Doin GCSEs over three years (Y9, 10 and 11)

[JenaiMarrHePlaysGuitar]

I've been looking at a secondary school where pupils - if they're sufficiently able - do their GCSEs over three years - although the courses themselves are all one year long.

So, in Y9 they might do RE, History and Geography. Y10 IT, Maths, Double Science, French, English Language, PE, Y11 English Lit, Chemistry, Biology, Physics, German (obv. the make up of these differs).

If they don't do as well as they might have done then they have the opportunity to retake.

Looking years ahead, how would university admissions tutors look at this? Say a DC wanted to go somewhere prestigious and their GCSEs weren't quite as good as they ought to be - would they cut them some slack for having sat them at 14 as opposed to 16?

If that child had retaken that GCSE at 15, would the fact that they didn't get an A first time round reflect badly on them?

Disclaimer: Bright as ds is, I don't actually think he'd be fast tracked like this. But I'm interested to know. Just in case he suddenly gets all academic on us

Jenai, if the school doesnt have a sixth form then at least where we are they just stop the subject, they dont carry on to A level early.

When I raised this to our school's head of maths (DD wants to do A level maths) he looked slightly nonplussed then said that those students who had finshed GCSE maths could then look to do GCSE statistics. So far as I could tell they wouldnt be taught it just given the books and left to get on with it.

The gap opens up between GCSE and A level.

The gap does open up. My son will have to do iGSCE instead of GCSE because of this. The GCSE is considered too basic for boys wanting to do A level, which he doesn't.