How do you use the last free year of school education

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DD decided to take a gap year as didn’t get into the course she wanted. At the moment she is just focusing on A levels so have not really planned her GAP year yet.

How can she use that extra year she has of free education until you are 19? She will need to keep her maths so was thinking in a course at the open university perhaps?

Any ideas would be welcome

It’s not a ‘free year’ in the way you’re thinking of it. It’s three years of funding to achieve your Level 3 qualifications. She won’t be able to do another year just because she fancies it, because she has the full complement of Level 3 quals.

the exception is an art foundation course.

Whether she can study at college for another year is therefore entirely up to the college - some will be more flexible than others with this and things like further maths would be more likely to be approved.

Open university is undergrad, so Level 4 plus - if you study with them it’s covered by student finance but she will be using her student finance for her actual degree so that’s not an option.

If she needs to keep her hand on, online MOOCs are the best bet

Also if it’s a maths heavy course, not all of them are happy with gap years - you need to check this with her preferred courses BEFORE the gap year.

UCAS Extra or clearing might be better options

Don't you have to pay for OU courses?

I think it’s unlikely to get approved, it’s really for students who have taken a year after GCSEs to re-sit before starting level 3 qualifications, or have needed the year for other reasons such as health.

I thought a GAP was time off studying before going to uni or whatever. Not an extra year of study.

DD took a Gap year to do an additional A Level.
When I looked into it the only way was to do it indpendently and pay, there is no "free" 3rd year for most DC

As others have pointed out, it's not a free year in the way you are thinking about it.
It's three years to complete her level 3 qualifications, a safety net in case it's needed.

This makes sense. Thank you very much.

Re the open university course I do understand we have to pay, was thinking in one year course or something like that.

what is UCAS extra?

As others say, it’s not a free year. It’s funded up to the year a YP turns 19, so has leeway for choosing the wrong options in Y1 of A levels or for those who’ve been moved down a year (illness, covid, etc) and would age out. As others have suggested some FE colleges let you do the art foundation diploma immediately after A levels for free, but we’ve found not all of them do - I think it depends which one you are doing.

Once you have a L3 qualification at 18, you don’t get any more. Unless you failed to complete by 19, in which case you can have free funded places to do a L3/one year Access course which is only available to those 19 and over with no L3 qualifications (my DD is 19, turning 20 next month, so is doing the Access course for free on this basis).

If your DC passes their A Levels and is not eligible for a free Art Diploma/Foundation place, it’s university or a year off working… or you can pay to do a course yourself, of course.

If you aren’t holding any offers, UCAS extra lets you make additional applications - so with your point about DD not getting her preferred course, she could explore in extra if there are other courses she’d be happy with.

If you’d like to say what she’s studying, and what she’d like to study, people might have other ideas for her gap year?

Thank you.

She wanted design engineering at IC. She said she is not adding more options as she doesn’t want to rush the decision. Will try to get a job hopefully related to the degree she wants to study and do some online courses.

A lot of engineering courses don’t like gap years as you lose the maths so she needs to tread carefully here.

So she’s only used one of her five UCAS slots? She can (and probably should) use the other slots. Has she looked into any other courses?

Bristol and Bath can be good options here

If she really wants a gap year unis kind of expect students to have done something with the year. If she's only applied for 1 course she could still apply for 4 more. If she did take a year off she'd need to keep the Maths up. She could do Further Maths online and pay for the course or maybe an evening course at a college. She could always get a job too to simply earn money.

Thank you. The online maths course is a good idea; she will try to get some work experience too in an engineering related area, learn to drive and a bit of travelling.