GCSE options- humanities...

[Hmmph]

My son is trying to chose his options.
So far he has
Maths, Eng Lang and Lit and Triple Science
French
Computer Science
Religious Studies

And he is stuck on whether to do History or Business as his final choice.

He is fairly academic and does well in all subjects, although he prefers maths and science.

In my head, it is traditional and better to do History as I feel you should do History or geography so you have a humanities subject. I also know this is compulsory to get an EBacc.

But he is wavering as business sounds interesting and he already has an essay subject in religious studies.

What does the wisdom of Mumsnet think?

Thanks all. Whilst a “selective” school, I think that as a previous poster has said they do pretty much let everyone in!

It wasn’t that he hated history and loves business, he was wavering between the two. He does, however, dislike Geography.

Anyway, in the end he decided by himself he wanted to do History as he hadn’t read the topics covered properly!

Thank you everyone for all your help and input and all your different points of view.

Btw, the school never mentioned EBacc, but I have friends in state schools and spend a lot of time on here, so I was very aware of it.

My son goes to a selective private school. We had a long lecture about forgetting our own experiences and not categorising subjects as "soft" or "hard". My son wanted to do Academic PE as one of his ten GCSEs. I still had a few lingering doubts so had a quick chat with the admissions team at my old uni. They confirmed this was definitely the case and your child should pick the subjects that they enjoy.

My son did history and geography and it was a lot of content. I'd say his GCSE geography had more content than my A level or degree. He really enjoyed history, partly as it was based around Germany from 1918-1945. I'd say it had less content than geography.

That said, I'm being a hypocrite and my younger son is choosing between PE and DT rather than doing both as we feel doing 9 non practical-type GCSEs might be better for university applications...

Fab, glad it’s all sorted to everyone’s satisfaction.
Hope he loves the GCSE History.

Glad you got sorted! We were pondering this same issue until late last night (right up until the deadline 🤦‍♀️)

My dcs are both at selective grammar schools. Dd did business, loved it and achieved a 9. At ds's school, they do economics, but he isn't too keen.

Ds has chosen Spanish, history, music and geography. He was very torn between geography and PE though and I'm still unsure if he is making the right decision.

Does anyone know anything about PE compared to geography?

@Mostlee in what sense? They are pretty different.

PE is aimed at sporty DC, my ds2 had to offer three sports, one tea, one individual and one either. IME unless a students competes at a reasonable outside school it's not a great idea. Ds plays footy for a local team and competes for county at athletics. A mate of his who is a good athlete was able to offer a team sport he did in school. There's a good deal of theory too, biology and stuff about sports psychology.

Geography is great if you like it, dd did it and took it on to A level too. She said if you do it, it's worth learning all your case studies in yr 10 to get ahead. She now studies Eng lit at uni but still references points in geography (eg things about how cities develop) and says it's useful to support her degree too (probs more A level than GCSE there).