Daughter wants Equine Management BTEC instead of A levels after open day

[Brainfreeze1]

Hello, my daughter in year 10 is a hard working student with expected 6 and 7 grade passes. Up until recently she was set on history and English A levels and off to university. All good. Until that is I took her to a land and agricultural college who were having an open day. The sun was shining the setting was beautiful. She is now determined to go there and study BTECH in Equine Management (she horse rides every week).

Whilst trying to support her I can’t help but feel this is the wrong choice and will limit her choices going forward. She loves horses but I always saw this as a hobby not a job.

i wondered if anyone had similar experiences of this. Do I respect her wishes and hope for the best or do I insist she goes to college to do a levels?

My daughters both took the btec in non academic subjects. One has a first class honours and a fabulous job in London and the other about to graduate next year. I let them follow their passion and they have thrived.
let her choose

I didn't come from the world though, so getting noticed was harder than for those that did. My parents support and help in finding contacts was what got me there.

It's like being a talented singer. If no one supports you and you're from a different world, it's much harder. But parents who believe in you and support you will absolutely help you get where you want to be.

When I got injured my parents pivoted on the support and pushed me into things "for my future" because they panicked. I'm still sad about it.

It won't be too late for OPs DD to obtain a degree or A Levels later if she decides it's a mistake. But the older you get, the harder it is physically to pursue something like this. M
Now, with her parents support, would be the time to try.

I know nothing about horses but my concern would be whether or not her enthusiasm was sustained when it wasn’t a nice sunny day. Is she an active outdoorsy person? Will she happily get up early when it’s freezing cold? I imagine equine management involves a lot of early starts, cold weather, mud and poo. It won’t be all petting horses and galloping through cornfields in the sunshine. Could you suggest she volunteers at the stable where she rides, in the middle of winter, and see if she still enjoys it?!

Agree. 6s and 7s are borderline for a university degree being worth while surely ?

And with the cost of university and the risk of AI we may find vocational study is a better option

Maybe you have fortuitously hit on the career for her then! This is the time to be thinking and exploring career options.

We briefly looked at Equine for DD.

iirc There are riding and non riding options, and you have to pass a riding test to do the riding option. Just being able to ride your well behaved horse isn't enough for the riding option, you have to be able to hop onto anything.

There will be routes into uni, either directly horse related or any course that just needs UCAS points as opposed to specific subjects.

There may be less 'hands on' than she realises, ask to see a sample timetable and ask which of the BTEC options the college actually does.

That’s very very overly optimistic in terms of the singer example. Out of all the many talented singers, the vast majority will never make it or earn money from it, no matter how much their parents support it. And you say yourself it was harder for you due to not having that background and that you were reliant on contacts through your parents. I’m pretty sure having a talent for dressage helped enormously too. Being “into horses” and doing a BTEC in equine management probably won’t. And parents can’t just magic contacts out of their butts unless they are already well connected.

Pony patting all the way. She can always do something else later but let her enjoy herself.

A friend went to Bishop Burton. It's set in beautiful surroundings and you can live in from 16. The equine students (twenty years ago) took their own horses to college, were very wealthy and didn't really plan for careers. Did she meet the other students?

I went to an agricultural university, it had the highest paid female graduates in the country (ahead of Oxford and Cambridge). A few of my friends did equine physiotherapy as their degree following college courses and are very well paid and in demand.

Let her do what she wants, my parents forced me to do a levels when I wanted to do a BTEC in childcare, messed up my plans. Nearly flunked my a levels as I didn’t enjoy them and had to go back to college later in life to actually do childcare. Never forgave them for wasting my time.

I loved my time doing equine but it didn’t lead to a job in the industry. None of my friends from uni work in the area either
I did a national diploma, foundation degree then a BA hons in equine leisure management. Lived in from 17 (I started a year late as forced to do AS levels first!)

I think you can say the same about other degrees - such as law and psychology - massively popular but very limited jobs at the end and all will require huge time and expense for post grad studies.

I also think the AI proof jobs will also be challenging - how many people will be employing pony osteopaths - or even owning a pony if we are all circling the drain. Same with plumbers - who will be employed to pay for their services.

I'm someone who went down this route. Back in the day people were spouting "if you can find a way to make your passion pay, you will never work a day in your life." Horses were my passion, so I went into equine management.

Over the years I worked as a groom, a pony trekking leader, a horse transporter, a pony-rides-at-birthday-parties supplier, a barn manager, a riding instructor, I even worked for an equine vet for a while. I also competed with my own horses.

My jobs were never well paid. The hours were long, I often lived above a barn or in dodgy accommodation provided by the barn owner. Then nights I spent walking colicky horses but was still expected to be up by 5am to get the horses braided for a show...

By 45 I had been injured many times over the years, and was not healing as quickly as I used to. At that point I had children and knew I needed to do something else and have horses as my hobby. I retrained in more of a financial administration capacity but never earned enough to keep another horse. I have regretted not going into a well-paid field from the beginning.

I am now in my 60s and horses are not a part of my life. I would encourage any young person who wants to have a career with horses to thoroughly check out what it entails and what sort of money is actually earned. If your daughter wants to work with horses, maybe equine medicine is a possibility?

I wanted to work with animals and do a Btec in animal management or equine when I left school (many years ago 😵‍💫). My parents pushed me into doing a levels which imploded and I ended up switching to a course I had no real interest in as it was one of the only options left for the year and they were adamant I couldn’t do a gap year. Then pushed into going to university which lasted 3 months before I couldn’t cope. I tried to pursue a career with animals in my 20’s and ended up as a receptionist at a vet’s, the industry is so competitive that it’s very difficult to get the jobs you would like without the desirable qualifications. I feel so angry and resentful towards my parents for this, also ignoring my ND and not seeking support (but that’s another story). You need to step back and not try to get influence her choice. It could damage your relationship as well as her future.

My daughter went to Hartpury and did equine management alongside her A levels. She absolutely loved it, and although she didn't go onto work with horses she now has a brilliant career in agriculture (they have a working farm there as well)

I feel this too. They supported me until I was injured and then pushed me to A Levels. My mum said they would always have preferred academics over the vocational so I think they maybe would have pushed that way even without the injury.

In reality, it's no different to anyone wanting to pursue any passion: music, drama, sports. But for some reason it's considered less important, despite there being lucrative fields within it.

She could do both. A Levels first, then as long as she is aged 18 or under on 31st August she can then progress to the BTEC fee free and she could qualify for a bursary (obviously check with the colleges). Given state pension age is currently 67 and is likely to increase, you might as well take the opportunities available for studying on the way. She could then progress to a degree / higher qualifications.

This is me. But 40 years later.

Actually I wanted to work, but if I had to stay in education I wanted to do an Art foundation course as it was called then.

VI Form stressed me so much my periods went haywire (vomiting, passing clots, flooding). I ended up in hospital with an inflamed gall bladder.

I was miserable, most of my second year I didn't go in and it put me off education for a long time. I eventually went to uni in my 30s.

Why not let her do the course she wants, it doesn't have to lead to a job, I mean A Levels don't lead to jobs either.

I agree with @countrygirl99 and @Stubbins - for various reasons I have grown up around ‘horse girls’ in Ireland and England, and been adjacent to the industry and I am now decades older and can look back and reflect - in every single case of nice middle class girls it ended fairly disastrously in injury, dead end jobs, running out of family money to compete, exploitation, alcoholism. There’s only one woman who made it and her family are literal touching on billionaires. I used to see the girl grooms at Dublin horse show - so passionate and hardworking and committed, treated like a resource. The industry is closed in, incestuous (look up the damning report released about Katie Simpson and Jonathan Cresswell and how many people covered for him!)

https://www.policeombudsman.org/news/initial-police-investigation-into-katie-simpson-death-was-%E2%80%98flawed%E2%80%99-and-%E2%80%98failed-the-simpson-family%E2%80%99

It is eye opening how many top performers are billionaires daughters - Athena Onassis, Steve Jobs daughter, Georgina Bloomberg, Bill Gates’ daughter.

It can be an exploitative world where nice middle class girls with a passion for horses are chewed up and spat out by middle age while the trainers, yard owners, stud owners chase the monied trustafarians.

Not to mention the treatment of the animals!

To be clear - I’m not saying don’t ride - the most successful riders I now know in later life are those with good professional jobs who make enough to keep a horse and have it in livery - where doubtless some poor idealistic horse girl is shovelling the shit every morning for minimum wage and zero job security.

And there's so many more options these days to when it was me 20+ years ago, and definitely to 40 years ago when it was you.

This age is the best one for trying something that might not work out. Because there's time to change it. The older you get, the harder it is.

@Brainfreeze1 please think about these experiences we're telling you about. I love my overall life NOW with DH and DD but I would never have chosen my job, and if I had a choice (no responsibility requiring a certain level of income) I wouldn't choose it now. Please don't make that happen to your DD. We spend so much time working.

Riding isn't the only equine career out there though. There's so many jobs connected to horses or other animals that don't just involve shovelling muck.

I would say agricultural college in itself is probably a great idea as I believe there is a real skills shortage and so probably some really interesting agricultural careers to be had.

Can you get her to talk to some people with different careers is the animal field and learn a bit more about what they do and how they got there? I am a strong believer in not pushing young people into the highest level of education they have the intelligence for just because they have the intelligence for it, they need to be happy too! I would think their would be quite a lot of skilled professions involving horses. For example, we live near(ish) Cannon Hall Farm, how are an open farm who do Facebook clips of farm life and I know they sometimes take very sick horses to a specialise equine hospital. I've not much clue what's there, but I imagine vets, vet nurses, even surgeons who all specialise in horses!