GCSE Option that limit potential attainment

[FiddleOnTheRoof]

Hi
Really want to get my head around maths, English, and science gcse options. DC1 is approaching this and I know this will be discussed next term in school.

Maths
I am aware there are two levels foundation and higher (no intermediate) is it correct that the foundation will only get you a C/5 at best? Who decides which you can sit? Would be very unhappy if school chose DC1 had to sit this paper limiting his options to achieve a better grade.

English
Is this also split into different papers or do all children sit the same paper and all grades are available to all?

Science
I really have no understanding about double or triple science. Where has the individual subjects disappeared to (biology, chemistry and physics). What are the dis/advantages of double or triple science? Are there also papers/levels which limit ultimate end achievement here also?

Advice greatly appreciated from experienced parents. I could obviously wait until the school go through it all, but rather properly understand it all so that we can have longer to think about it all and make the right choices.

Rockin I was told there was no cap on the mark they can get in the foundation& double science exams

This is a confusing statement.

Foundation tiers papers cap you to a 5 (or 5-5 for combined science).
Double/Combined/Dual science at higher tier has no cap and you can therefore get a 9-9.

To qualify for higher courses it's not just top marks in subjects, but high attitude to learning & attendance scores too.
Different schools select who can do triple science using different methods. Many schools will not take attendance / attitude into account.

Many schools will not take attendance / attitude into account

I'm pleased to hear that as I did think the whole thing was very unfair & resented having to argue her case against it, even though tge school backed down easily.

I was told that, so not ideal, but she had been very ill & we weren't even sure she'd sit GCSEs at all, let alone catch up so well, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over it, seeing that it's done now & she has a complete change of heart as to what A levels she wants to take, so as long as she gets a decent pass, which she should they aren't as important to her anymore

Apologies for the confusion. I'm dealing Migraine

Just finished my exams (going into year 12) so hopefully I can help...

Eng Lit and Lang are untiered, and a separate English Speaking component (where you speak to your class and answer a couple questions) yields a pass, merit, distinction grade. This contributes nothing to the English Language grade.

Math Foundation tier has a lot less content and requires ~55% for a pass (4) and ~70% for a good pass (5), which is the capped grade. Math Higher tier allows grades 3-9 but has a lot more and a lot more harder content, and about 20% for a pass (4). Higher Maths is aimed at people comfortably in ~6+ attainment (not super strict) and my school was very liberal about forcing students to do a tier, and they took into account what the student wanted as well as parents (this took a big role in deciding science tiers too).

Combined Science: Trilogy (formerly Double Science) studies all three subjects and results in 6 exams, 1h15min each. Foundation has less content and easier content, requiring ~50% for a pass (4) and ~60% for a good pass (5), once again capping the grade at 5. Higher is once again 3-9, with more content and harder content, with ~25% for a pass (4) and ~35% for a good pass (5). In terms of final grades, you receive a weird hyphenated grade such as 6-5, 8-8, or 4-3 (with the higher one first).

Separate Sciences (formerly Triple Science) have a separate grade for Chemistry, Biology, and Physics. In terms of difficulty compared to Combined Science there isn't too much difference, literally just that there is more content in Separate (so will come with more lessons of science a week--I had 8). Separate is also split into Higher and Lower, with Higher allowing 3-9 (~25% for 4 and ~35% for 5) and Foundation allowing 1-5 (~55% for 4 and ~65% for 5).

If you're going Further Education route, then A Level Math generally requires ~6 in Maths, Physics requires ~6/7 in Maths, and all sciences generally require ~6/7 or ~6-6 in Combined Science or the corresponding Separate Science.

Sorry I don't know much about requirements for English courses but i hope I helped a little as I saw some outdated information about the new GCSEs (I swear I could take an exam on how the new GCSEs work at this point), so any questions please ask.

Sorry, I meant English Lit. It should have said English was not tiered.
Would of been happier if they were.
My DC has dyslexia so her English Lit poetry exam was 3hrs 08 minutes. Having to learn over 20 poems and then write for over 3 hrs was not easy. She would of rather spent time turning pages in the poetry book than trying to learn them all

Fin That was a very clear & comprehensive summary.

Feeling a lot more relaxed about the whole process now. The power of info! Now also feel I better understand the various options and grading scales better.
Going to just Get DC as ready as I can and take the advice of the teacher as the general view here is that they will know best!

Can anyone recommend a science text book I can work at home with? One that is comprehensive! Some I have viewed online are quite basic and would require supplementary research online to support learning...

All suggestions welcome! Combined book or individual sub just book? Pearson or CGP?

FYI @fin02 that’s brill by the way! You probably could sit an exam in it...lol

If doing triple you'll need 3 separate guides.
If doing combined you'll need the combined guide.
However if you haven't started the GCSE syllabus yet then the KS3 one might be what you are looking for.

We have the CGP Edexcel board one. It is very comprehensive with exactly what you need to know. (Though it isn't explain-ey like a text book so if you don't get some of it you'd need to go online for further details.)

combined is 6 papers, triple is 9 papers.

That’s wrong information.

As a teacher yourself, please know that it is not ‘would of’ but ‘would’ve’ or ‘would have’.

Sorry to be a pedant but if you are providing information...

I thought the cgp guides were pretty good. The ones for our board flagged all the material that was for the fuller syllabus so they would work for combined or triple (or indeed separate, which is available on this particular board / option.

I used to fine the younger cgp books a bit painful because of the heavy handed humour, but the gcse ones were I think better

My ds is entering Y11 in september, I don't think his school offers foundation level for maths, I wish they did. Ds is working towards level 8 in english language, lit, history, geography, level 6/7 in computer science & combined science, a distinction in Btech drama, but struggles with maths, I think he will be struggling to get a level 4, if he could do the foundation level, I feel more confident that he would get the level 4 he needs. He is looking at doing English, history, geography & politics at A level as he prefers essay subjects.

I didn't say I was a teacher, I am replying as a parent. I did say that the error on triple was because my eldest DD had sat them previously.

Each triple paper is 30 mins longer so they have to sit 3hrs more in total and study a third more syllabus.
www.my-gcsescience.com/9-1-gsce-science-a-guide-for-parents/

I apologise le5ley2001, I was responding to I work in a secondary school that you said, not just speaking as a parent in that post.

I had only seen that you corrected your misinformation on the English exams in a later post, not the Science error and wanted to check if anyone else was reading this thread, wanting information, that they didn’t make that mistake.

It does highlight the fact that even parents with children who have just sat the current GCSEs (your DD) are still confused by the complicated 9-1 GCSEs. It’s easily done! Thanks Gove

Can anyone shed some light on the difference between gcse and igcse???
Is one better than the other? Are both recognised equally? Why would a school recommend one over the other where both are offered?

Years ago my school put the weaker students in for iGCSE as it was felt it was easier, maybe to get a C.
State schools can no longer do this so only private schools offer them.
IGCSE have not been reformed so get letters not numbers. For that reason and also because they are less of a prep for A level than the new GCSEs, I wouldn't be keen myself.

Hi Clary, i’m Surprised by the comment that it is offered to weaker students. I’d consider Whitgift and Westminster Schools as very academic and they offer both boards to their students. Are you sure this would be the main difference between the two exams?

My understanding is that iGCSEs are being reformed so that candidates can obtain number grades but the letter grades will still be available as well (it's up to the school to choose).
In the past iGCSEs were considered to be harder firstly because they didn't have any coursework but reformed GCSEs no longer have coursework so this is no longer relevant. Secondly for the old modular GCSEs in Science and Maths, it was possible to take (and retake exams) over the 2 years. This hasn't been possible for a while (GCSEs went linear prior to 9-1 reforms) and for both qualifications exams are now taken at the end of the 2 year course.
I think it may be possibly easier to obtain a grade C (or equivalent) because the questions are more accessible to pupils with lower reading ability or whose first language is not English. Independent schools may have significant numbers of overseas pupils. iGCSE exams don't have the same tiering arrangements so for Science / Maths there is just one paper which removes the angst of whether candidates should be taking Foundation/Higher tiers.
Provided pupils stay at the same school for sixth form it isn't really an issue whether they take GCSE or iGCSE. However it can sometimes be a problem if pupils move schools.

Well of course if an exam were easier and a school were allowed to offer it and students would then get a better grade then private schools would be on board! Even amazingly academic schools want their students to get high grades. But anyway, I was trying to say that it was supposed to be easier to get a C. That was what my English colleagues told me, I taught MFL so it wasn't an issue.

I didn't know they'd been reformed too, makes it better as a list of letter grades looks out of date for a 16yo now

I'm a few years out of date, as my children both took old style GCSEs, but their school (very academically selective independent) did iGCSEs in some subjects (maths and separate sciences) because they thought they were harder and therefore better preparation for A level.

They also swapped to iGCSEs in MFL because they had been concerned about the quality of the marking of the GCSE board they had previously used. If I remember rightly, they thought that the GCSE marking was too formulaic. One year the whole year group sat both GCSE and iGCEs in MFL as an experiment and the school concluded that the iGCSE results were a better reflection of the students' abilities as the best linguists actually got the best marks (which didn't always happen with the GCSE).

DS school told us it was much easier for DS to get As in combined science than a B in triple science. Someone mentioned back then that this was right but studying combined science meant the jump between GCSE and A level science was far more difficult to bridge. I really don’t know if this is true or not but so far he is predicted 8-9 in sciences even when we were told he could only get a 6.

IGCSEs have indeed been reformed. In some, like history, the syllabus is as before (so no compulsory coursework etc) but schools could choose to have them marked with numbers this year - annoyingly DS's history department has chosen to keen letters for this last possible year - only numbers available from next year - so he will have 11 numbers and 1 letter which is inelegant.

Other subjects, notably maths, but also science, have updated the syllabus, and moved to letters simultaneously. Maths was changed where necessary to reflect gcse changes so about 5 new topics such as squaring a circle or whatever it is called.

Igcse is a year behind though, so last year was the first for new maths and english, and the rest follow this year, so my son is the first year in his school to be (nearly) all numbers

Confusingly, in some subjects they do GCSEs so about a third of the subjects last year were new grades.

Surely schools also decide between boards and igcse vs gcse based on the syllabus offered (just as for a level CE pre U)?

For instance, I gather from MN that some of the popular gcse history boards have what seems to be a slightly bizarre scattering of topics over a huge period with no clear thematic link, while DS1's course is all 20th C international relations type stuff (or, mich more attractively in my view, they could have gone for 19th C continental nation building)

Sorry - posted too early.

Not to say that one is inherently better than the other, but one can imagine a department having a strong view.

I think that is how our school has ended up with a bit of a mixture.

DS's school told us at Easter that those going into yr11 would be doing iGCSE but they started yr10 heading for GCSE. They said better syllabus.