My DD had mocks in early January, and got her results back yesterday. She has done well in English, History and the more "wordy" subjects, but has failed science and maths. She just scraped a 3 in her trilogy science and also got a high 2 in maths. Her science teachers have stated in her notes that she got close to full marks on the wordy 6 marker questions in the sciene papers, but she seemed to have no idea what to do when it comes to the maths aspect. They are also saying her maths isn't satisfactory for GCSE level and she is having a meeting with her maths teacher and a few other students on Monday where they will apparently create a timetable for booster sessions etc. DD is very upset, she is a clever girl. She got an 8 in her English, she does very well in art, she loves history etc, but she just cannot get her head around maths. I was the same but managed to scrape a pass in my O-Levels (by a couple of marks!) through pure forcing myself. Her friends have tried to help her and I've also tried to go through some past papers with her but she becomes very distressed. She can't seem to access any of the questions beyond the 4th page, and anything she does learn she forgets. She is usually a confident girl but maths makes her doubt herself and it's very sad to see.
She has told me that the teachers have said they may be offering students who failed the mock the chance to do Functional Skills maths instead. DD is keen to do this as she has looked at the past papers online and she feels it is suited to her as the questions are focused on real life application rather than stuff like trig and simultaneous equations. However, I've been looking at it and apparently it doesn't hold the same weight as a maths GCSE. I looked at a few unis near us and a couple further afield and a lot of them said they do not consider funtional skills a valid qualification. Even the local college insist they want GCSE English and Maths passes for their Level 3 Btecs. I'm worried also that Functional Skills rather than GCSE would raise an eyebrow on job applications.
Obviously I'm not a teacher so I don't really know which is why I'm asking here. Could FS limit options? If I'm wrong about all this then I'd be happy for her to do it, but I can't help but think she'd be better knuckling down to pass the GCSE. Worst case scenario she fails and we reconsider our options.