DS doing 9 gcse - enough for good uni?

[Ssmiler]

DS is at a very academic school where all students do ten gcse as a minimum. With further maths and / or fast track music that could be 12 for some students.
DS (mistakenly as it turns out) did not take further maths or music so has ten currently. The issue is that he detests spanish and is on track to get a C at best. The rest of his subjects he’s working at high grades.
He’s more or less decided to drop Spanish but is concerned that

1. having 9 subjects at a school where 10 is a minimum, and
2. Having no MFL

could affect his opportunity for offers from good unis.

He thinks maybe having no language is less of an issue but having 9 subjects at a school where ten is the minimum could be a problem?

Can anyone who knows anything about uni offers or admissions advise?

He won’t be applying to oxbridge but would be interested in Bristol and similar. Possibly engineering. A levels will be maths physics and history. A fourth subject for AS still to be decided but likely business studies or sociology

Any advice welcome - thanks in advance

Might be worth him seeing if he can persuade the school re further maths, if he firmly decides he wants to take it? If he's getting 8/9 in maths GCSE they might be open to him making the case - maybe if he explains he's been looking into engineering and has realised the FM A Level could be really important. If he's strong in maths they might be persuadable. (Further Maths A Level is difficult if you're not genuinely strong in maths, so it will depend on how able he is in that subject area I suspect)

Will his school even let him drop a gcse? My dcs school will only allow it if a child has learning support needs and then they go to the learning support teacher for their free periods. They won’t allow year 10/11 pupils to have unsupervised frees.

Ive just checked his school A level choices and they only accept you for FM at A level if you’ve done it at gcse and got an A grade in both gcse FM and gcse maths.

wow that's harsh. What if someone came there from anotehr school to do A levels - and that school didn't offer FM GCSE?

FM A level is tough, no doubt about it; DS2 considered it but changed his mind mid-yr 11; he did maths and got a hard-won B, having got an 8 at GCSE. His very clever maths-whizz mate got A in both A level M and FM, and is now at Cambridge, but he is really very* good at maths (and driven). He didn't do FM at GCSE tho and it (clearly) wasn't an issue.

Are there other post-16 options for your DS who might take a more reasonable view on the lack of GCSE FM?

A school that was prepared to scupper my child's university choices because of a gcse decision they made on a rainy afternoon in Y9 is a school I'd be tempted to remove my child from after GCSEs, to be honest.

Most young people who do FM at A Level haven't done it at GCSE, for the very simple reason that most schools don't offer it at GCSE! The specialist maths A Level sixth forms (eg Kings Maths in London) don't require it, and FM A Level is compulsory for their students. They just require an 8/9 at maths GCSE.

You do have to be genuinely strong at maths to do it - if you're not getting an 8/9 or an A with very little sweat it's likely to be a very difficult A level choice. But if your DS is really acing GCSE maths (which he should be if he wants to do engineering tbh) then it's very harsh of them to not let him try for FM at A Level.

This is interesting
We are in NI and have a different system - mainly if you go to a grammar school as many do then you stay in the same school from age 11 right up until after A level. Its quite rare to change schools for A level. Most subjects are offered but in the rare case of something not being available, or a timetabling clash, you can often go to a neighbouring school for that one subject

But I did a quick check around other neighbouring schools and they’re worse! You need A* at gcse in both maths and FM to be allowed to do FM A level. His current school “just” requires an A in both!

We have our options meeting at the school this week so we will need to tease all of this out. But I’ve just looked over the prior years data for the school - c60 to 70 students (out of over 200) do maths A level each year but only c4 do FM. Is that a very low percentage? It explains why FM didn’t even get onto his radar as it’s clear so few take it

Head of Sixth here with probably 15 students a year applying to engineering at the likes of Bristol.
FM is desirable but not essential if he’s not applying to not just Oxbridge but also places such as Imperial, but I’m surprised he’s not considering chemistry or perhaps geography if he’s interested in engineering. History, BS and Soc will ultimately most likely make him less like to get an offer than students doing a subject closer to the engineering field. Alternatively, some of our engineering students do 3D design as their fourth subject and many seem to enjoy that.

If he researches courses then they may not directly say that you must have, for example, FM, maths, physics and chem, and they can’t because lots of comprehensives cannot offer four subjects or cannot offer FM, but that doesn’t mean when they have a huge pile of applications to go through they don’t have to make marginal judgments between them, and A Level choices are often one of them.

To answer your initial question though, the number of GCSEs won’t make a difference to offers, and especially not compared to A Level choice with a subject such as engineering (I.e. less of an issue if he wanted to do politics which there are more varied routes to because not all schools teach that at A Level).

Yes that is very low. DS2's sixth form year was about 100-120 students and of those, I am guessing about 30 took maths (two groups anyway) and of those, IIRC six took FM. So while not huge numbers, more like one in five than the one in 15 you quote, @Ssmiler.

It's interesting that so few take it when it is offered at GCSE - I wonder if they are put off by the GCSE? Or do not many take it at GCSE (and hence are excluded from the A level)?

Btw an ask of an A when A is available is low for FM A level. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone not easily gaining 8/9 (which is A and A** for want of a better term). A 7 minimum (=A) is good for maths. A student in DS2's maths A level class had got a 6 and really really struggled.

If you’re looking at Trinity Dublin then your DS would need a MFL, otherwise it’s not required any more at UK universities (UCL has a work around).

FM would be advantageous but it’s not a deal breaker for engineering if you’re not looking at Oxbridge / Imperial - maths and physics or chemistry (depending on what kind of engineering he’s interested in- chemical engineering is a lot of maths and some chemistry) will be needed.

Can he do FM as a 4th A level and drop it at AS level it’s too much? It ramps up in difficulty in the second year.

Edinburgh- great city, low workload.

This is bollocks (as a parent of a recent Edinburgh MEng grad).

My son has just been offered places at all 5 of his university choices for engineering and not one wanted FM. Only A Level. I can't see not having it being a problem at all. He also only has 9 GCSE's as he took his 10th as a BTec Level 2.

Nine GCSEs should be fine, but as a former STEM Admission Tutor I am also concerned about the approach of this school to FM. Many Schools of Eng do not strictly require FM because it is still not available everywhere (in practice). But if is offered and not taken, some - by no means all - may take a dim view. Do you know whether the School is aware they are handicapping their pupils?

@poetryandwine

Nine GCSEs should be fine, but as a former STEM Admission Tutor I am also concerned about the approach of this school to FM. Many Schools of Eng do not strictly require FM because it is still not available everywhere (in practice). But if is offered and not taken, some - by no means all - may take a dim view. Do you know whether the School is aware they are handicapping their pupils?

We have the A level choice meeting with the school this week so we can ask then what their view is.

But I’ve now checked the other schools in the area and they all take the same approach. So I’m guessing the school is going to say he had the opportunity to take FM gcse and didn’t take it. And that they teach A level FM assuming that the gcse was taken so he won’t be able to keep up!

But as a PP said it seems unduly harsh to penalise him for a decision taken when he was 13! And to be fair he took that decision because his maths teacher at the time was so atrocious he had started to believe that he hated maths and / or couldn’t do it.

By the time he started his gcse course and got a new teacher, he was consistently top of the class. He then realised it WAS his subject but he didn’t want to go back and pick up FM as by then he would have been two months behind. I tried to persuade him to do that and I’d get a tutor - but he was too worried that he’d be behind.

At that time FM wasn’t on our radar - in fact it wasn’t on our radar until this thread!! - so we didn’t fully realise that it was going to be an issue

Thank you all for taking the time to respond. I’m reading all the replies and they are all so very helpful

I agree this is a very harsh reason not to permit FM now, even though I see upthread that some schools near to you have even stricter requirements. Even with 5 yrs as a STEM Admissions Tutor I cannot recall seeing anything about GCSE FM until this thread! So clearly one can succeed at A Level without it.

If it's any consolation, DD went to an inner city London secondary. Didn't do further maths at either gcse or A level.

She didn't find any of this a barrier to getting an interview at Cambridge andbeing offered places at good universities for Physics. She's now at St Andrews.

Well done to your DD, @slug! Is she enjoying it?

Yes. Last year was a nightmare. She came home for Christmas and was told not to go back (lockdown). Doing everything from home was not optimal. However, she's back and loving it.

I did a specialist engineering masters degree in the late 1980s with no more than a maths O level - some of the maths was difficult but with good text books and application it was fine.

I look at applications for my over subscribed fairly academic course in my role as course leader. We ask for BBB and get 20x the number of applicants vs places. I have never counted how many GCSEs are on someone’s ucas form. So I would say it doesn’t matter.

Definitely speak to the school @Ssmiler and maybe also find out which unis he's starting to think about (there's a long thread on here about best unis for engineering) and see what he can glean about what their attitude is to kids who don't take FM where their school offers it. If it's genuinely not a problem for the unis he's interested in then you can maybe save yourselves some stress. If it is a problem you might be able to use that info in your conversations with the school - and if the school won't play ball, maybe he can do it independently (with a tutor, if you can stretch to that), or as part of a gap year and apply a year later with most of his grades in hand. Where there's a will there's a way.

Ds1 is in his first year at Durham uni. He "only" had 9 GCSEs as that is all school offered as they do combined science not 3 separate sciences ie it isn't offered as an option. So 4 option subjects plus core.

Re FM A level, Ds didn't have FM at GCSE (not offered) but he did do it for A level. You needed a 6 (B) to do Maths A level and a 7 (A) to do FM. Ds thinks this is low. Those that get a 7 at Maths GCSE tend to get a D or a C at A level.

The way it is structured at his sixth form is they do the whole 2 year maths content in yr12 and then FM in year 13 and sit both exams in year 13. I do know that around half his FM class dropped it (4th A level) to concentrate on bringing up their Maths A level grade. Ds was a high grade 9 for maths so found it relatively easy but he had friends struggle. I will also add he did Physics A level too and more than half the class had only done combined science. Everyone seemed to cope just fine with the content. Ds fell out of love with it though at A level, still achieved an A* but the love had gone from GCSE years.

Although many universities may not specifically ask for FM it can disadvantage an applicant if they apply for a maths based course. Definitely ask any department/admissions person about what A levels they are looking for.

Re the sixth form your son is possibly going onto the reason for the high grade admission is to keep the grades high, keep the class moving along together work wise and obviously reflected in their A level results. I do find it awful that they won't let him even try for FM at A level though.

Bristol Uni only take the top 8 GCSE's into consideration. Anything above this amount is not taken into consideration at all for any course so if he takes 10 and gets Spanish at a low grade that won't matter for an Engineering course, If he drops it , that also doesn't matter - as long as he has 8 minimum. Similarly with A levels - only the top 3 are considered if applicants have 4. The most important thing for a competitive engineering (or any) degree is good grades at BOTH GCSE and A level.

Different Engineering degrees have different requirements (some require a second science subject, some don't) but Maths is essential at a top (A*/A) grade. A Maths / Physics / History profile is absolutely fine for a Bristol Uni engineering degree. If a course is asking for Maths and FM, it will be very challenging on maths content and inadvisable if you aren't consistently getting top grades at school at A level. The step change is steep for maths across all courses, whether or not he has FM A level.

The above relates to Bristol specifically, other Unis will have different admissions policies and requirements as mentioned by other posters.

Re Bristol's 'reputation' - it's no worse or better than any other UK University. Drugs are around at all Universities and people are naive to think otherwise. I wish people would stop singling out Bristol about this. The most important considerations in choosing a Uni are the course and whether or not you like the town / city / campus.

(long term on mumsnet, but infrequent poster. Name changed for this in order to give accurate information and challenge defamatory comments about Bristol!)

So thanks so much again for all the info.

I spoke to the head of maths and asked about the further maths. I told her that I’d been “talking to my friends in England” (I wasn’t sure how she’d take it if I said it was the mumsnet advice!) and summarised the advice you’d all given

I asked what happens to kids who make that “wrong” decision age 13 not to do further maths gcse but later want to do engineering

She actually couldn’t have been more helpful. She said she agreed with everything my “English friends” told me! She said in NI the FM offering is less common and they “have to have some guidelines” so they say A at further maths gcse is necessary. But her view of what’s actually necessary is a love of maths - whether that’s something that came a bit later or not

So she looked at DS scores in gcse maths and said with those scores she’s more than happy to take him onto the further maths A level if he wants to do it - regardless of the fact that he doesn’t meet their “published” criteria

So FM A level wasn’t even on our radar and now is - thanks to this thread and you all taking the time to help.

The original question faded away a bit but it was about dropping gcse mfl - so we also raised that bombshell with school and it went down a bit easier than we expected - mainly because I said it was causing him undue stress - so that made it more difficult for them to force the issue - though they did say to take more time to finally decide. DS said five minutes later he’d done that! So no MFL I think

And the final update is that DS said “isn’t mumsnet so helpful - who knew!”

ah great update op, thanks, and best of luck to your DS 😀

Hurray! Well done you and your DS, and his teacher. Common sense prevails!