A level - lots of questions!

[NotDonna]

I’m not sure where to go for advice. My yr13 (upper sixth) DD is currently doing 3 A levels at school. She wants to drop one of them and just take 2 at school. But wants to start a 3rd and take that externally. How do we go about this please?

I don't know the details as neither of my home educated kids has done A levels, but I do overhear things so I have a rough idea. I believe that A levels are more difficult to do outside of school/college because there are more controlled assessments or fieldwork.

This entire site is excellent. It's mostly about (I)GCSEs but there is some info about A levels as well. he-exams.wikia.org/wiki/HE_Exams_Wiki You'll find links to Facebook groups you can join to ask all your questions and discuss the details of particular subjects. Do try to glean as much info as you can from the site first, and search the Facebook groups to see if others have posted the same questions you need answered. The admins on those groups are helpful but are quite busy, especially this year with large numbers of Y10/11 kids starting home ed due to Covid-19 or the knock-on disruptions to their education at school.

The main things to check first are these.

1. Is the specific subject your daughter wants to do awkward, expensive or impossible to sit as a private candidate due to the centre having to certify that she's done practical work?
2. Can you find an exam centre which will allow her to sit the exam as a private candidate? You may have to hunt hard and travel some distance for it. This is always a challenge for home ed kids, as schools etc don't have to take private candidates and most won't. It is the one thing which home educators have repeatedly asked the government to provide, not necessarily for free but just access to sit exams. If you can find a centre, which exam boards can they offer? That dictates which syllabus she should prepare.
3. Do you need a backup plan in case of a repeat of last year's exam cancellations? Centre assessed grades hit home educated kids hard. They often didn't have evidence of what their expected grades should have been, so centres were unable/unwilling to put grades forward for them and they were left with no results.
4. How will she learn the material? Independently, with a tutor, online college?

Try asking her school to let her sit the exam there. That would eliminate some problems and save you money and hassle. I believe many schools are unwilling because they don't want the results to contribute to their performance statistics when they haven't taught the material to the teen themselves. They may assume she won't do as well as if she had received instruction at the school.

That’s great thank you!!