Protocol for approaching school when parents are not happy with range of GCSE subjects offered? Sorry its a bit long!

[GcseOptions]

Name changing regular here (joined 2006) as this is very identifying, but I hope someone with experience of secondary education timetabling and the new curriculum can help!

My child is in year 9 and making her gcse choices at the moment.

However, completely out of the blue, the school have decided to make Religious Education and Citizenship "core subjects" and all children will have to take a gcse in these, accounting for two so-called options.

My daughter is among the gifted and talented cohort at school and is being very strongly encouraged to do triple science. This would take up one additional option.

So now she would be doing English language, English literature, maths, RE, Citizenship, Triple Science, French, Latin (which is already partly taught as a twilight subject outside of the timetable).

This is apparently the maximum she is going to be allowed to do and there is no room for History (her favourite subject in there), Drama or Art (which, again, she is in the G&T band for and has already done a year of 2 hours extra lessons per week).

In other schools she would opt for History over RE and wouldn't take a gcse in Citizenship at all!

Many of her g&t friends are in the same situation. A group of us parents want to see if anything can be done to persuade the school to be less restrictive towards the g&t pupils.

Anyone know what the process is? Any previous success stories or precedents?

Sorry it's so long. Wanted to paint full picture!

RE I don't mind. Citizenship - wtf?

Science A level after double science ..... just asked DD who is at a mahoosive 6th form college.
THere are people on her Chemistry and Biology A level courses who only did Double
BUT
at their offer interviews it was suggested to them to revise the rest of the syllabus for themselves over the summer.

OP
It sounds really daft to me that the school are stopping their top pupils from having a fair crack at the Science A levels.

NB the curriculum and modules are very different than they were a few years ago so Leeds case is no longer fully comparable

They aren't stopping their top pupils from doing triple science, quite the opposite.

But if they do do triple science, it counts as one extra option. Afaics, this is because the school wants more pupils to actually do triple science and they are devoting more timetabled time to teach it. It is a STEM school.

Hmm,
at DCs school, top set do triple in one option, second set do triple in two, third set do double in one, fourth set do double in two, bottom set do single
and TBH if its a STEM school are not all of them meant to be now they should be able to get the top pupils to rattle through triple in one slot.

DS has covered the whole of core/single in a term

PS
The Russell Group do not think much of Citizenship
www.russellgroup.ac.uk/faqs#10

OP. Talkins school has what you might call a vey umm flexible attitude towards RE in KS4. It appears to positively encourage pupils to opt out if they so wish. I get the impression that most schools are a bit more rigid.

Are you sure that it isn't RE-and-citizenship ? I only ask because at DD1's school they all do RE short course but people can use a whole option and do RE-and-Sociology so they get 2 GCSEs for the price of one.

DD1 has had to do compulsory Maths,2 English, ICT, RE-short, core science, and then had 5 options to select (where double or triple only used 1 option). (Plus 1hr PE a week). Compulsory subjects 25hrs per fortnight, optional ones 25hrs per fortnight.

The Dfes publishes performance tables where you can compare schools / LEAs. As an example, here's a school that I picked at random. You can see that "percentage of KS4 pupils achieving the EBacc", with the information further split into low / middle / high achievers, is published information. I can't see why a school would be preventing a high achiever from bumping up their EBacc statistics.
Are you sure of your facts, has DD got the wrong end of the stick?

Thanks everyone - all comments gratefully received.

Senua, I'm very confused about it all, but when you say "I can't see why a school would be preventing a high achiever from bumping up their EBacc statistics"

What do you mean by that?

Apparently dd will be on the ebacc pathway at her school and they expect her to achieve this. What is it in my posts that makes you think otherwise?

Can you actually spell out ebacc to me??

OP. For Ebacc you need Maths, English, 2?Science, a language AND History or Geography.
Your DD is apparently not going to do either History or Geography.

RE counts as the humanity though
BUT
not having Hist or Geog sounds a bad idea to me

Ah, ok, thanks T&T.

Talkin Did they change that then? Initially RE wasn't in the Ebacc list.

RE is NOT an EBacc subject. See here: www.gov.uk/english-baccalaureate-information-for-schools

Ah, sorry, I thought Gove had buckled. silly me

BTW the head of our school is an RE teacher so its not even that its an atheist bastion

Ebacc is meaningless EXCEPT that it will be used as a stick for politicians to beat schools so is a hoop worth jumping through

RE is a Humanity but the only Humanities that count towards the EBacc are History and Geography. See here.
If she is on the "EBacc pathway" then surely she must be doing Hist or Geog?

Which is why I suspect OP or her ds have the wrong end of the stick - particularly as they have said their top set will be on an EBacc pathway!

Her dd sorry.

She could do history or geography, but that would be her only option. Just one. No art, no Latin, no other option at all.

If she wants to have two options (or two choices, if you will) she will need to drop triple science.

I haven't got the wrong end of the stick and this is why we are concerned and want to appeal to the school!

OP
I believe you
I'd suggest getting DD to FB / snapchat / whatever as many of her fellow top set pupils as poss and get them to get their parents to look at the RG document and get Citizenship dropped and more space devoted to "facilitating" and "ebacc" subjects

it may also be worth contacting STEMnet to see if they have advice that could be forwarded en masse to the school

This is apparently the maximum she is going to be allowed to do and there is no room for History

She could do history or geography, but that would be her only option.

Which story are we going with?

This sounds like a time tabling fuck up.

Put your concerns (including the ebacc stuff) to the head.

So she CAN do history then? That's not what your OP said. While I agree citizenship is a waste of a gcse, she does have choices. She can choose triple science and history if she wants, or history and art if she sticks to double science is that right?

To be honest the whole option choices thing is misleading in all schools - there is very little in the way of choice full stop. I would suggest you, and other parents approach the school and see if they would be prepared to let their top set do triple science in the same number of timetable slots as double which would free up one more slot for an option, and is a common way to offer triple that many schools do.

My DD's school compulsory had to do: Maths, English Literature, English Language, Triple Science, ICT, Citizenship, PE. After this, she had 4 more choices. They also had the chance to do 1 twilight subject if they wanted to.

I can't imagine how awful she would have found it to have such limited choices as your DD. I have no idea how you should approach it, but I hope you can get something done. I imagine in-person would be better than email?

Sorry my op should have said history AND drama or art.

In other words, none of her subjects can be a creative one.

WittyUsername - do you mean it was compulsory for your dd to a gcse in PE?