GCSE choices - don't know where to begin

[tatt]

we have to make choices soon. Our child is reasonably good at everything but not outstanding at anything. Likes art/ design & tech best and is currently keen on animation. Possibly looking to a career in something like graphic design or website design but we're concerned they may be very competitive ad not good choices fo someone who also wants a lot of money. Help - how do you decide?

Yes, it's a bit like some children don't realise that doing Law A level is held against you if you want to become a lawyer because it's not a normal difficult A level like English. Good schools tell you these things. Not so good schools might make you all rush off to do XYZ Studies because it means the children will all gets A*s and the school rises in the rankings. Knowledge is the main thing - know the consequences and then take the action. e g if you want to do medicine you're going to have to do science etc.

If your child is thinking of doing graphic / website design, then keep up the art as many unis want to see a potrfolio for entry to the degree course. However, I shouldn't worry too much about the other courses as there are not very many of the really academic unis that offer GD. (for example, the unis close to us Oxford, Oxford Brookes, and Reading - none of them offer it - the closest was Swindon College of art and design, which is an FE college, but has a good rep for its GD degree).

My hubby graduated last year, and the pay is awful. The highest earners in his class earn around 18K, but some earn as little as 12k - and that's almost one year after graduation! Website design does pay better though! It is also very competitive and many of his classmates still have not got GD jobs, but my hubby loves his job and is very happy, and I think that is worth its weight in gold!
hth

very interesting. I'll look at the Dida course. It isn't one of the choices available at this school though. There doesn't seem to be any chance of our child wanting to do science but single science and one language is compulsory. They can choose between history, geography, art, music, d&t, a second language, business studies. They are doing well enough to be expected to go to university and possibly a "good" university. We're going to have to have a hard talk to the art teacher as art may be one of their weaker subjescts.

Is business studies a good option or is that seen as a soft choice by universities?

We've told ds that we think business studies will be seen as a soft option. My background is in media, and I'm afraid media studies are not well-regarded generally - again, they're seen as a soft option, not really teaching anything that useful about journalism. Much better to get real work experience on a newspaper; and I imagine the same would be true of business studies.

Having said that, ds' school excels at teaching media studies, so we're still keeping that window open. We feel he should also follow the good teaching, IYSWIM.

Very few good schools offer GCSEs with the word studies in them which kind of tells its own story really.

Ds' school is a very good school. League tables and Ofsted confirmed.

May be I was generalising too much about the studies thing but a lot of employers are old fashioned and they like to see on the CV GCSE english, maths, French, history not 8 GCSEs in studies things.

I don't think you have to choose that many (4 at dd's school) as the main ones are compulsory. Dd1 is in year 10 and the compulsory ones for her are English, Maths, Science and IT.

She chose History, Latin and PE. Unfortunately the way the choices were categorised meant she couldn't do Geography or Cookery (her passion) and one category had nothing she fancied (Business Studies, R.E., Music, Spanish). She chose Spanish in the end.

I would go for the ones that he has an interest in or one that you know he would like to do at A level. I remember feeling totally unprepared myself.

There's a list here of A level subjects that Cambridge consider "less effective preparation" for their courses. So if my child was likely to want to go to one of the better universities I would steer them away from those A levels. But the vast majority of people aren't going to go to Cambridge, so I can't see that it matters if they do business studies etc. Better to do well in a less prestigious exam than be bored rigid studying a traditional subject.

Thanks CocoLoco, food for thought...
It is depressing to see IT there, not that I argue with their list much.
I would never has guessed there even was a "Information Technology in a Global Society" course.
FX:Shudder.
Some subjects are inherently not academic, as in "book learning", like dance, but IT should be a proper grown up hard subject. Instead the decision was made to make it "inclusive", ie one anyone can do.
You wouldn't exepct to pick up an A level Physics or Chemistry textbook and make any sense of it if you haven't done that subject.
But the IT books are pitched somewhere below BBC science programmes, and thus can be directly read by anyone.
But of coursae IT isn't as important in today's job market...

We have 6 and 7 year olds at Ryde Teaching services near here picking up IT GCSE!

It's lack of information which is sad, the child who wants to get a graduate job at a big company and go into business and his school said do Business studies etc and then he finds it hard to get a place at a good univesrity with that A level from which those companies recruit. Good schools don't let you make those mistakes.

Agree about the information gap, and I have to point the finger at teachers to a large extent. They tell kids that certain subjects are "useful", when they clearly are not.

An average 14 yo doesn't know that "business studies" is not the first step to being Richard Branson, or even becoming one of his senior henchmen. The IT syllabus has nothing to do with
bending the little silicon bastards to your will, and when was the last time you saw a job advert asking for French ?

I've often thought that as a function of the time I spent on it drama did me far more good than "academic" subjects like german, biology and history put together. The ability to talk confidently adds a good % to lifetime earnings regardless of your career path.

I would encourage your child to do:
English (possibly 2 GCSEs if school does that)
Maths
Double Science
French or other modern language
Geography and or History
Art
Design Tech
The last one (or two) can be child's choice and will be dependent on what is available or fits in with the timetable. Business Studies/Media Studies/IT are considered as soft options and will not be as valuable as the courses above.
I think I'm only confirming what virtually everyone else has written!

I saw a mock gsce IT paper recently and I think my child could probably pass it now so I understand why it isn't valued very highly. Even if they get good grades I don't think Cambridge offers the type of course they are likely to want to do so it looks like we'll be looking at other universities.

Oh and we means the family, child has the major say in this but we need to help them understand the implications of different decisions.

DC, a lot to be said for the elocution lessons my mother paid for us then... and the speech and drama exams. I agree. The best things my daughters have as students seems to be their supreme self confidence in all situations. I don't just give their schools credit for it. It's within them. My son doesn't have it. But at the end of the day it will be that not their degrees which get them and keep them good jobs. Whether that makes them happier is a different question.

I wonder why some children don't know things though? When I was at school about 14 or 15 and no internet I spent a lot of time looking into university courses, requirements for courses etc. I wanted and did the research. the school wasn't doing it for me. Something must have given me the desire to do that. So easy for children now. My twins got their new lap top today. They are 8 and then can find out anything they like in the world in a second virtually on line. I suppose it's influence. If the school is trying to get X number of pupils on to the PE GCSE course then the pupils respond to the lobbying.

Xenia, yes, the number of times I've sat in a room full of people whingeing about not having a chance to apply to Oxbridge because their school didn't tell them about it. I'm forever telling my children that they need to take responsibility for their own actions, do their own research and take their own consequences... And remember that anyone giving them advice may have an axe to grind...

Very useful link, CocoLoco - thanks! (Not that I'm too fussed whether my children go to Cambridge, please note!)

Unfortunately, a lot of children and parents still have some trust in the schools to have advise them in areas they are unfamiliar with. Schools are generally expected to be up to date with the multitude of changes that go on in education and be able to pass on that information to affected parties. So, I can understand the 'whingeing' of some who have found out that their trust was misplaced.

Point taken, juuule. Maybe I'm just an old cynic who can't understand why anyone would ever trust anyone else... but if you wanted to do something badly enough, surely you'd look into it for yourself?

(My school told me I didn't have a hope btw - I ignored them )

How many 13/14 year olds know at the point of options what they want to do badly enough to ignore the advisors who over the years they have been told to accept the word of unquestioningly? And if they have said that they know what they want to do and are then given bad advice, why should they doubt it? What is the point of careers lessons(or whatever they are called) if you can't trust the advice and in reality have to do all the research yourself?

I agree that any advice given should be of good quality. But I'd never advise my own children to take anyone's advice (no, not even mine) unquestioningly, and am amazed anyone else might.

Turning to your last sentence, I think a "good" careers lesson would involve advising the pupils on how to consider their futures for themselves (encourage them to be honest about themselves, and to think about what people in Job X really do all day and whether they'd like doing that, etc), and how to go about researching their ideas.

In my case Xenia, I wanted a very differnt life to the one that was there by default. I latched on to computers as a way out.
I recall quite distinctly a bunch of teachers quite smugly telling us at a "careers" thing that they knew how to get good jobs, but that wasn't what they were about.
In retrospect I think they were bullshitting, but it betrayed an attitude.
I don't think thgere is any part of the curriculum that is done worse than careers, indeed even as kids in a sink school we could feel that what what we were getting was crap.

I don't think it has improved all that much, indeed if anything it has got worse. The increasing power of the arty subset of education has meant that schools don't anymore build links to local firms. At least when working class kids like me got labled as factory fodder, we at least got an intro to the factory.
"Work experience" is a sham. For various reasons, I've often had these bewildered kids around my desk over the years. Rarely do they have the skills to actually do anything and of course modern standards of health and safety stop them from doing many manual things anyway.
Though I did hire one once, good job, far above his reasonable expectations. However, the process by which he got it, at one point hasd the 17yo literally shaking with fear and unable to speak.

I keep saying this, but nowadays teachers are not allowed to give career advice as such (or at least, in the 6 schools I have worked in over the past 10 years, that has been the case!) Careers advice is now given by connexions advisors. They are not teachers but are employed independently of schools and work in schools to give advice.

As for Tatt's child, given that he is wanting to do graphic design or somethign similar, I shouldn't worry about his chances of getting into Cambridge as they don't do vocational degrees like Graphic design.

If you were otherwise indifferent between subjects, it can be worth looking at the success rate of the school in particular subjects, e.g. Design Technology 43% A*/A, Business Studies 57%, ICT 73%. Which would you choose? (This is in a school where the results for Chemistry is 95%, Biology 87%, Maths 88%, English 65%, Physics 98%)

hmmmm that's a good point Clerk. If dd really cannot decide on the 4th option, that might be the way to go.