Pressure on daughter

[Kara742]

My 14 year old daughter is in yesr 10 at school and has recently received her predicted grades for gcse. She is taking English language, English literature, maths, further maths, Latin, classics, triple science, food/nutrition, drama, pe, Greek, philosophy and is predicted an A or A* in all of these except Greek (B) which is excellent and I have told her how proud I am. The problem is that now she has seen what she is predicted she has been panicking about the tests and seems continuesoy stressed and worried. It doesn't help that recently she had to miss a few weeks if school because if a burst and infected appendix... How can I get her to stop panicking so much?

Milly-

That is a rather anti-intellectual position! If you had said computer programming, I would have totally agreed with you, as computers dominate our lives - they are even connecting everyday objects to the Internet now. Computer languages have greater use than even modern foreign languages in terms of the British economy. However, we need young people who have had their minds expanded, their intellects inspired and who have the ability to think critically. Whether derived from learning modern foreign languages or Latin, or thinking about philosophy, or studying history, it trains the brain. For example, bilingual children have been shown to have more synapse connections in MRIs of their brains at an earlier age than monolingual children.

What you are listing are life skills, which are learned either from parents or through subjects. In Maths, we were taught how to do budget spreadsheets. In physics, we were taught to change a plug. Maybe I was just lucky. Also, if you are going to be a medic, as a poster above mentions, then a basic grasp of Latin makes learning medical terms easier. Medics are quite helpful to society...

Friday, you can do History as an A level without having done it as a GCSE.

You can in principle do any subject at A Level without having done it as a GCSE. Convincing a school to let you do so, however, especially the sort of school I suspect we're talking about, is another matter. Super-selectives will demand an A at GCSE in a subject to be studied at A Level, unless it's a subject that they didn't offer at GCSE.

Ehhn You were obviously lucky. I certainly did not learn how to change a plug or do spreadsheets or do food technology.
I certainly never learnt how to cook from my mother. She was in and out of hospital for years and not everyone has parents who have time to cook from scratch.
Academia costs. I have a friend who has a degree in Ancient History. She has never used her degree. She admits it was fun to study and she had a great time at Uni but would not recommend her daughter go down that path as with the £50000 price tag attached it is too much money for a fun 3 years.

I think she should reduce the numbers as she might in an academic private school down to these subjects:

English language, English literature, maths, Latin, triple science and perhaps further maths (8)

Pity she is doing no language and no history or geography which makes it a bit unbalanced and with some junk GCSEs comps tend to go in for.

Which GCSEs do you think are junk, 78b? nutrition, pe & drama? You know how insulting that is to kids who work very hard to get those qualifications. And I bet it was OP's DD who strongly wanted to do them because she liked the subjects. I'll grant you they aren't as highly regarded as others, but "junk" is uncalled for.

OP: It sounds like a very competitive environment. Something I was very wary of with DD & ran a mile from when given the choice.

I think anxiety is a huge danger for high achievers, they try to push selves too hard.
I would encourage downtime with DD if I felt i had to. We are still working hard on the message "you can't do everything, you have to make choices" which somtimes sinks in. Also "You don't have to excel at everything". They need to learn to do things for fun or in a tickbox way if not that enjoyed.

78b - which academic private schools are you thinking of when you suggest 8 GCSEs? It's not my experience of my children's (top10 academically) schools - 10 is the norm for both of their schools.

Junk was a bit insulting, sorry. I just meant if this child is bright they ought to be doing the standard core GCSEs the best academic grammar and private schools do which would include a language and at least one of history and geography before PE and drama were even considered. I feel that some state schools do not give the best advice on GCSE choice. By all means do one extra one of the kind like PE or music or whatever but make sure the core academic ones are there over a broad range.

You know how insulting that is to kids who work very hard to get those qualifications.

This sort of concern trolling makes the whole debate pointlessly emotive. Some children work incredibly hard to get a BTEC Level 1 Life Skills certificate. It is not denigrating their work to remark that for university admission, such a qualification is entirely worthless.

Nutrition, PE and Drama are, for the purposes of someone predicted to get mostly As and A*s in broadly academic CGSEs, also worthless. If you removed those from the OP's daughter's CV, it would make precisely no difference.

If she wants to learn to cook/act/play tennis, she should do some cooking, do some acting and play some tennis, not study rather low-grade GCSEs with a rather fake air of "study".

10 is what the universities expect to see as well, 8 would put you at a disadvantage.

This thread has almost had me thinking Gove has a point, and I have rarely had any time for his thinking, let alone the doing. However it shocks me that schools are allowing pupils to do so many GCSEs which are not the balanced academic mix that would put them in the best position to compete for university places. It benefits the school and it's position in league tables far more than the pupil, who as we see here are stressed as a result. I'm not quibbling that the pupils doubtless want to play the numbers game but at DDs indie (also top 10, though I wonder how many top 10 schools are attended by mumsnetter's DCs ) they absolutely refuse to allow them to do more than 10.

78 Actually at DDs indie History or Geography are not prescribed because they recognise that for some after the core of English Lit and Lang, Maths, double Science and a MFL, they will want the flexibility to specialise eg if they are artistic they may want to do music, art and drama. If they are linguists they may want to carry on multiple languages. The arts and languages and Religion and Ethics are not downgraded in value, my, and the Head's issue with Gove's EB. In practise most would do one of History and Geography but DD has friends at eg St Martins, or on the drama course at Bristol who knew early on that was the direction they were headed in. However that is an entirely different proposition to what is described here.

How on Earth do they manage to fit all of this into her timetable?

It's far too much. Even if she's getting A/A* grades she's going to be exhausted and stressed out. The core ones should be Maths, English lang and lit. Ds is doing Latin, physics, chemistry, RS, history, spanish and german. He's an A grade student and would have liked to have done more but there isn't space on the timetable. They don't teach classics or philosophy until A level. Your daughter could do with some career guidance so that you can narrow her subjects down as the scatter gun approach that you're using isn't practical.

"Pity she is doing no language and no history or geography which makes it a bit unbalanced and with some junk GCSEs comps tend to go in for."

Would you care to elaborate?

And while you do that, you can list the "grammar and private" schools that thing 8 GCSEs are a good idea?

Actually, history is an A-level where providing you have good grades in English, most schools have no qualms at all about allowing it for A-level without GCSE. This is actually very sensible given the narrowness of the GCSE curriculum and the likelihood that no-one ill have studied the relevant periods in any depth prior to the start of the course. Therefore, providing you can structure a critical argument, you'll be fine. Indeed, Cambridge allows you study it at undergrad without an A-level. There were several people on my course in that situation.

Genuine question - why is English Lit now seen as a core subject? It wasn't at my school back in the dim and distant, so just wondering why it is now.

I did my GCSE'S in 19 something . It was a core subject then.

I did my O levels in 198* not much
Eng Lang, Eng Lit, History, Geography, Maths, Phys/Chem, French, Art
8 was normal then even at a selective gels

now the standard for good Uni Entrance is 11 (convert my single phys/chem into triple science and add extra maths for top sets)

a couple of years back, with modules, 13/14 was becoming the norm - but with linear study (as was brought in in 2011 but Gove forgets he did) the current year 11 (incl DD) will have a shed load of exams to sit.

I'll be happy for it to settle at 11 : leaving kids able to make the science / humanities / arts decision at 17 rather than 15 - which is a good thing

PS
When I did GCEs, there were still CSEs
so those who could not do double English at 16 had switched to the CSE
that is the purpose of the single English GCSE
sadly something that the exclusively selective school parliamentarians are utterly unaware of .....

I did my O'levels at a girls grammar in 1981. I did 9 as was the norm - Eng Lang, Eng Lit, Maths, Chemistry, Biology, History, Geography, French, DS-cookery

Interesting that good Uni entrance requires 11 - so DD's Eng lit and lang, maths, triple science French, History and three more would be enough. Hmmmm....

I did O levels between 1982 and 1984 (see previous post, 1 early, 9 on time, 1 late) but English Lit was optional and thank God for that! IMO. English LANG was compulsory, but not Lit.

At every school my children have been in everyone does
english lit
eng lang
maths
1, 2 or 3 languages
2 or 3 sciences
then virtually always history or geography and usually both (although as someone said above not compulsory to do either)

Then 1 or 2 others like RE, music , art

9 or 10 being about the usual number including music or art or whatever.

I have had children at university very recently and no way were 11 GCSEs required. You are better off having time for hobbies. I don't think even Oxbridge requires 11 GCSEs although I agree that if you do engs x2, maths, french, latin, gego, hist, 3 sciences plus say art or RE or music you have 11 and those would be a typical selection.

In a sense doing too many looks a bit unusual and weird and out of synch with the best schools rather than better.

Well there will be a lot of non-selective state-school students looking weird and out of sync then.

"tuther maths" t this level isn't a gcse, is another qualification which helps kids to move to AS level of maths with ease
in my son'e school is only oferred to those kids who are predicted to get A* in matha and is not started until student sits his gcse
so she has 13 GCSE's on the go, not 14

*futher

None of the Sixth Form colleges around here demand history or geography GCSE for students who wish to do history or geography A-level: all they demand is high marks in English/English literature. The course work is so different that it doesn't really matter if you've done history before, but it does require a high level of literacy; hence the insistence on the English.

The reason English literature is viewed as a core subject is probably that universities and sixth forms are worried by an influx of students with poor decoding skills: it is very difficult to teach A-levels to students who are not used to reading anything more complex than revision guides.