GCSE Options - OCR Computing

[CatelynStark]

My daughter is considering taking this option but my eldest daughter has cast doubt on it's suitability as several of her cohort took the subject for A2 and failed horribly.

It's such a new course, I'm finding it hard to research how it's going (eg several frightened teachers on the TES forum have worried me that my daughter's teacher might not be a computing specialist.

We have an Options evening tomorrow so I can talk to the teachers there, hopefully but I wondered if any parents on here had any experience of their child/ren doing the course and how they found it.

MTIA

My DS did this but only to AS level. He did it as his fifth AS. He really enjoyed it. It goes nicely with maths and further maths. He found it comparatively easy and could self teach a lot of it.

There was one student on his course who had thought he was going to be studying an IT type subject.

It is useful for applying for some Comp Sci Uni courses as it shows an interest in the subject but all (or nearly all) Comp Sci uni courses teach everything from scratch and do not expect any specific Comp Sci prior knowledge. Here is some info on Comp Sci degrees and A level requirements and choices.

Comp Sci is basically maths and if a student is a good mathematician then, I imagine, they will be Ok at Comp Sci.

It is not considered a soft A'level. This document produced by the Russel Group Uni's is useful.

That's really useful, thank you!

The school have stated that students must have at least level 6 in Maths and my daughter is currently exceeding that, so hopefully she'll be able to cope with the demands of the course.