GCSE French in Year 9

[French2019]

My dd is currently in Year 8, and will soon be going into Year 9. She and another pupil have been asked if they would like to do GCSE French in Year 9, freeing them up to do an extra option in Years 10/11. DD is very keen, but the suggestion has taken me rather by surprise and I'm confused about what's in her best interests. I'd be really grateful for any advice or insights from other parents who have been in a similar situation.

My current thoughts are as follows:

Pros

• DD seems to be very good at French and is getting a bit bored, so moving at a faster pace would probably benefit her. She would apparently get an extra lesson each week to help her prepare.
• She has been struggling to narrow down her option choices, so having the chance to do an additional subject in Year 10/11 would be good.
• It might build her confidence to get one GCSE out of the way early.

Cons

• Her "target grade" is a 9, but I can't see how she'd cover enough ground in the next year to finish the syllabus, and she might therefore end up failing to do as well as she would if she waited until year 11.
• I'm concerned about putting her under too much pressure too soon. She will still be 13 this time next year, which seems very young. However, she doesn't seem to think this is an issue.
• If she later decided that she wanted to do French A-level, I'm not sure that she'd find it easy after having had a gap of 2 years. I know from my own experience how easy it is to forget languages if you don't use them. At the moment, she says she isn't interested in doing French A-level anyway, but that could change.

I'd be really interested to hear your thoughts and/or experiences. The other pupil is half French and will almost certainly do the early option as she speaks French at home and has an older sibling who did the same. DD's situation is a bit different - DH and I are both good linguists but neither of us speak French to any sort of respectable standard, so she wouldn't have any help at home.

Nobody?

Hi, I was a head of Mod Langs a few years ago (now SAHM) and I doubt the school would recommend your daughter for early entry if they didn’t believe she was ready and were willing to put the support in place for her to succeed. My next step would be to ask for a meeting with her teacher to talk your concerns through. It might be a good idea to get one GCSE out of the way early to relieve the Y11 pressure, however you know your daughter best and I think you should really have a chat to her teacher and take it from there.

My stepson did a GCSE a year early. He got a B. He got As or A*s in all the other subjects he took the following year, so we wonder if he'd have got a better grade if he'd waited. So I'd hesitate. (I've also hear stories of schools doing it to push their percentage of pass rates up rather than because it's the best thing for the actual child).

Thank you both for your comments.

N21, it's reassuring that you don't think they'd put her in for it unless she was ready and were prepared to offer the support. I am just struggling to get my head around how she could do it two years early without missing out a lot of the input. Or is it that there is just a lot of repetition by the time they get to year 10/11?

I guess my concern is that she may do less well as a result of rushing it, like Honey's dss. Not that it would really matter, but I do think she has the potential to do really well in French.

I don't think it would really take the pressure off in GCSE year, as she would simply do another option instead of the French.

Honey, I did wonder if there would be some sort of advantage to the school in putting kids through early, but I don't really understand how that works. Surely it's in the school's best interest for her to get the best grade she can, rather than do it early?

I will ask for a meeting with the French teacher, as you suggest N21.

Out of interest, Honey, could I ask how your dss feels now about the GCSE that he did early? Does he wish he had waited instead?

I think that it bothered him initially but it's water under the bridge now he's at uni.

Thanks Honey

Having gone through the university application process with DD this year I simply cannot understand why schools put so much emphasis on getting students to take more GCSEs than are necessary, by getting them to take some early.

DD has been looking at medical schools, and they only look at the best 8 GCSEs, and want them all to be taken at the same time. If your DD acheived a grade 9 in year 9 and didn't do so well with the others in year 11 the grade 9 won't be taken into account. It is far, far better to take 9 or 10 GCSEs and get excellent grades, than 11 or 12 and drop a few grades.

Also, your point about continuing into A level is a very valid one. If there is any chance at all that your DD wants to take French at A level then taking it at GCSE in year 9 is not a good idea.

Don’t take it early. It’s highly unlikely they can cover the full syllabus which is broader then before. It’s not a good idea to take anything early and certainly not in y9 unless she’s a genius and is a nailed in 9. Do it at the right time. 9 GCSEs is fine. It also keeps it in her memory for A level because she will have constant practice and the teacher could set extension work if she’s above a 9. Or even start on A level work.

My concern would be that the school would be quite happy to have her take the GCSE early, and get a pass (maybe C or B). If she waited a couple of years, she would most probably get an A or A* (or the numerical equivalent).
If it were my child, I wouldn't want her to take a GCSE in Year 9. I think it is too early. (I have no educational qualification; there was a petition at my DD's school for them to be allowed to take maths GCSE in Year 10 rather than Year 11 which I refused to sign!).

A boy in dds year did it. He’d lived in France for two years though & he followed up the GCSE with an AS level in Year 10.

As a teacher of GSCE / A Level French I really doubt that the school could cover the syllabus in such a short space of time. I would speak to her teachers, but I don't see the long term advantage of doing an MFL GCSE early.

Thank you all for your comments. The general consensus seems to be that she should wait until Year 11, which makes a lot of sense to me. I will speak to the teacher, as suggested. Ultimately, I will let dd make her own decision but I do want to give her some guidance.

Can anyone give me any insight into why the school might want to encourage this? What's in it from their point of view?

I wouldn't waste too much time trying to understand the school’s logic. IMO schools manage MFLs extremely badly. Their reasoning may well be based on all sorts of fallacies.

Can anyone give me any insight into why the school might want to encourage this?
A few options really-

Lack of students studying MFL in the current y10 cohort so getting some from current y9 to do it next year means that's a couple of extra students in thr MFL bucket for progress 8 (so it might be in the school's interest to get a 6/7 for them this year vs a 9 in a couple of years)

It might mean that the students will take more options which bump the open bracket in y11 because they've already done the MFL. (One ok school in our region is apparently the best for progress but then you look at how they make all students do BTECs and ECDL which significantly bumps their open category for P8.) Your DC's school might be trying to get the benefits of pulling P8 up with the open bucket without reducing the curriculum too much.

They wouldn't suggest it if your DC wasn't very capable, but I would think this option is an option to benefit the school, not the children.

Thank you user and Maisie. One of the reasons I'm keen to understand the school's motivations is that dd really likes and trusts her French teacher and can't imagine why the school would recommend doing the GCSE early if they didn't genuinely think it was in her best interests. While I'd like to believe that, I'd also like to offer dd an alternative perspective.

I don't really understand how the Progress 8 thing works. Would a pass at any grade count towards their Progress 8 score, regardless of whether or not the individual child has met their targets?

I wish these things could just be about what's best for the individual child instead of all the stupid hoops that the schools now have to jump through!

A child has to get expected progress of higher to count to progress 8. 0 is on target abd then it's +/- depending on how far away you are.

I can't see how schools can have a P8 based target of a 9 (3 levels of progress from the old level 5a is only a 6 or 7 depending on which calculation you use) so the likelihood is that getting a 7 would be fine for P8.

If you have a few talented linguists put into a year with poor linguists then their performance could mitigate some of the negative P8 scores.

Progress 8 is about monitoring progress of cohorts though, not individual students.

If she wants to do languages at A Level, I wouldn't sit it early. Equally if she really wants an 8/9 then I wouldn't sit it early. If she enjoys it, wouldn't mijd a go and would be happy with a 6/7 then do it (but MFL teachers on here will be best placed to comment on how likely that outcome is. I know I couldn't teach my GCSE spec in a year to a high standard)

I can't see how schools can have a P8 based target of a 9 (3 levels of progress from the old level 5a is only a 6 or 7 depending on which calculation you use) so the likelihood is that getting a 7 would be fine for P8.

Thanks Maisie. She did the new SATs with the scaled scores, rather than the old levels, so I've no idea how that translates into the target grades for GCSE. I don't even know how or why anyone would use maths and English SAT scores to set targets in other subjects.

Is there any way we can find out what her actual target might be, rather than the one on the system which may just be aspirational?

God no, don’t do this. They probably want to enter the half French pupil early (which is reasonable if she is fluent) and wanted her to have a friend to sit with in the extra lesson a week so picked your DD.

Don’t leave it to your DD to make the decision, she trusts her French teacher but the evidence is that early entry leaves kids with lower grades than they would have had if they sat at the correct time.

If you’re still tempted, you could always ask the school how many times they have done this with the new spec which is much harder (probably zero) with pupils who are not bilingual and what the outcomes were. Your DD would most likely be a guinea-pig.

School systems are about getting huge cohorts of children through hoops. There’s not much anyone can do about that. If you want your DC to get the best possible GCSE profile, you should probably have her take GCSE French, along with all her other GCSEs, in Y11. If you want her to learn French you should send her to France!

from what i hear universities now want to see your best 8 taken in ONE sitting.
it's not about lining up a whole extra batch of GCSEs.

If she is getting bored though then it might be worth it, i know a few dcs who take their language GCSE in year 9 but they are all from bilingual homes.

from another perspective, if she did do the GCSE in yr9 and got say a 6 or 7, could she then carry on with it and ahve another go at it in yr11.

Could she "forget" it was ever done university application-wise?

Universities don’t always count bilingual children’s GCSE in their home language as an academic achievement, so there are quite good reasons for bilingual children taking their language GCSE outside the normal Y11 sitting.

UCAS requires all examinations taken in secondary school / from the age of 11 to be listed on the UCAS form. So, no, à GCSE cannot be forgotten and retaken.

makes sense, thanks.

how do they know if a child is bilingual? . i do actually know of someone studying MFL at Oxford who switched to their mum's surname to "hide" their spanish roots!