Dd in tears over gcse options.

[VivaLeBeaver]

Aggh.

She's been told she can't do art and graphic design as they're in the same option block. Which is a bit shit when you want to be a graphic designer for a career and have been told you're amazingly talented at both subjects.

She's got to pick an option from a different block, so drama, music, computer sciences, history or geography. None of which she wants to do.

When the bloody forms came out the subjects weren't in blocks. I can't understand why they don't do options forms with the subjects in blocks and tell the kids months ago they need to pick one from each block.

Dd asked if she could carry her second language on rather that do something from block D but was told that's not possible as all the languages are in one block as well. Which for a language specialist academy seems stupid. Surely they should put similar subject areas in different blocks?

Anyway, what do you think my chances of arguing it with the school are. Apparantly head of yr 10 told dd he'd try and sort something but he doubted he'd be able to do it. I want to tell the school that unless they're taught at the same time on the same day I want her to be able to do both. Is that unreasonable?

Oh wow - it would be ridiculous to do Graphic design, Art AND photography GCSEs - with the amount of coursework involved her other subjects would suffer without a doubt - unless she has agreed to a reduced number of GCSEs?

I would have thought the school would advise against doing Art & Graphic design together even if the timetable allowed it simply because of the sheer volume of portfolio work required. DD's school advised against Art and Textiles, for this reason.
AS PP already said GCSEs are to demonstrate a broad education with A levels for subject specialisation. Although I have to say that a language academy in effect only allowing the studying of one language seems very narrow.
I have thought for a while it is completely misleading to talk about GCSE options when so many subjects are compulsory (& rightly so) and really you're only talking about dropping a few subjects.

Sadly even if you find 'Art' classes at Evening classes - they are only open to those aged over 18 and they are more leisure courses than GSCE. Might be better to look at an Arts Award - my DN did a Bronze and got so much from it. More and more providers are offering it. It is a bit similar to the Duke of Edinburgh awards in my mind - apologies to both if this isn't the case.

I would recommend Art and computer science personally.

DS did both art and graphic design, and I wouldn't recommend it! Music, drama, even geography are also pretty coursework-heavy, unless it's very different from our schools.

I'd go for history.

My dd was in the same delimma when she was in year 12. She had chose Eng. lit, French , photography and Art but we only found out the French was in the same block as the Photography , so had to drop one and pick another subject.
She wanted be do Fine Art, she dropped French in the end and picked Biology which she did terribly at AS. No need to say , she dropped it after AS.
Should the school informed us much earlier , we could have applied for a few more sixth form or college. Well, there was one mixed school offered her the four subjects of her choice but we declined their offer as their Art department was way too small, only 2 girls took the A2 the year before.

Anyway, she achieved the A* for Art and A for photography. She is currently study at UAL for her Art foundation. She could have done better for her fourth AS subject if she was allowed to do French instead of Biology.

School should have given out the subject block to inform the students and parents as soon as possible, I will bear in mind when it's dd2 to choose her AS subject.

Hmmm, she hates history.

She's also dyslexic but very bright. I think coursework type subjects suit her more than the time pressures of exams and writing a lot in a short space of time.

her chosen career will have lots of time pressure, although she will of course be more mature.

I'm afraid this is life lesson #1, you can't always get what you want. There are only so many combinations of timetable and someone will always not be able to do their desired subject set.

it would indeed have been helpful to manage expectations earlier - lesson for the school - but the job now is to encourage her to choose suitable alternatives.

Dear OP,
I would actually be quite concerned that a school would allow a student to choose art and photography, doesn't require them to do a humanities subject and won't let them do two MFL's. I would suggest that your daughter is at real risk of narrowing her options far too much at this stage. She is what, 14? How many of us changed our mind completely about what we wanted to do after that age. If she is academically able to cope with it I would be encouraging a much broader base to her GCSE's that will allow a wide choice for post 16. I personally think a humanities subject is absolutely essential for a students academic development.

Really, really do not do 3 art or graphics based subjects. Do not think about doing one as a twilight. She does not need all these three. She needs a humanity. If you look at Graphic Design at Brighton, for example, it is about producing a portfolio of work and that includes making things and sketching. If she is keen on this career, their portfolio requirements make interesting reading.

With respect, photography does little for this degree application. What block is photography in? Photography A level, as we have previously discussed, is very possible without the GCSE. Could the photography be swapped for GD? I am surprised any school would let pupils do 3 arts/design based subjects so I don't think your school is unreasonable . However it should be a choice between photography and graphic design because they tend to send the student off in different directions at A level and beyond. Your DD seems determined to do only a narrow choice of subjects without seeing the bigger picture. She runs the risk of not getting the work done if she has a free choice.

Please forgive the grammatical errors!

I have dd at same stage as you. Our option forms were in blocks and since they drop a subject the following year the blocks for these were also shown. This makes life much more sensible IMO. I would agree with humanities or computing. I think drama or music would be really hard work and a bit hit or miss if you have no interest in them. I think unless you are a natural at languages they are also relatively hard work in terms of memorising vocabulary.
My dd is doing art and graphic design purely because she likes them both, so I feel really bad for your dd. Our school has a partnership arrangement with the local FE college for some subjects and I wondered if this was an option you could explore through the school or as an extra curricular course?

Photography is in a different block all together. So no she can't drop that and do graphic design instead which would be my preference. I think dd would rather do photography though as she really enjoys it. I know it adds nothing to her career plans and can be done as part of Art but there's no telling her.

I had screams of being told that I can't tell her what options to pick, that it's her life , etc, etc.

Lots of design programs (things like grasshopper etc) now work on the basis of parameterized design. So effectively instead of drawing something you code the rules that describe it's shape making it easy to alter. DH works in this area and wishes he could code. A bit of basic programming knowledge will be an asset.

Art schools will look at Art and Graphic design as pretty equivalent subjects, you only need one of them to get to Art college - so she should just choose which one she likes most.

Art, Graphic Design and Photography are all massive course work subjects. Doing two is really going to be pushing it, three I would think is impossible.

Geography is approximately 50% Human and 50% Physical Geography - and is a much more highly thought of subject. It will leave far more doors open for her if she decides after 2 years of GCSE that she doesn't want to do Graphic Design anymore. My DD is just sitting her GCSEs and has totally changed her career ambitions. During these two years she has wanted to: run a stables (and study equine management), be a professional Photographer, work in humanitarian aid, join the RAF, and be a Psychologist - this is a pretty usual spread.

Then all you need to is outwardly sympathise that it's not fair and inwardly breathe a sigh of relief as she won't be doing a quite so mad combination.

Please DONT argue with the school - it absolutely is in her best interest not to have three portfolio heavy subjects. Most kids are overwhelmed with one.

I've just asked her about triple science because have remembered that was her reserve option. She only selected double.

She says they've told her she can't do triple science either due to timetabling. Which can't be quite right as other people are doing triple science. So she must mean that it clashes with another option, ie: art, photography or german. I suspect art or photography.

I'm going to get hold of the HOY and tell them to put her down for either triple science or geography. Tell dd it was impossible to get her onto graphics.

If she still wants to do it a level she can.

My brother and his wife are both graphic designers, and my brother is now a design director with a major London graphic design company and my sister-in-law a very in-demand freelancer. Neither of them did graphic design at school. They did art alongside academic subjects (biology, english, maths, IT).

Your DD is FAR better off doing art and ICT; a lot of graphic design work involves web design these days, and combining art with ICT will give her FAR better background transferrable skills than graphic design. Really, Graphic design at GCSE is, frankly, one of those mickey mouse subjects that shouldn't exist - no matter how good she is at it.

(ugh - I meant computer science, not ICT.)

Depending on the exam board, only a very small part of Computer Science would be about web technologies, and it would be from a technical point of view not a design point of view. Which is of course fine, if that's what your DD is ok with!

AQA subject content

OCR specification

qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/GCSE/Computer Science/2013/Specification and sample assessments/9781446914229GCSELinCompScieIssue2.pdf
Edexcel spec (link fail...)

In each of these, the web stuff is all about the technology, not about design. I'm a programmer, and work in web technologies but I'm not in any way capable of designing the artwork, graphics, layout etc.

Looking at those course contents I think dd would hate the computing. I guess if she goes on to do a degree in graphic design then they will teach her enough computing for what she needs in the degree. And I'm guessing in the degree it will have a graphics slant to it which she would be fine with.

technical point of view not a design point of view

Thank you, that was precisely my point (though clearly not expressed very well!)

Thanks for all the advice.