something most schools would avoid if at all possible. That’s expensive in itself.

Withdrawing a course for those about to start, yes, but not pulling it for kids halfway through. I think there has to be something else going on. I think either the summer results were awful or the school knows something you don’t about staffing this year. Perhaps the Mandarin teacher is seriously unwell and going to miss a lot of school, maybe they will be going on maternity or perhaps they have already resigned effective from Christmas and the school don’t think they can replace them.

My guess is that the the students weren't predicted to get high grades in the final exams. Unless the student is speaking Mandarin at home I imagine they won't be getting the highest grade at school. If they are speaking Mandarin at home hire a tutor so they are exam ready and expect the school to enter them into the exam.

Having said that, I would be furious if it were my Alevel child as they may well need to spend another year at at school to gain three Alevels.

@Takoneko

I think you’d be surprised at how scrapped for cash schools are.

I can’t imagine more than 1 or 2 students are studying Mandarin at the OP’s children’s school. Paying a FTE teacher salary for a teacher to teach that many students, when another FTE teacher potentially teaches 100x that many in the same contact hours, is completely unaffordable for a lot of schools and can’t be justified when it means that opportunities for all children are taken away to provide for a tiny few.

This is why most schools have a minimum number of students required for a course to run. This is particularly true for subjects that require a lot of equipment, like Music or Art - if you only have 3 children wanting to study an A Level that costs effectively £50k to run once you factor in the teacher salary and the equipment required to teach it, it’s not justifiable unless you’re a private school and parents are paying you to deliver this kind of one to one curriculum.

I don’t think it’s anything to do with results or the teacher and everything to do with money. If the teacher were unwell a new one would be found. Every subject has bad results from time to time - it doesn’t mean you pull the subject entirely - it means you learn from it and train the teachers so they do better next year. Pulling a subject mid course is because they can’t afford it. I’ve been a teacher and SLT member for a long time and I know how schools work!

There is probably nothing to be done now for the OP other than finding a tutor and arranging with the school to still let them sit the exams. Their school will be an exam centre so the school can enter them for the exam still, they’ll just have to pay for it as if they were an external candidate, as it’s not a subject offered by the school
any longer.

If going into year 11 and 13 it's likely too late to start a new gcse or A level to be taken in May/June next year tbh.

The teacher who has had his hours cut may well be glad to tutor him privately but it would obviously incur quite some costs. Perhaps he could share a lesson with any other pupils who want to continue.

I can’t imagine more than 1 or 2 students are studying Mandarin at the OP’s children’s school.

Not very likely if he was teaching an A level and GCSE. Also depends on the number of Chinese heritage kids at the school - if it’s in London there could be a good number.

It sounds like the mock results were terrible and the school is worried about its overall grades. To be honest, the only kids who got good mfl grades at my DD's school were either already bilingual (eg due to a parent or grandparent being from that country) or had extensive tutoring which we didn't know at the time but came out later eg my DD's friend who got a* at German told her he reckons his parents spent over £5k on his tutor where as my dd got a d on no tutoring... the school have since dropped all languages bar French and given the option of extra tutoring at a fee

I’d be really surprised if this is just about the cost. The bad PR of pulling a subject halfway through is something most schools would avoid if at all possible. That’s expensive in itself

I'm assuming it's a state school if they went back today. PR isn't really an issue in most schools as there is an overall shortage of places in schools.

You have no grasp on the situation that schools are currently in if you think they wouldn't make a decision on financial reasons.

If there are hardly any children in this class or the results are untenable then it's likely that the wider parent group would see it as a good decision.

Disastrous, but not unusual, and it will be down to staff shortages. That teacher still being in the school is irrelevant, if they are needed to cover other lessons in other places.

No it isn't illegal, it cant be. If a school can't deliver a subject, they can't deliver it, how would making it illegal change that?

edit for typo

The difference is that in the UK, GCSEs and A levels are both 2 year courses. The school has stopped the course halfway through. They may not be able to transfer, as different schools and colleges will cover the different aspects of the course at different times. Particularly for the A level student, this could mean that they will not have the marks they need to go to university. It’s a much bigger deal than having to change school at the start of the course (which UK students often do for the 6th form, anyway).

With the A level how doe sit work - I thought you needed to be doing 3 A levels (or equivalent of) to get the funding? So they need to put something else in place. If they want to do Chinese at university there are options for people who don't have A level.

More difficult with the GCSE, but there may be scope to do a GCSE in a year (I did Italian in a year, although it was when GCSEs were easier than they are now).

My son's school offered a couple of extra subjects for GCSE after school. I wonder if the teacher would be willing to teach out of hours (even if you had to pay for it), you shouldn't have to, but it would be a solution).

how many were in the classes? Were they too small to maintain?

"own language" GCSEs and A levels are often not counted in applications for sixthform and uni, so may well not make any difference

I’m also an SLT member (Including Head of Sixth Form) in a school that has been in deficit for a number of years. I know how cash strapped schools are and everything that you say absolutely applies when deciding to run a course but in my school, however woeful the finances, we would not withdraw a course mid way through on those grounds. Any SLT I’ve ever worked with would put our commitment to students who are already halfway through a course ahead of balancing the budget. Regardless of the legalities we would consider ourselves to have an obligation to those students. If we withdrew a course mid way through it would be because we felt it was in the students best interests and never for budget reasons. Maybe I’m naive and it’s not that way everywhere but I wouldn’t work with a Headteacher who pulled a course mid way through because of money. It’s immoral to make kids pay the price for the school’s poor financial planning. If there were only 3 kids on the course then it should not have run in year 10/12, it’s ridiculous for the school to let it run for a year before deciding it’s too expensive.

@Takoneko

I think you would pull a course if it were a case of pulling a course very few students are studying or losing another key area of school life that is accessed by a higher number of students.

You don’t know the circumstances this headteacher has found themselves in. A huge unexpected expense may have occurred between last year and this year that has tipped the scales in some way. In an ideal world, of course you wouldn’t pull a subject half way through an exam course, but this school has obviously had no choice. Results or teacher absence would never justifiably lead to an exam course being cancelled half way through - new teachers can always be found - so it has to be a desperate financial issue that has caused this. In this current financial climate, with a cost of living increase to pay for staff without enough government money to pay for it from September, I think a lot of schools are going to be in dire financial straits this year. Only cutting one niche subject is a good outcome in my view - in some schools it will be redundancies of experienced core subject teachers to replace with cheaper NQTs and cutting access to SEN provision, sport and arts clubs and extracurricular opportunities. I think more people need to understand just how much of a crisis school finding is currently in. I have many teacher friends reporting redundancies and cutting of SEN provision etc this year in their schools. Parents need to wake up and realise this is happening so they start supporting teacher strikes and putting pressure on their MPs. At the moment it seems to be totally sailing under the radar.

@EnidSpyton You cannot make an experienced teacher redundant and replace them with an ECT… it’s illegal and schools will not be doing that. You can make staff redundant and make classes larger, or reduce curriculum time, or phase subjects out but you cannot make a member of staff redundant and then replace them with anyone, cheaper of not.

We obviously have different priorities, but I’d far rather cut extracurricular opportunities, sports and arts clubs than cancel an A Level subject for kids who have already put in a year of work towards it. That niche subject can be cancelled next year and you can cut the year 10 and 12 class immediately. If you have to cut some extra curricular for a year and then bring them back a year later when those kids have finished their exams then so be it.

If we offered something like Mandarin because we had a Mandarin speaking teacher who said they could teach it (even though they weren’t an MFL specialist) and then it was a total disaster, they didn’t understand the syllabus and the kids had all failed when the first set of results came in, I’d reluctantly pull the plug on that to save the kids the stress and anxiety and figure out what else we could do for them instead.

This is poor though. Doesn't seem right that school can leave a child with only 2 A'level's, so possibly no Uni place. I'd look at getting a tutor asap and sitting it independently, like pp suggested writing to school to ask them to cover cost.

I agree if this is the case though it's more likely that it's a 4th A level as this is often the case with A levels like Mandarin and Russian that students sit because they are already proficient due to speaking it at home.

The reason for dropping the course could be one of many. It is extremely unusual for me course to be dropped half way through, so the head must have very good reason.

For the gcse student, while not brilliant, it's not the end of the world if they don't have a gcse in Mandarin.

What is the A-level student wanting to do at uni? You mention that they absolutely need the A-level Mandarin?

I would suggest your friend make an appointment with the head as soon as possible to discuss the options. Waiting a few weeks isn't good enough, on the school's part.

One possibility is self study, hopefully combined with some tutoring and just sitting the exam at school.

Check other schools/colleges in the area to see if they offer the A-level? If so, it may be possible to attend for that subject and do the exam there? Or their teacher may offer private tuition and they can sit the exam in their own school.

If you know which uni course, people may be able to advise on that a bit more.

Of course it’s illegal. But there are loopholes. It happens all the time. You make the experienced teacher redundant and then you rehire an ECT on a slightly different contract. This is rife in academy chains. They find ways around it. I’m surprised someone with your experience doesn’t know about this happening.

So you’d pull the plug on a course half way through because of a shit teacher? I hardly think so. Surely you’d just find another one? There are plenty of Mandarin teachers about. I personally know four as I used to work in a Mandarin-teaching school. Jobs are thin on the ground and they’d be inundated with applicants. If the only issue were poor teaching, cancelling the course would not be on the table.

Mandarin is rarely taught in state schools and when it is, it’s usually to native speakers for whom it’s an additional ‘bonus’ GCSE or A Level to boost overall point scores. Universities frown on native speaker qualifications anyway as they know they’re not representative of the same amount of work as someone learning ab initio, so it’s not the end of the world for a student for a course of this type being pulled to save money. They’ll still have enough qualifications to go to uni.

I think we have very different priorities. I’d far rather 3 kids miss out on an optional additional native speaker qualification than 50 kids miss out on the chance to put on a school play, or 100 kids miss out on the chance to play in a football league. For a lot of kids in deprived areas, school is the only place where they can do any kind of extracurricular activity. Taking that away from them would be hugely detrimental - and I could never see it as being justified to put the needs of so few students over the needs of many more.

The best course of action here is the parent pursuing a private tutor and asking the school to still enter them for the exam. It’s clear that this course is not financially viable for the school and they aren’t able to provide the teaching, so regardless of the rights and wrongs of the school’s actions, private tutoring is going to be the only way for the kids to finish the course. The school probably shouldn’t have offered it in the first place with such low numbers, but perhaps there was a hope it would attract more students who haven’t materialised.