Y9s and option subjects in lockdown

[lurchersrule]

I'm just wondering how your Y9s are addressing subjects they know they'll be dropping in a few months in the current situation? Ds has always hated art with a passion, hates most elements of DT and loathes ICT! He is actually a well-motivated student and always gets high effort and behaviour marks in these subjects when in school, but he is struggling a bit with them in lockdown, especially the latter two.

I just wondered how awful it would be if he just didn't do some of it. He has just shown me a DT task he has done (to design a takeaway product for someone with food intolerances) and in all honestly it looks like a three year old did it. I'm wondering whether he wouldn't be better just not doing some of it. He has done the Q & A stuff fine, and written a reasonable justification for his 'product', it's just the design element that's really half-arsed! But would it be awful to tell him not to do these main tasks? It just seems a bit pointless when he'll drop them soon and some of the practical elements are so hard to replicate at home.

I'd also like to hear from non-core Y9 teachers. As an English teacher I don't have this, but I saw from his last parents' evening a few weeks ago that teachers are very much targeting (or not!) those they want to take through to GCSEs and therefore is it just best all round if ds takes a more minimal approach as long as he does something so they're not having to chase him up? Probably clutching at straws there but wanted to ask...

My DS is now Y12, but did exactly the same once he'd picked options - basically gave up with the subjects he was dropping. No amount of my saying that it wasn't an excuse to stop working at other things got through to him, and in the end I decided to pick my battles and, as long as he wasn't being disruptive to others (he wasn't) let his teachers follow up if they had issues with this approach.

On a (slightly) related note, my Y10 DD is not doing any PE at all(they are meant to submit details of what they have done so this should be obvious) and no one has followed up at all. Whereas the school is following up for students missing options subjects, so I guess they have adopted a "don't care" approach to this. This is probably individual to schools and maybe even teachers though.

This was ds last year - we made him persist with the subjects he wasn't taking, do the work, hand his homework in etc on the principle that there is always stuff in life you don't like doing and you just have to suck it up really and its good practice. That said, as long as it was done I didn't check the quality, unlike his option/core subjects and it was a relief when they got to the point where they said they'd just do their options but that wasn't till June I think

DD in year 9 last year stopped bothering with the ones she was dropping, as she was struggling. After a while the school made it official policy that they could do this (with the exception of the holocaust topic in history, as they felt it was important they covered that).