How many GCSEs? And will it change for the new exams?

[Whyjustwhyagain]

My dd is in Y9 so will be in the first cohort to sit the new exams at the end of Y11. At the moment, the school are planning to continue with 11 GCSEs.
From previous reading on here, it seems schools have different views on the number that they expect the majority of students to take.
So my question, how many GCSEs is your LO/school doing? And will this change for those taking their exams in June 2016?

DS1 took his GCSEs this year and ended up with 13 GCSEs, including one taken early.

DS2, at the same school, will sit his GCSEs in 2017. He will study 10 subjects, including the three separate sciences, and I doubt he will be taking any of them early.

So the drop from 13 (blimey, that's impressive) to 10 is that purely down to the new exam structure?

Yes, the school has always been keen to react quickly to new government guidelines. Sometimes too quickly and at the expense of some individual pupils, IMO.

I am happy that with the changes, just not always with the haste in which they've been implemented.

The advice is that the new maths GCSE should be allocated extra teaching hours due to the fact that it has more content than the old one. So if they are starting in y10, they should be having extra maths lessons to account for it.
www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10834633/Teenagers-to-be-given-an-extra-maths-lesson-each-week.html

I think most schools are ignoring this though!

Our school is (from this academic year) implementing more Maths time and trying to wangle more English time if they can for next year (or more cross curricular embedded English learning). The timetable is still the same number of hours so something has to give and, I would guess, that might be option subjects. I can't see it coming from science as parents and student views would support a strong science curriculum offer, I am sure.

I expect many will drop the arts - but that won't happen in our school. Not sure what they will do!

I hadn't heard that extra time should be devoted to maths. I too suspect thus will be to the detriment of arts courses

DS2 in Year 9 is definitely doing more maths and science than DS1 was at this stage. He has already started his "options" though in this year's case it was one option plus the choice of either Geography or History. He has chosen Computer Science as his option, to be taken along with the prescribed timetable of English Lang and Lit, Maths and Statistics, French, Sciences and History (which could have been Geography). At 13 he won't ever be studying Art, Graphics, Music, Drama or Technology again.

That's really sad, I'm pleased dd is keeping all her options until the end of Year 9. Like your DS they are starting some GCSE work in English & science, but I'm not sure if that's all the groups or just top group
My big concern is I feel they should be going less GCSEs though I know that will upset DD who will find it hard to reduce her options anyway! (Not cos she's a fantastic brain box, just that she quite enjoys a lot of different subjects)

Think it's 9 (assuming lang and lit are separate and science counts as 2)

Triple science children do 10 because they also do statistics (which I'm annoyed by as ds1 would have passed statistics but he is not allowed to take it as he CHOSE to do double science)

They will be no change as far as I know but I believe that statistics is now not being linked to triple science (just in time for ds1 NOT to take it...bloody school)

my dd's school have added an extra hour a week maths for from this year - they've lost an hour of tech which dd is delighted about but I imagine not everyone is so happy.

DS in y10, neither of us know answer to OP's question. Somewhere between 7 and 9 + a BTEC. I just hope he passes them all and even gets a few good marks. He implied stats final exam is end of yr10.