77766665555 for GCSE mocks

[basilbrush]

DD in Year 11 just got the following in her GCSE mocks: 77766665555

She did revise hard for them but is not very organised and really lacks confidence in herself in many ways. She has also missed lots of school (mainly in Year 10) due to medical problems so I am really proud of her for doing this well tbh! I think these results are a fairly accurate representation of what she will get in the summer - I don't think there will be any huge jumps up in grades

She is very keen on going to sixth form college with her most of her friends and doing A-levels. However, she is thinking of Biology, Psychology and English and I am concerned she will not be able to cope with 'meaty' subjects like this. She says she want to keep her options open and not do anything too specific at 16 as she doesn't have a specific career in mind yet.

However, her current school have basically suggested that she look into doing BTECs at the local FE college as a 'back up' options

There's lots of open days etc on at the minute - should I be encouraging her to go and visit them? She just assumes she'll be doing A-levels with everyone else and I don't want to dent her confidence when she's trying really hard. Equally, I don't want her to go down an inappropriate path either because I was too scared to be honest with her and tell her what her school have said!

No, Ofsted now take a very dim view of GCSEs starting in year 9 as they feel it represents an early narrowing of the curriculum. Your DD's school was ahead of the curve in that respect!

They had pulled up from "satisfactory", as it was classed then, to "good" and were chasing "outstanding". It was a pretty good school and is oversubscribed.

Thanks everyone, it's really interesting to hear how much it used to vary. Yes@ThanksItHasPockets my DD2 took GCSEs in 2015. But they didn't start them in Y9 at her school, it was even odder than that.

In Y10 they studied maths, double or triple science, ICT and 1 option. They didn't study humanities or languages at all (though they did keep English ticking over). Then in Y11 they didn't study science at all because they'd finished their GCSEs but instead packed the whole GCSE courses in humanities, MFL(s) and most of English x 2 into that year. They had time to concentrate on these subjects because no science was timetabled. Very weird.

They don't do this any more, quite possibly for precisely the reasons you have explained.

Indeed.
This is one of the very few things that I approve of in recent educational policy - well government policy in general in fact. It sticks in my throat a bit to say it but I do think the GCSE syllabi are better now than in the past.
My DC have older cousins who did GCSEs when they were modular, mainly coursework based and they all did 12 -14 subjects, maybe more, spread over 3 years. I think they'd be the first to agree that most of the courses were of little value and a poor preparation for future study. It's almost like it became a competition as to how many GCSEs you could collect, not whether they were decent quality.