PE A level if football is your only sport?

[Roundaboot]

DS is in year 11 and considering options for A level, one of them being PE. He's currently doing PE GSCE and predicted a 7.
His PE teacher at school is steering him away from A level and towards BTEC as she says that unless you are playing a sport at county level, it's too hard to get a good grade in the practical aspect. He doesn't want to do a BTEC though, as he prefers the A Level syllabus and the fact that it's mostly exam-assessed

DS is currently only playing football (he was doing a couple of other sports but these got dropped due to time/practical constraints) to a decent, but not particularly high level

I was just wondering if anyone's DC had experience of doing PE A level with football as their only sport and how they got on? Is it worth him picking up a new, more obscure sport purely for A level?

Hi OP My ds took A level PE and his sport was football. He also played a couple of other sports to a decent level but he had played footy for so long and it was his main sport at the time.

He played for a local club - he's a goalkeeper - so not to any very fancy level. He knows a lot about footy tho (fan and watched matches since aged about 5, played since age 6) which is key. He got a very good practical grade and a tip-top grade for his analysis task - he said lots of other ppl had to retake it but his was already good.

In the end he got an A which is great, but he, his mate and maybe I even reckon he would have got an A-star if he had sat the exams (2021 so TAGs) as he always does well in exams and we think the school for various reasons were cautious about PE marks and coursework in general (bc of moderation down in PE and music in previous years).

Anyway the footy at local level was in no way a barrier to his achievement. FWIW he considered athletics as well and was told that throwing discus (his main discipline) 35m in year 12 would get him a good grade - he would easily have achieved this. I think one thing in footy's favour was that you play it in the winter so you could offer experience and skills from the winter of yr 13, while athletics (well discus anyway!) you only do outdoors so in the summer, so year 12.

Good luck to your DS - my lad loved his PE A level; lots of places local to us no longer offer it which is a shame as it really supported his biology (which is what he went on to study at uni).

Completely agree with other poster. The practical element is such a tiny part of PE A level that it really doesn’t matter what level of football you play at, obviously the higher mark you get but it certainly didn’t stop my son as he was got most of his marks from the theory side and the game analysis which DS found really interesting.My DS did his exams this year and got an A (eventually after getting it remarked and gaining 6 marks!) and he just plays football at grassroots level. He is on a gap year(due to waiting for remarks) but doing Sports Science next year.

My daughter is currently doing A-level PE after completing GCSE PE earlier this year and honestly as you’ve probably gathered it’s mostly theory anyway and she does boxing, having one sport isn’t an issue they just want the student to be participating in a sport three days a week (well that was her experience!)

I’d echo the above the practical element of Alevel PE isn’t as onerous as it was for gcse with its 3 sports req. My DD is doing it but she is competing at a national level in one obscure sport, she has checked and it is listed phew! As it’s a subset of a more mainstream sport.

Thanks all! I really appreciate the feedback