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.

Highers and gcse should not be compared one is a university entry level qualification and the other is not.

Ah yes the cut offs might be the difference

My older son is an April birthday so started p1 a year after he’d have started yr in England

My younger son is a November birthday and he started p1 at the same point he’d have started yr in England. He’s in p7 and his English peers are in y6.

Brokenwing - no, that's not the comparison. That's the whole reason for this debate explanation

P7 = Y7
S1 = Y8
S2 = Y9
S3 = Y10
S4 = Y11 (Nat 5s for S4s, GCSEs for Y11s)
S5 = Y12/Lower 6th (Highers for S5s and/or Nat 5 [re]sits)
S6 = Y13/ Upper 6th (AHs and/or more Highers and/or more Highers for Scots, A Levels for the Y13s)

I thought Y7 is first year of high school

Waxonfeckoff having googled I think NI now has a reception year but we definitely didn't back in the 70s - P1 was full on school and you had to go, no one started the following year. In fact some people (including my brother) did the opposite of deferring due to birthdate, and did two years in primary 7! we like our schooling in NI
The cut off dates are different too - the summer in NI and Feb-ish in Scotland, iirc.

Y7 is the first year of secondary. But England does Reception plus 6 compulsory years at primary before moving. Children move to secondary in England the summer before they are 12. Some have only jut turned 11. Then, if they stay on for A-levels, they have 7 years at secondary.

Scotland has 7 years at primary and 6 in secondary so it's the other way round.

AFAIK the cutoffs for Northern Ireland are different again to those in England. Middle of July rings a bell?

The Scottish and English school entry years are 6 months apart. In Scotland it runs from the 1st March birthdays until the last day of Feb the following year birthdays In England my understanding is birthdays from 1st September until 31st August the following year are all in the same school year. ( There are exceptions in Scotland with deferrals ofcourse, I do not know about England).

Horatio, maybe also depends how old you are (I daren't ask a lady! :o)

The year I started school (1971) was, I believe, the first year of only a single entry (or maybe just a change of age cut off?). Prior to that I think that children could start at Easter or the summer - no idea what the age cut off dates for that were. What then happened was that my year was enormous with a massive age difference between oldest and youngest - iirc it was almost 2 years! Wasn't noticeable at my primary as there were 3 classes in my year and were split by age, but when we got to high school it was really noticeable as we were split alphabetically.

Dementedpixie - Y7 is indeed the 1st year of secondary in England

But they have 5 + 2 (= 7 ) years at secondary (assuming secondary followed by 6th college if you can get in ) after 6 years at primary (and a non compulsory Reception year before they actually reach compulsory school age). 6+5+2=13

Whereas in Scotland we have 7 compulsory years at primary, followed by 6 years at secondary (no 6th form college - almost all secondaries go all the way through). 7+6=13

Essentially, the Scottish kids start secondary a year later than in England.

Ds turned 12 a few weeks after he started secondary. He is at the young end of the year. Technically he is right in the middle, but because of deferrals, there weren't that many who were much younger than him.

As it happens, the brightest guy in the year was also the youngest Ds had one friend who was 5 months younger than him, and another friend, in the same year, but who'd deferred who was 9 months older than him.

He had another friend who was a month younger than him who was in the year below!

My two are both summer birthdays 13 months apart. DS2 had a friend in his class who was older than DS1. DS1 had a boy in his class who was put into school early so was only 4 months older than DS2. In January when DS1 was in P7, the older boy from DS2s year transferred up to his class and then a girl from the year above who'd been off a lot and should have been in high school already but had basically never made it, came back to primary instead and then moved up with DS1s class. I think in the end they had 2 who were already 13 and 1 who'd only just turned 11 by the end of P7.

Mine both started P1 age 5 and S1 at 12 and start Uni at 18. I like to keep it all nice and neat and tidy!

Wax Very organised of you (and your dh )

....now if they'd played rugby, which has a 1 September cut-off date (based around the English school year - causes no end of problems ), they'd have been the youngest ones in their teams!

Not quite that well planned - did I mention they were 13 months apart... :o

DH is a rugby man and would have loved them to play. DS1 has shockingly poor eyesight and also doesn't do team sport (or any sport anymore) and DS2 is dyspraxic. I think I could play better..

I agree my lot had a much better Scottish education than I did. I had 8 options at O level but 1 of them was arithmetic, a language was compulsory and a third science was de rigueur - my DC had 2 / 3 free choices out of 7.

I have thought for a while it wasn't necessary to do all 3 sciences at Nat 5 but in a fit of boredom was comparing local authorities who offer it with those who don't. What surprised me was that overall uptake of science, and Physics in particular, at Higher is actually lower in areas offering 3 at Nat 5.

I'd forgotten that one of my 8 'O' Grades was Arithmetic . My other one (beyond the 6 I continued to Higher ) was History.

I didn't have much choice either - but that was also driven by the fact that I arrived back from 2 years in NZ only 6 months before the 'O' Grade exams, so had to choose what I could rote learn/catch up on quickly (hence Latin rather than German ).

But also in those times and especially in my school (typical of an East Dunbartonshire school ), the academic/clever pupils were very much put onto an academic conveyor belt with Uni the sole acceptable goal and the rest (especially at my school) not getting much attention

My mum's school (Clydebank High) was, imho, actually a much better school as it sought to support and do the best for all its pupils, not just the "clever" ones. That's the attitude I have witnessed at ds' (old) school.

I sat 10 O Grades!! One was supposed to be home studied but I thought I'd been taken off the exam list until on the day of the exam I found I was still on there so went and sat it - Anatomy, Physiology and Health (APH). Was similar to Biology which I had also taken and got a 3 for it (highest was a 1).

Maths, Arithmetic, Statistics were all separate exams too plus I did 3 sciences

I did Latin cos I hated French so much - not French people I hasten to add and indeed DH is half-French and could speak French before he spoke English. Sadly he only got a C in his English system French O Level

Probably just as well the DDs opted out of MFL.

I remember doing one year of Latin. Our school had streamed classes A, B, C. Only A classes got to do Latin

I loved Latin. See you can now do it on Duolingo

Yep we had APH as an optional extra too.

In S1 we did something called "Classical Studies".

In S2 we were streamed according to what our French and CS exam results were from the end of S1 (and were set for English and Maths). The top stream were forced got to do French and Latin and German. The middle streams got to do (iirc) just French and Latin, then French and German, with the bottom streams "just" doing French. I don't remember much choice, but as I was one of the select few , I don't really know what happened in the lower streams. Plus we went to NZ in the October anyway

Ds wasn't keen on French either but I made him do a MFL, nasty mother that I am Despite my French degree he wouldn't let me help him: I ended up having a day to work with him for his Oral . Made a lot of progress in that day - but could have done soooo much more He ended up with a C - but at least he passed.

I did Arithmetic and Maths as separate exams too. At my school the kids who weren't particularly academic just did the arithmetic and others did both. It was a good system - a way of proving you had basic numeracy without having to get into the more complex stuff like circles and angles.

A language to O grade was compulsory at my school, as was at least one science.

When I was at school, people interested in medicine, dentistry or vet med typically did Maths, English and three sciences at Higher. Now that's all changed. 2 sciences seems far more typical now, I know several people who have gone on to do Medicine or related degrees like Biomedical Science without even doing Nat 5 physics. They just don't seem to ask for it any more. Similarly, DS is looking into Microbiology or similar courses, and none ask for Higher English.

Back when I applied to Uni, my Uni's business faculty demanded higher maths for their international business and languages degree. Or you could do something like french and marketing through the Arts faculty and you didn't need your Higher Maths. Now, they've scrapped the Maths component for the Business school unless you're going to be specialising in Finance.

There does seem to be a LOT more flexibility these days. It's meant that DS who loathes English has been able to drop that and continue with History instead. And he's not having to do Physics as it's so unrelated to his chosen degree.

And yes to APH - my uncle used to teach that and he was a PE teacher!

I would think;

Maths
English
A language
A science
A social subject
Art / Music (if he has any interest/skill)
IT/computer studies (if that's still an option)