Dropping Art GCSE?

[emMo13]

DD wants to drop art GCSE because she feels the workload is too high and she doesn’t have enough time to revise for other subjects. DD is a procrastinator but has recently started to get down to it and has now realised she’s started too late. I have been telling her she needs to get her finger out for since half way through year 10, but to no avail. Maybe it’s my shoddy parenting. Regardless, I’m willing to accommodate her wishes because I don’t think that not letting her drop it out of spite is going to achieve anything at this point. I’m 100% sure that if DD replaced the time she was spending doing art, she’d do incredibly well at the rest of her subjects (she has 10 others, and did RE last year), since she spends days on it and nothing else. Yes - it’s a time management thing when it comes to art (I’ve been blasted about that before) but she insists that if she had to do it to a passable quality she’d still spend a significant amount of time on it and there’s no point spending that time just to get a 4 or a 5. Thoughts? Has anyone ever dropped art so late?

Schools make all sorts of decisions on behalf of the children within them. It is rather their job.

Goodbye, your attitude to schools and staff other than your children's school comes through quite clearly throughout the thread.

MaisyPops I'm a little more objective about my DCs' school than you appear to think (I mean, how can you know what I think? I've mentioned one different approach that they take to dropping GCSEs and the fact that subject teachers seem to know what career options are facilitated by taking their subject).

In fact I admire the work and initiatives of a whole host of other schools in both the state and the independent sector, where the schools are led by first class HTs.

At the same time I find narrow minded, moralistic, unaspirational and unimaginative schools quite a pain and don't think they do the best by their students. It is an absurdity to think that all teachers are high quality or even tolerable at their job, but we do have an enormous shortage at the recruitment end so that tends to mean that too many in the job who might be edged out by better teachers aren't, and hang around for too long, usually moaning and pulling down any progress that their students might make.

Is it ever going to be possible to have an educational discussion on MN without at least one pompous, self aggrandising, argumentative, blinkered parent trampling all over the thread ?

sigh ... so dull.

I thunk you possibly mean teacher Jenny not parent.

jenny
Probably not. But that's standard isn't it.
Experts on the whole system eh.

I think you almost certainly mean teacher Jenny.

Obviously not thunk.

Jenny,

If you mean Maisy and me ... you will mean teachers..

If you mean Goodbye, you do mean (self-declared) parent and (I surmise) governor or similar role..she has a role in the school over and above parent (otherwise would not have sat on multiple teacher / leadership selection panels) but I don't THINK she is a teacher as she has declared herself to be lazy. Though I know some less than brilliant teachers, I know vanishingly few who are lazy.

Tbf, we all have our hobby horses, so apologies if I have ridden my particular ones to the detriment of this thread.

Of course, goodbye may be a teacher - she wouldn't declare whether she was or not upthread - so if that is the case case, you definitely meant teacher and we will have to work out which of us you meant ...or all of us

cantkeepawayforever
I agree. That's quite true.

One of mine is an insistence that what works in one places must work everywhere else.

I hate it when consultants who don't teach do it, when colleagues decide we should do X just because school Y did it, I dislike it when parents call up and correct us on how to do our job because their friend's children go to a different school and they said... And i hate it when armchair educationalists do it.

E.g. Why can't my child do Romeo and Juliet? Their tutor says that it's a much easier text and they don't get why you're doing Macebth.
Right everyone, this term we are starting with a new behaviour policy because there's a school on Twitter that does it and ofsted liked it.
My friend's children are allowed to have independent study instead of doing MFL. I want to pull my child from German.
There's a literacy problem with boys so we are going to get accelerates reader because at another school it sorted it for them
We should have a 3 year ks4 because school B did and their progress 8 was off the chart.
We are doing x initiative because the local private school did it

Making any school leadership decision is nuanced and will rely on complex factors.

Maisy

Totally agree. Luckily our SLT are reasonably sensible. We find even from year to year what has worked with one year group will not work with the next set of year 11! Some years we have a small support group at GCSE, some years totally mixed, some years a top set, some years completely set.

It sounds like we have similar SLTs bobby. Good leaders know their schools and their contexts. It's common sense really.

One year we revamped how we did options because our SLT (and all staff) could see we had one of those wobbly/funny year groups coming up through ks3. Another year we put in additional small groups at KS3 to try and overcome some weaknesses before they got to KS4.
We have some students doing 11 or 12 GCSEs and others doing core plus vocational routes or off site education.

It works well for our cohorts. It wouldn't work in the school down the road.

MaisyPops my initial point made early on was that it's clearly possible to allow a student to drop a subject on pragmatic grounds since our school takes a pragmatic rather than a doctrinal approach and the sky hasn't yet fallen in.

The strong fightback I immediately got from you seemed based overwhelmingly on the ground that you know best and a mere parent can't possibly know better than teacher. Ignoring the very obvious point that parents are capable of having additional roles besides that of mere parent. As I said, it does sometimes seem that a fair few classroom teachers on MN think that they alone know the secret of life, although there are very honourable exceptions it's worth saying, who are also always courteous and polite even when views clash. Those are the teachers who presumably are better operators in the classroom since they are probably open to exchanges of views with their students, who may indeed be brighter or more interesting than they are themselves and may well have things of value to add.

Throughout this thread I've kept very firmly to the fact that my patch is selective education but I do think that if the comprehensive ideal is all that it's cracked up to be then high achievers - which seems to include OP's DD - should get the same type of education and be treated with the same approach as those students who benefit from segregated selective education.

My comment about my own laziness was in relation to intervention on school matters on behalf of my DC. I can't recall a single clash in fifty five years of my DCs' cumulative secondary education.

In terms of overall lassitude it's probably quite hard to achieve with eight DC born as singletons within twelve years, but if other people in the same situation can manage it then all credit!

Bobbybobbins I think it's well known that different cohorts can differ markedly. It's very puzzling that one Y11 cohort may be generally biddable and conscientious while the next are rabble rousers.

should get the same type of education and be treated with the same approach as those students who benefit from segregated selective education.

The thing is, in the very specific issue of being allowed to drop a subject due to a potential lower result, not all segregated selective education establishments allow this [locally, I know that modifications are possible in highly extenuating circumstances such as serious illness, but not under the OP's circumstances]

So your initial argument on this thread was that all comprehensives should do for an able pupil exactly as your specific selective establishment would - ie allow, or even encourage, dropping a subject with a lower grade - even though other selective schools might act very differently from yours.

It would perhaps be more accurate to say that 'in the OP's circumstances, some schools, of whatever type, might allow the dropping of the subject, and goodbye's school would allow this. However, this is not universally true of selective schools, and not universally true of any other type of school either - all SLTs, in all school types, make decisions like this based on local factors and their detailed knowledge of the pupil.'

Does that cover it?

Yes that's a better way of putting it can'tkeepawayforever my juxtaposition wasn't great. The thing is, a lot of comments were made about how it's not possible to let a student loose in a comprehensive setting. Someone else made the point that this particular student appears studious etc, so that's where the thing was amateurishly conflated.

cantkeepawayforever
Well put.
Much better than 'this school allows students to drop on demand, why shouldn't that school? There's no difference between sectors, go on what's the difference, it's exactly the same in the OP as in a selective school because the child is able, you lot think so poorly of comprehensive students, at my DC school teachers let them study different subjects in their room but clearly not all teachers are very good. You keep saying why schools may say no, that proves how inflexible and doctrinal they are. Why won't you tell me the difference. You're not answering my question etc. Oh now you've presented it as simple as possible I'll claim you're being way too simplistic.'

The thing is, a lot of comments were made about how it's not possible to let a student loose in a comprehensive setting.
Nobody said an individual student in a comprehensive couldn't manage to study. People have repeatedly pointed out complexities in the comprehensive system and the limitations of self-directed study at 15.
This is my point. You're willingly aiming to have a pop at comprehensives for all these supposed failings (and not doing what your DC school do) and then when people point out complexities you claim we have low opinions of comprehensive students.

It's baffling.

Bobbybobbins I think it's well known that different cohorts can differ markedly.

Very patronising. I am not proclaiming that my point is some kind of amazing discovery I have made, rather using it to illustrate to Maisy (and anyone else who is interested) how schools are flexible beyond the original discussion about dropping a GCSE. It was framed as a positive comment so I don't really see why you need to be so critical.

Obviously a lot of my students are cleverer than me - good! In fact one of my students achieved the highest mark in the country at A Level in my subject, in a comprehensive.

And I'm leaving this thread. That last comment by nobody has really irritated me as needless criticism of a positive point I was making.

Bobbybobbins it's hardly patronising to pick up a point and say it's a well known and interesting phenomenon but I'm way past bothering about misinterpretations.

MaisyPops give it a rest. All I said was: this can be looked at in a pragmatic way without the earth freezing over. You got shirty because you knew better. And was a parent. I didn't let it go. End of. I have no problem with the comprehensive system at all, not the selective, not the independent. So yes, basically, give it a rest.

I can't cook and type: You got shirty because you knew better. And I was a parent.

Yes actually MaisyPops I've just re-read the start of the thread while grating 1kg cheese. You might do well to do the same. You do seem to get quite harrumphy quite quickly. I checked back to see whether I'd been inadvertently rude but I think I'm in the clear.

bobby
I knew what you meant. They'd have been critical whatever you said.
On something I posted (that they later said they agreed with complete with snug face), their first reply was why I clearly didn't know what they were talking about. Argumentative for the sake of it and then playing the victim when challenged.

You got shirty because you knew better. And I was a parent.
I got shirty because you insisted your DC school was better for doing things one way, repeatedly argued that your questions weren't being answered despite me answering, other posters answering and me quoting my replies answering your question and falsely claimed that staff on this thread who have a working knowledge of the comprehensive system and the complexities have a poor view of comprehensive students and their parents.

I don't mean grate 1kg cheese (unless you're also making a macaroni cheese for ten). I meant re-read.

Cross posts MaisyPops.

I can assure you I don't in any way feel victimised.

I was certainly shocked by the characterisation of comprehensive students and referred back to the post I meant - not yours as it happens.

It's probably time to call it a day and just agree that we find each other equally irritating.