Tell me about Citizenship GCSE. Which is apparently compulsory at my DD's school. She doesn't want to do it.

[bellinisurge]

As it says in the subject, Citizenship GCSE has now been deemed compulsory at my DD's school. She would prefer to do Triple Science but doesn't want to lose a free space in her GSCE options to do it. She deliberately didn't go to a faith school (despite being in a feeder primary) to avoid having RE GCSE forced on her.
Any suggestions?

@bellinisurge

Thanks for the helpful comments. I have no problem with her having citizenship lessons, it's important and useful life info - she hears it from us anyway because of our jobs- but not worth clogging up a GCSE slot. I will ask about what it clashes with on the proposed timetable. She has to do an MFL which she isn't keen on but accepts it's usefulness for future career purposes - I have an MFL degree. She commented that even if it is an "easy degree" which will get her a good grade, anyone seeing it on her future cv will know that and disregard it. Probably only a bit true but I think it's a good point.

(As for the odd poster telling me to "suck it up", I hope that they didn't stay up too late after CBeebies finished. I'm too polite to say Fuck Off but it's implied)

You are getting some dickwad responses on this thread!

I'd want to avoid it too - it's a waste of a subject, your daughter is effectively being limited to 8 GCSEs. RE was compulsory at KS4 when I was at school, but those who did RE GCSE had extra lessons with their exam cohort, rather than the 30mins a week with their form group.

I suspect the school is doing it to boost their exam results as it's an easy A, which is shit for students who are capable of more challenging subjects.

Sorry, no advice, just solidarity, and a recommendation to see if you can get the school to budge.

So doing French instead of Citizenship will only matter if your DD goes on to take French A level

Well no. It matters if you want to be able to speak a basic level of French. Schools should not just be exam factories.

4amWitchingHour

I agree. I can't see any parents of kids at dds school going for this setup! RS is compulsory at their school either as full gcse or half, but all mine did full and then did A level Philosophy and ethics.

Citizenship sounds like a fat waste of a gcse.

This year's year 9s may well be 'behind' on their core subjects due to online learning.

I would have sympathy for a school who decided to drop down usual number of GCSEs to ensure sufficient time in the time table in y10/11 to cover maths/English/science. Then if they decided to use a small amount of time saved to throw in a life-skills-GCSE such as Citizenship then I can see their logic.

It still comes down to how much time the school is allocating. An hour a week or a 'full option' allowance.

a lot of schools split year groups into two or three and timetabling for several hundred pupils is very complicated

Yes, it is very complicated, but that doesn't mean a school should force a worthless GCSE on a student

(I'm not saying the content is worthless - it sounds useful and interesting and I agree it's good as a compulsory subject, but doing it to GCSE level seems ridiculous)

Our school does PSHE - is this the same thing? Tbh this is the dds least favourite part of the week so they'd be horrified if they had to take anything like it at gcse.

It's a pain in the arse when they're obliged to do a subject they're not interested, my DD (Yr11) feels much the same about French.

She chose Citizenship over RE - faith school so they had to do one or the other, it was the lesser of two evils as far as she was concerned.

She loves it and is on target for a 9 in her GCSE, has joined the local Youth Council and having been keen to be a photographer is now planning to take A Levels in Law and Politics with a view to taking a law degree.

It covers a really wide of issues that are relevant in every day life and encourage debate. If your daughter can go into it with an open mind she might find she really enjoys it.

I've just asked Dd2( year 11 state comp) and she has never heard of citizenship,or a GCSE in the subject,none of her friends are doing it and it wasn't offered when she took her options.
Her school is classed as deprived,but has a fantastic head who has dragged then out of special measures and has been over subscribed the past two years.

I have a Y11 daughter. She’s also having to study Citizenship but although it’s compulsory, they’re not doing a GCSE in it. It’s just an hour a week running alongside their GCSEs.

I think it’s compulsory at KS3. I’m not sure about KS4 but all kids will definitely have done it through KS3

Citizenship is a much less rigorous GCSE than RS which is extremely interesting

I don't know how accurate this is but I think Citizenship can be what you make it. Certainly in DDs school the girls that study it are a wide mix of the less academic and the very highly academic who aspire to careers in law, politics, social science etc.

It covers a really wide of issues that are relevant in every day life and encourage debate. If your daughter can go into it with an open mind she might find she really enjoys it.

This ^^.

I don't know why I am sticking up for Citizenship because I would rather DD had studied French than Citizenship, but her school was very poor at teaching French, and DD hated the lessons. I have French A level so it was obvious to me how badly taught it was. I also think that we are generally poor at foreign languages in this country, but that is really for another thread.

I did find that DD was taught a lot of things that were useful though. It was more like general knowledge than anything else. They covered moral issues, politics, the electoral system, Brexit and anything that was useful about modern day living. I think maybe the answer is to have an hour a week so they can learn something useful about life in general, but use it as downtime because it is a non examined subject.

Just checked in with DD...she does 5 hours per fortnight timetabled Citizenship.

It's not about the subject. I have no problem with it as a subject. Same as I am obviously fine with them doing PE - it's important for all sorts of reasons. But not as a GCSE.

A compulsory GCSE, that is

Expected to read or listen to the news every day at dds school and discuss once or twice a week. Seems to cover it.

But do a compulsory GCSE?

Is it an academy school? If so, they can say it is compulsory but they can't enforce it. As my dd's school found out when I told them so about a subject they told her she had to take. We disagreed, and they backed down in the end.

Interesting. It's about to become an academy school. Scooping up other poor performing local schools as part of it.

@TeenPlusTwenties

Cara I'm bitter because at my high-performing independent girls school we had to choose between Physics& Chemistry OR Biology, so I was forced to drop biology.

And I’m bitter because at my all girls, v academic indie, we had to do all 3, no option, so I couldn’t do art. Had I been able to, I probably would have gone on to do art foundation after A-levels.

I did a subject at school back in the 90s called 'parentcraft'. It was non GCSE. It took the slot where I could have chosen a different GCSE but I liked the sound of it more than doing GCSE PE or an extra language or more science (which was basically the choices).
There were 4 girls in that class who had actually became pregnant before we finished our GCSEs. Tbh having done 'parentcraft' and therefore having one less GCSE was probably actually better really in what they actually needed in life.
I don't understand this 'waste of a GCSE' thing. It's knowledge that's the important thing surely?

@bellinisurge

Or you could be helpful. Hope you enjoyed being snarky and it made you feel good.

Sorry but I agree. It's a good chance for your DD to learn the difficult lesson that life isn't all about what we 'want' to do. If she feels that strongly about not wanting to do Citizenship, she can move schools. Otherwise, she must do what lessons the school offer.

You could argue that most people don't use what they learn in science at GCSE but it doesn't mean they don't have to do them, even if they really don't enjoy them.

I would have much preferred to have a subject like citizenship than boring old science. I hated the fact that science was compulsory.

@HelloDulling and @TeenPlusTwenties I think what all of our experiences show is that forcing pupils to do GCSEs they really don't want to do for no good reason* when this has the knock on effect of cutting them off from a subject they really do want to do and feel passionate about is a bad thing (copyright Sellars and Yeatman ).

*Good reason for forcing say, the mathematically inept to do GCSE maths would be that we all need to be able to balance our weekly budget, or forcing those who find English dull beyond words would be that we all need to be able to read and write.

@LindaEllen , I'm quite happy that my daughter gets opportunities to learn important life lessons- thanks for the sermon. But I'm seeing a missed opportunity to build on her academic ability by forcing her to do a less valuable GCSE. It doesn't appear to be a common compulsory GCSE judging by the responses.