Subject choices already

[Sewbean]

DS is in S2 and has had his first chat about choosing his subjects for S3 and 4. I am so behind the times with all this, I need to get my head around it all. He's a worrier so he will be stressing about it already.

He has the option of 7 nat5s. I think he will manage that if he puts some effort in.
Maths and English seem to be the only definites in his school. I would think a language is a must, but apart from that? A science?

My instinct is to advise him to take things he enjoys. It seems to me that the people I have come across in life, the subjects they have studied and even in many cases he degree they have, are not directly related to what they have ended up doing.

I guess the exceptions to this would be anything medical where you will definitely need sciences. Other than that where else does your choice of nat5 subjects limit you?

Is it a bit naive of me to say to pick what you love? I know dh will think quite differently to me and want him to pick quite academic things. He followed a very traditional path of maths, accounting, economics sort of subjects at school, an accountancy degree, then became an accountant.

Or nowadays do you need a degree that relates very specifically to a job? And do you need to set yourself on that path quite early on?

I am in denial a bit that I have reached this point in being a parent already. Are there any good places to read, good discussions to learn about, to try and help me understand how the world works nowadays? I've been in the same job for years and am really happy there so totally out of touch.

Thanks for the voices of reason on this thread! Let’s suppose the real essay question is why are we even debating this? Two different countries two very different systems! Now we could have a debate about the Scottish system the good and the bad and I know that would be very lively 😃!

But we don’t try and compare Scotland to any other country why should we compare to England?

I have family and friends in England and the lunacy of the gcse years with the no guarantee of a 6th year place is one of the reasons we moved to Scotland, let’s not even look at entry into primary school or selection at 11!! Breadth in 5th/6th year in Scotland plus the flexibility of college with a clear route to uni is one of the fantastic positives about the Scottish system.

Have any of you checked the Pisa international league tables recently? Scotland is dropping like a stone. So Nicola has taken Scotland out, to avoid having to address the problem.

I do understand the different age ranges. For my dd, it means finishing school at 17 (or at 16 if she stops after S5). If she moved to England, she would do an additional year (or 2 years).

The system wasn't better in "my" day.

I'd say that ds was better educated than me: I was really good at rote learning; ds has been taught to think and work things out for himself.

I might have got As for my Maths and Physics Highers, but I really struggle with Applied Maths, so would struggle with exams in both subjects today.

the lunacy of the gcse years with the no guarantee of a 6th year place

I was shocked by this too! My eldest was born in England and we lived there for a few years before he started school. Have kept in touch with my ante-natal group who all obviously have children born within the same few weeks as me. When one of the girls got her GCSEs her mum posted something like "Well done Katie, now you can go back to school for 6th form!" I was a bit confused and the mum explained that it's not automatic progression, they chuck people out after GCSE if their grades aren't good enough!!

Also my nieces went to "Sixth Form College" which is a concept we just don't have here.

It's like comparing apples and oranges.

I was about to try to explain again using ds as an example, why the years of compulsory education are the same in both education systems (7 in Primary in Scotland and 6 in Secondary in Scotland, 6 in Primary and 7 in Secondary in England - or rather, 5 at Secondary and then 2 if you're lucky in 6th form).

....but then I realised, what's the point?

But the standards of the current education system and how the system works are two very different things. You can slag off the lack of rigour in the system quite happily but that doesn't mean that individual DC aren't doing at least as well as DC in other countries. It also doesn't mean that Highers are the equivalent of GCSEs. Can you enter Uni with GCSEs? Thought not...

Don't use logic Wax

BTW: how are preparations going for your ds2 to go to Uni with his GCSEs crappy Scottish qualifications?

And iirc, your ds1 could have chosen to go into 2nd year at Uni (with more of those crappy SQA qualifications) but chose not to but has had a very successful 1st year at Uni and now has some interesting options.

If you think that Highers, taken at 16, are the equivalent of A'levels, taken 2 years later, you are deluded

Just as well no one said that then, isn’t it. A-level English not teach comprehension?

pamper Nat 5s are sat at the same age/stage as GSCEs.

Highers are a one year course so sat a year earlier than A level which is a 2 year course.

No one leaves school at 19, which is what you seem to be saying, if your daughter would have an extra 2 years in an English school after doing highers at 17

And A levels are taken a year later than highers, not 2 years.

Yep, DS1 got offered straight entry into 2nd year at Heriot Watt, unconditionally, just with his Highers that he'd already achieved in 5th year - they just added it as an option for him onto UCAS. Strathclyde invited him to go for 2nd year but didn't say whether that was unconditional or conditional on his AHs and he didn't ask as he wanted to do first year.

He also had unconditional offers from Glasgow and Dundee. Finished first year at Strath, wasn't required to do any exams due to his ongoing performance (or any at Christmas), his average was around 90% for each subject and he was then invited to change from the honours to the MEng.

DS2 is some boy, that's all I'm saying. I've made lots of preparations, him not so much...

In other good news for those of us that live in the real world Reporting Scotland was saying a couple of days ago that 91% now stay on for S5 and 65% for S6

Most will be doing Highers in S5 but some no doubt will be sitting/re-sitting Nat 5s that they need and/or they might do that in S6.

And they don't have to change schools to do that

Prettybird I agree with everything else you are saying, but I definitely (in days of yore) went to school for an extra year compared to my dc (my schooling in NI, 7 years of primary and 7 secondary; theirs in Scotland with 7 primary and (hopefully) 6 secondary. There was no optional reception year all 7 years were compulsory. I do not know if that has changed. And I turned 19 less than a month after I finished school, being at the start of the cut off date.

I’m trying to get my head round what pamper is saying but I don’t think I get it

My son is in s2. If he was in england he’d be in y9. He’ll sit Nat 5s in 2 years when he’s in s4. My friend’s current y9 child who is same age as my son will sit her GSCEs in y11 at the same age. My son will then do highers in s5 and then maybe more in s6, when his school days will end, aged 18. My friend’s daughter will do A levels in y13, aged 18, when her school days will end.

That’s it, surely. Am I missing something?

ds(15) is in S4 now. In his school they choose 9 Nat 5 subjects at the end of S1. They study these 9 subjects and drop 2 at the end of S3, taking 7 into S4 for exams. So many schools do it differently.

Your ds should get a options form, like this one pictured, with the subjects split into columns and he will have to choose 1 subject from each column which will restrict his choices. Also be aware they might guide him away from choices, some of ds's friends were only allowed to do general or 1 science, or were not allowed 2 languages, or 2 humanities because they were assessed in class tests as not having the aptitude (in S1!!).

ds has no idea what he wants to do so has picked subjects he enjoys:

English (mandatory)
Maths (mandatory)
Modern Studies (picked as enjoyed more than geography in S2)
Physics (likes science)
French (doesn't really enjoy but chose over S2 Graphic comms which he hated)
PE (again instead of S2 geography, soft choice)
Chemistry (likes science)

Last two columns don't really matter so ignore.

Hardly anyone left our of DS's S4 cohort, literally 1 or 2 out of 200+.

It's a lot more flexible than it was in my day too. One of DS's friends has chosen to take 4 highers plus a Foundation Apprenticeship in S5. So he's doing two afternoons a week at college at the moment, and will go out to get practical experience with an employer too. In S6, he'll do (I think) 2 full days a week alongside whatever else he decides he wants to do at Advanced Higher or more Highers or whatever. I think at the end he gets a qualification equivalent to either one or two highers, i'm not sure.

It's an awesome idea which is giving young people the combination of work experience and academic schooling which just wasn't available in the past. In my day, if you were academic, you stayed at school and did Highers. It was only the less academic who even got the option of work experience.

NI might be different to England, so I can't comment - but in both England and Scotland, schooling is only compulsory the school year after you turn 5.

In Scotland, with a cut-off at the beginning of March, that means you go into P1 the August after that. That's why technically I could have deferred ds, whose birthday is in September, and why, nowadays, so many January and February birthdays (and less commonly, November and December birthdays; I even know an October birthday, but he came from overseas later) are deferred, so that they only start the following year.

In England, the cut-off date is 1 September, so kids will be 5 when they go into Y1 (since the English school year starts after the beginning of September). The complication - and where the confusion arises - is that England has a non compulsory Reception Year. It used to be that you could choose not top put your (say) summer born child into reception (who may only just have turned 3) into Reception, but then your child, still the youngest in the year, would still go into Y1 with all the other kids, who by now have the advantage of a year in Reception This blew my mind when I first realised this on MN far too many moons ago. Some LAs would allow true deferral and there is now apparently a statutory right to it (although you mighthave to fight for it), but some LAs apparently might still insist on a deferred child going into their "correct" year when they make the transition to secondary, thereby missing Y6

It doesn't help that many (including me in the past until I worked all of this out) equate P1 with Reception, rather than Y1.

I’m trying to get my head round what pamper is saying but I don’t think I get it

To be fair, Latte, I don't think even she gets it....

The basics are the 6 months mismatch of age at school intake. Children taking Nat5s this year were born (mostly) between March 2003 and February 2004. Plus a few deferred children from January and February 2003.

Children taking GCSE this summer, because of the difference in intake, were mostly born between September 2002 and August 2003. As the GCSEs are later, in June, most of the children sitting GCSEs will already be 16. Some will have been 16 since the previous September. Only a handful with July/August birthdays will be 15.

In Scotland, only the March - May birthdays plus the deferrals were 16 when they say Nat 5s. There will be more 15 year olds sitting Nat 5s ( and as a consequence 16 year olds sitting Highers next year) because it's a longer time from May - February and the school cut off than it is to the end of the English cut off in August.

Depending on when in 2003 a child was born, they may be in either school year. My March 2003 boy would still be in the year sitting GCSEs in England. However, had he been born at the start of September, he'd be rapidly approaching his 16th birthday but not doing GCSE until May 2020.

But having said ALL that and if you're still reading, the fact that some Scottish children are 16 when they do Highers and most English xchildren are 16 when they do GCSE doesn't make them the same thing.

Horatio, you will be counting reception year? We don't do that in Scotland - the equivalent will be pre school year in nursery.

I have twin cousins in England, their birthday is 1 week after mine in the summer. They started reception while I still had another year in nursery. I went into P1 the same year that they went into year 1. My mum always told me that i still learned to read, write and do my sums quicker than they did and had overtaken them by the end of P1. That might just be maternal boasting and I also think that DCousins weren't particularly academic. Their sister got a scholarship to a prestigious private school though so maybe they just weren't interested. Football mad.

Otra - I think a few more than that left between S4 and S5 at ds' school, but given that 10% of the intake is Roma, the fact that it's not as many as 10% is a brilliant reflection of the school There were even some Roma in ds' S6 no idea what the current S6 is like

t used to be that you could choose not top put your (say) summer born child into reception (who may only just have turned 3) into Reception, but then your child, still the youngest in the year, would still go into Y1 with all the other kids,

This was one of the main reasons for our move back north. DD's birthday is 29th August. Had we stayed where we were, she would have started school at 4 years and a few days old, in reception. There was no option for deferral. All we could do was refuse a reception place for her, and apply for a Y1 place the following year. And of course as all the good schools were full, parents in that situation are faced with filling up the gaps in schools nobody wants.

In Scotland, she started about a week before her 5th birthday in the middle of the year group rather than as the very youngest.

I think the comparison is:

S1/Yr7
S2/Yr8
S3/Yr9
S4/Yr10 - Nat 5s
S5/Yr11 - Highers/GCSE
S6/Yr12 - Adv Highers/AS Levels
Yr13 - A Levels

A Levels are worth more than Highers, probably closer to Advance Highers but the Scottish system has less depth and more breadth. At Strathclyde Uni to get into an engineering degree you need 5 Highers at AAAAB or 3 A Levels at AAB-BBB (both must include maths and physics)

But there's not a comparison because a child currently in (for example) S5 in Scotland could be in Year 10 or Year 11 depending when in the year their birthday is.

Sorry, a new S5 in Scotland would be in either Y11 or Y12 depending on when their birthday is.