Is 4 GCSes enough for uni/jobs?

[themunster]

DD16 missed her GCSE exams and all of Year 11 do to personal family circumstances and MH issues. She has got onto a full time college course where they take 4 GCSEs over the span of a year, English and Maths, and then she's chosen Biology and Psychology to do aside. She wants to go straight onto Level 3 Health and Social care next year as if she did Level 2 followed by Level 3 she'd be there 4 years and would lose funding for a year. College's typical requirements to do Level 3 is 5 GCSEs from grade 4-9. However the college GCSE head has said that they allow students who they have taught GCSEs onsite to Level 3 as long as they get 4 good passes (so grade 5 rather than 4).

I'm confident DD will pass all 4 (was predicted 6s/7s at school) and therefore get onto Level 3, but I'm concerned only having 4 will be detrimental in getting into uni and jobs. She wants to do child nursing. Having looked, having 4 does rule out quite a few uni's (for example Manchester and Lincoln want 5), though there are some that just want passes in English and Maths. But even if they only require those 2 passes, surely if DD and another student who passed 8 GCSEs at school got the same grades on Btec both applied, the uni would choose the 8 GCSE student rather than DD with 4, wouldn't they?

My niece wanted to be a nurse specialising in children. Unfortunately she didn’t do aswell as expected in her A levels and was going to resit when an opportunity came for her to work in Great Ormond Street - not as a nurse but I think as what was known as auxiliary (can’t think what it’s called now). She started that and loved it, around a year in she was offered the opportunity to train as a nurse but being paid still by them and doing placements on the wards there. So it’s saved her a massive amount of money and guarantees her a job with them at the end as a nurse.

I’d encourage your daughter to keep an eye out for that kind of thing too. There’s means and ways of getting to where you want, doesn’t always work out the way you thought, but in this case couldn’t have worked out any better