How many GCSEs is your child taking?

[Alpacasoup]

My DD is in Year 11 and is taking 10 GCSEs. She is a bright girl but does not have a great memory and really struggled with the retention of information for her Year 10 exams and is already worrying about January mocks. I'm hoping that the actual GCSEs will be easier in some respects as even though there will be more content to cover, they will have longer to revise. For the Year 10 exams they were getting homework and learning new information right up to the exams so it was really tough for her as she needs time to absorb it.

Anyway, I was wondering if 10 is the norm? It seems like a lot, especially if it includes the three sciences. If it gets too much I'll be tempted to persuade her to drop one so am holding that thought in reserve at the moment. She's on track to get 6,7,8s.

At my DC's school they do 10 if they're doing three sciences or 9 if they're doing double science.

I'm just a year older than your Mum. I did 5 Highers in 5th year then crashed 2 in 6th year alongside my SYSs (for the non-Scots, crashing a Higher is doing it without doing the O grade, not failing it).

I am a scientist and am recruiting new graduates all the time. Science has become more important not less in the last 30 years so if you are young enough to be my child I'm really surprised you only did 1 science at standard grade, at 16 education should be broad and by only doing 1 science standard grade you really restricted your career options, particularly in Scotland which has always educated more broadly for longer than England.

@Dido2010 Thank you - that's really helpful