Options in Year 8, anyone have any experience or advice?

[Sunnymeg]

DS's school is changing the options selection from year 9 to year 8. This seems awfully early to me, especially with regard to a foreign language selection. DS currently does French and Mandarin and will start Spanish next year. Two terms of Spanish doesn't seem much time to decide whether a child has an aptitude for the subject, or indeed whether they like it enough to take to GCSE, or whatever Gove is going to call his new examsð???

Has anyone had to face options in year 8? I know to make his choice as varied as possible, to cover as many areas as possible, but would appreciate any advice.

Does he have a 2 year KS4 or a 3 year one? DD1 did options in Y8, but they had a 2 year KS4 and then a 3 year 6th form. Or, will your DS pick more options in Y9? DD1 didn't have a huge amount of choice - only 3 free options and realistically she wasn't going to be choosing German DT PE or Art. And I wouldn't allow her to do business studies even over my dead body. That left drama, geog, history and music. She was happy with her choice (did the latter 3). She's gone on to do all of them at AS.

They are doing this at my DD's school as well, they choose some subjects in year 8 but then they choose GCSEs in year 9. They have to do at least one language and one humanity and AFAIK they have to do science, I'm not convinced to be honest because they could drop Spanish and then not be able to do it for GCSE a year later if they change their mind.

DD1 has just done this, her school are opting for a 3-year GCSE course so that they can put more depth into a lot of the subjects, be prepared for further bombshells courtesy of Mr Gove and generally adapt to the ever-changing demands from the government. The choices themselves are pretty standard, DD is doing English lang and lit, Maths and Statistics, Triple Science, Geography, History and French. She is very glad to be getting shot of DT and IT and is planning to join drama club as an extracurricular because she will miss it. Truth be told she is ready for KS4, she and her set sat a past GCSE maths paper in Yr7 and she got a B. She wants to learn more.

Ds1 had his option choices in yr8 and started them in yr 9. They do: maths,english, physics, chemistry and biology with a further 5 options. The school encouraged them to include 1mfl and a humanity in their choices.
One key thing that we did was to make sure that he was choosing his subjects for the right reasons, not because his friends are or because he likes the teacher.
He enjoys all his lessons now and was very glad to drop the ones he didnt enjoy and wasnt as good at.
For him it has worked out very well.

Thanks for your messages, as pointythings said, DS's school are changing the options timings, so that they have room to manoeuvre with regard to Gove's reforms. As I understand, once picked the subjects will be set in stone. DS has to take English, Maths,Science, RE or Ethics or whatever they call it and a qualification in PE, together with at least one Language and at least one further Humanity. He can take a total of 12 subjects, with the option to pick up Latin in year 10.

Part of me thinks it will be good for him to drop the subjects he hates/is useless at, whilst the other part of me thinks that the school will have received more information regarding the exam and curriculum changes if they held off until the next year.