Any secondary school only do 5 GCSEs?

[loveyal]

I live and work in London and many people I know with professional jobs including myself didn't go to school in the UK. We don't understand why most children in this country do at least 7 GCSEs with the majority do 8 or 9.

As far as I know there is no minimum requirement other than English and Maths which is totally understandable.

There is this thing called Ebacc with 5 subjects which sounds sensible to me.

Why don't schools just do Ebacc and spend the rest of the time for non examined activities, be it creative, sports, community, home economics, whatever they like? They could still have all league table requirements such as Progress 8, Attainment 8, etc and etc.

My bad, it was Combined science. But yes, still just one grade.

From the school's perspective, if the students are required to be in school a certain number of hours a year (which they are), then those hours need to be filled. GCSE teaching is approx 5 hours per fortnight in year 10 and 6 hours per fortnight in year 11. School minus breaks is approx 5.5 hours a day in the average state school. So you can see why students end up taking 9 or 10 GCSEs (Religious Studies is often taken as a short course in year 10) as otherwise they would require free periods.

And sadly schools simply don't have the staff or spaces to supervise free periods.

And as finances are tight and subject specialists are lacking, the emphasis has been on subjects that can be filled up, so 25 or 30 to a class. Plus of course schools are highly incentivised to teach subjects that count in the national measures.

A curriculum review has just closed so hopefully there will be some movement on the creative subjects, as it makes little sense to have cut back on those with them actually being export earners for the UK!

If you want an idea of what school might look like if it was more market driven then consider the curriculum of somewhere like Sevenoaks School or Millfield. And then check out the fees.

You get what you pay for.

That's odd actually. I assume IGCSE since he got letter grades? But still strange,

Ah no @TurtlesDoNotPetsMake it is a Cambridge IGCSE in combined science, a single award. That might mean a bit of catch up to do biology A level tbh

I guess that's where ppl are coming from in terms of v few GCSEs sat. If DS2 had done biology, maths, english, spansih and history then he wouldn't have had the PE GCSE to take him to PE A level.

I meant to add that I agree with those who say that other options would be helpful for some students – those for whom English GCSE is a massive struggle – and who might be better served by a functional skills qualification and some coursework-based quals. I'm all in favour of that – but just not making every 14yo pick just five subjects (and by the sound of the OP's idea, actually only two; and those two to be MFL and humanity).

Meant to say that the Brit School in Croydon does 5 GCSEs and the rest of the timetable is made up of a choice of performing arts qualifications. So it is possible to vary the offer, but most schools don't have the resources.

I taught in a small private school for a while which did let the students drop GCSEs if they didn't have sufficient academic ability (or other calls on their time - there were a few elite sports and acting types, students with long term illness etc) but the school did have the staff and resources to supervise study periods for as few as 4 or 5 kids.

It does mostly come down to money.

Thank you Clary, I hadn't realised.

@clary the difficultly in getting functional skills really annoys me - certainly in the post 16 arena. Why force the retaking of gcse maths and English rather than functional skills is just awful

as is not having foundation English

yes this a thousand times.

I have had students (just a few - really only a few) who were struggling so much with English lit GCSE, just copuldn't access the Shakespeaer at all. They were going to get a 1 or not even that. Nothing the school could do about it tho, it had to enter them

Gove’s reforms completely ruined the subject I teach for everyone. The sooner the curriculum gets overhauled, the better.

What's the point of sweating over a GCSE that is neither core nor you plan to take it for A level. I rather do fewer GCSEs better and have time for hobbies / sports.

I think a wide-ranging curriculum is a good thing tho.

We narrow so soon in England and it's getting worse, as I say, bc more schools are focusing on fewer GCSEs (it's not really their fault; the content is so much more) and those ones are of course often the ones that the school is measured on (Ebacc subjects, P8).

So as I said, creatives are in danger of falling by the wayside. You ask my DD (now 23) which GCSE she enjoyed the most and she will say drama. She had a great group, she loved the lessons, it was all good. No, she will not be an actor; in fact she never wanted to take the subject for A level (for various reasons). But was it worth doing the GCSE? oh yes.

Same (in a different way) for DS2 who took computer science. In then end he wasn't keen on it and felt he had done badly, He did better than he thought and came away with the positive feeling that that brings – that you can do pretty well at something that you perhaps don’t love, if you work at it. I think that's well worth learning.

Edit: and by the way all my DC had time for hobbies. DS2 is a big sportsperson and continued to compete and train weekly for two/three sports through his school career; DD was in more than one drama group, a Guide until she was 18 and also did dance and music lessons/band.

School is full time. Hobbies are for late afternoons, evenings, weekends and holidays. You can't surely be suggesting that 14/15/16 year olds only go to school three days a week so they have even more time to do hobbies (gaming for a lot....)?

itchy I'm not thinking of gaming nor part time school. I'm thinking free periods to do revision to free up evenings and weekends for sports / music etc.

Kids can do two hours of revision every day straight after school if they want, and still have evenings and weekends free for hobbies - both mine did two instruments, scouts, a sport, and band practice every week, plus gaming, seeing friends, shopping and getting a broad range of 10 GCSEs.

I think you're suggesting solutions to a problem that doesn't exist!

itchy horses for courses.. mine has a 1.5hr commute to school due to rural location and is on an Olympic pathway and also plays 2 team sports so time is precious. I'm not suggesting doing 5 GCSEs but I don't think you need 10-11. 8-9 is adequate.
I'm not saying it's a problem I'm saying there's no need to sweat over more GCSEs than is useful..

Yes lots of SEN schools will work towards their students who have the capacity gaining 5 GCSEs. The rest of the curriculum is filled with gaining life skills and various therapies to help the children develop the resources toxipe with the world. Most neurotypical children have it well within their caoacity to achieve 8-10 GCSEs and it's reasonable to expect most to achieve that. This number is sufficient to include maths, english, sciences, humanities and at least one language so gives a broad basis of general familiarity with important areas of endeavour. A well informed basic level of education for everyone across a broad range of subjects is beneficial to the whole population. Our tradition is then to specialise into a narrower range after 16. If we only took 5 as standard at GCSE the range of A level options would shrink massively.

A lot of mainstream schools will allow pupils with additional needs to take one or two fewer subjects than is standard but it wouldn't be wise to only take 5 if a child has the capacity for 6 or more. 5 passes is the minimum for most jobs and if you only take 5 there is no room for mistakes. If you take 6 or 7 then it's not a problem to fail one or two so long as you don't fail english or maths.

DDs are home from school by 3pm unless they go a club... so plenty of time for work and play.

Looking at their breakdown, in GCSE years they will have weekly
4hrs English (2 gcses)
4 hrs Maths (1× gcse)
6hrs Science (3x gcse)
3x 3hr subjects (1 gcse or btec per subject)

1hr PE and 1hr Culture (no quals)

is that 1.5 hours each way? tbf that is very unusual for secondary. For many DC their secondary school is less than 15-20 mins' walk away; even up to 45 mins of commute would still see them home before 4pm with plenty of time for HW and revision as well as a couple of hours of sport or whatever hobby.

Clary yep each way.

Depends a great deal on amount of school choice, population density and transport.

Where I live on the London borders a lot of secondary kids commute an hour or more to selective schools and some go to very local comprehensives. So averages are not much of a guide. However, legally speaking, school transport is only provided if distance is over 3 miles, so the govt considers that a reasonable journey.

Clearly you don't teach. Have you got any idea how much persuasion, encouragement and cajoling it takes to get teenagers to study anything? At least if there's an exam at the end of it, with the prospect of getting onto a different course, getting to university, getting a better job etc, you have half a chance. By only teaching a few subjects and then fannying about with optional extras will not fly!

Honestly because there are 3 core subjects - English, Maths, Science, plus a lot of exam boards offer English Literature as one GCSE and English Language as another. A lot of exam boards offer Science as a double or triple award.

Many jobs will require a pass in English and Maths, and maybe science, so depending on school, achieving those minimum subjects would REQUIRE probably 3-6 GCSEs.

If your child wants or possibly wants to go in to further study or a line of work where other GCSEs are required or preferred, such as a foreign language, a fine or creative arts subject, or a technology, they will have to do an extra year or two at college after school to get these if they are not offered by school.

I agree that there should be flexibility. Pushing children through 7-10 GCSEs who struggle with it and suffer as a result is not good, but many children do benefit from the opportunity to do this many as it gives them the opportunity to try out options. In reality many people would not get the opportunity to do things they wanted to do if they only did 5-6 GCSEs. Of course, you can do GCSEs later on and some jobs/courses may not require GCSEs in a subject from an older applicant, if you can do more GCSEs at the time, why not get extras you may need for your career, or use the opportunity to explore a subject that interests you?

The Times article on 31 Dec 2024

Make lessons fun to keep children in school, ministers told

www.thetimes.com/article/94e7e52d-5819-4def-aa82-f358f1f1041b?shareToken=2ee44ad47f924bc362c10aca1d3b64b3

One of the readers commented that as a retired Headteacher they used to have teachers having talents of delivering extremely fun and engaging lessons but they were asked to leave because the GCSE exam results were so disastrous they couldn't be spoken about.

Why can't education be about learning and absorbing knowledge and thinking skills rather than taking exams and showing off certificates? A certain number of exams is necessary to signal the employers that these people can hold certain knowledge. The rest of time in education should be about learning itself.

I have taught at some very good schools with some excellent students, for about 15 years now.

I'm afraid only a very small minority are interested in learning for learning's sake (teachers often are, and sometimes kids who've been educated abroad, and those with a real passion for say art or music). Still fewer are interested in "skills". At A-level, students often really don't want to hear that their desired grades would come more easily if they could write more fluently, lay out calculations more clearly, if they had more knowledge and vocabulary from wider reading, etc.

The UK is an unequal, highly competitive, acquisitive and status conscious society. Grades and exams do motivate students. They often dodge all learning that isn't exam focused.