GCSE options help!!!!!!!

[morehelpneeded123]

My DD is choosing her GCSE's. she is very acedemically able but really struggles with languages (but at her school its compulsory to do atleast 1 MFL)

she currently wants to do

English Lit
English Lang
Maths
Triple award science
Geography
Food
French or German (undecided on which one)
and then Either History or Drama

i want her to do history as we have been told by her teacher that she can easily get an A* but she wants to do drama more. history teachers face fell when she said she was only considering as he though it would be a definate.

What should i do?

(she will probably end up with a B or C in whichever language she takes)

True, and they recruit graduates anyway so looking at the GCSE choices is not going to be that important to them.

I suppose my point above is my sons seem glad the only "easier" GCSE they picked is music as their friends who thought PE and drama would be a piece of piss seem to have as much work to do and homeworks as those doing much harder subjects.

I strongly led mine to do history and geography which I did and all my siblings did. Their one sister who did not do both regrets not doing history as said it would have helped when she did law later apparently, presumably when they studied British legal history although she didn't listen to any of my advice at the time and concentrate on science, did science A levels and a BSc which is fine - I don't need them to do what I tell them at all.

I have a geography degree ..... its his little bit of rebellion methinks!

Drama if she loves it more. No brainer.

I agree with previous comments that she should do the drama if she wants. School isn't all about bloody grades at the end of the day. And the idea of an after-school drama group sounds good in theory, but you don't know it will work. Things like that are very dependent on feel and the people involved. She may want to continue pursuing drama with her friends at school in a way that she wouldn't feel comfortable with going and joining a bunch of strangers.

Re history, we had a similar problem with there not being enough option slots for my DS to take it (it ended up as his reserve). At first I was horrified as I've always viewed history as the single most important humanity subject (after English of course), and the underpinning of just about everything else. But then I thought about it and realised that (a) the school history syllabus is incredibly narrow anyway, focusing on a few very limited periods and events, and (b) most of what I know of history I learnt after school, and there's nothing to stop DS from continuing to read books and talk about them. I think sometimes we need to be reminded that doing a GCSE in a subject at school is not the be all and end all of how that subject can contribute to one's life.

Not wholly convinced by food tech though, or how relevant it will actually be to becoming a chef, if she wants to. I'd probably go history and drama and drop food tech, given the choice.

I went to a Welsh comp with a dreadful french department. MFL wasn't compulsory, but the very large number of us who refused to do Welsh (this is long before the Welsh Nats were allowed to ruin Wales) or French played havoc with the time table.

DD cheats, she's dyslexic no one in their right mind suggests she does MFL

History at DDs school is WW2 for the 3rd time

Whether music is 'easier' or not depends on the child - my DD's perception of her friends who do it is that it's the hardest subject because they are forever having to do performance pieces ... and even if they don't have 'homework' they have to practice and rehearse those pieces.

I suppose as mine already learn instruments there is no extra practice for music GCSE. They think it's very easy and that will get A* although I doubt such confidence is a good idea.

Dcs both loved history gcse. They did Wjec and covered 1920s USA, russia and WW2

handed in the options today. doing:

English lit
English Lang
Maths
Separate science (3)
Geography
Food
History
and French (after some tears)

Is she going to keep up drama out of school?

she will continue to be in her school play and house drama doing technical work. that was part of the reason she was so adamant about doing drama, you can do the technical courses aswell. however we have managed to find somewhere that puts on productions termly and they would love to have her as a part of the crew.

That's good! Which Food is she doing - like I said upthread DS's school said that Catering was by far more useful than Food Tech which is a lot of work apparently.

DS is half way through Yr 10 now and doing

English Language
English Literature
Maths
Statistics
Biology
Chemistry
Physics
Graphics
Business Studies
History
Latin

He is glad that's all and that he didn't choose any more demanding Tech course or Art which is known to be very demanding.

If in doubt, I would suggest considering the strength of teaching for the "maybe" subjects. For example, my DD2 really wants to do performing arts. I know that she should be able to do very well at music and would really prefer that she chose that, but also know that there is a 50% chance that she would end up with a very weak teacher in that department, whereas in performing arts there would not be the same issue.