GCSE choices - double or triple science?

[CordeliaNaismithVorkosigan]

DD is trying to work out what to do about GCSE. Because of the way her school timetables the GCSE curriculum, she can’t do triple science and geography and history- she has to do double science or drop history or geography. At the moment she doesn’t know what she wants to do for A-level, so I’m advising her to do the thing that limits her options least. The school reckons she’ll be able to do A-level physics or chemistry from double science and it’ll be fine, but does anyone have any experience of this? How hard was it for a student who hadn’t done triple science to catch up?

(As an aside, I find this ‘double award science’ business infuriating- if they did separate GCSEs DD could just have dropped biology and she wouldn’t have had a dilemma!)

Personally I'd go geography over history. Broader subject I think, physical and human both interesting. If you have to choose one.

With double science students take the first exam paper of each subject (so three papers in total) and get 2 GCSEs as a result. With triple science students take a second paper in each subject (so six papers in total) and get 3 GCSEs as a result. Therefore double science is half the workload of triple science, but for 2/3 of the GCSEs.

@livingonpurpose unfortunately if you look at the syllabus (at least for Edexcel IGCSE which was what my DD took), there’s very little that comes up only in paper 2. So you’re right that they sit half the papers but they do more than half the content. Maybe different for other boards.

Our board - AQA- they still sit 6 papers but the content is a third less for each science. I find teaching the double syllabus much more of a scramble for time than triple but that might just be our timetable. Also behaviour in triple is better , but again that is probably school specific. One advantage for triple is that if you are stronger in one science you can shine in that one regardless of how you are doing in the others. In fact you could do foundation tier in one and higher in the others if appropriate . In double the grade is an average of all 3 sciences.

I’d ask the school how many of the a level science students did double and how many did triple. Because if 95% of the kids at that particular school going through into sixth form have all done triple science then it would be likely to be difficult to keep up - the teachers might tend to not cover the missing material as well. But if a big mix have done double or triple - half and half say - then it would be much easier.

I asked this exact question yesterday of dd’s science teacher.

Full disclosure - I think that Dd should do triple science so the question may have not be asked in a completely unbiased way. 🤣
Dd is also already performing at Grade 8 level and has just been put forward by the science teacher for a (good!) behaviour award so I’m guessing that the science teacher would quite like her to do triple science.

Despite there being little short of a “say triple science is best” tap dance going on here, the teacher (who has also taught at A level) was very clear that doing double science have little impact at all on doing science A levels.

So looks like Dd gets to do PE and Computer Science after all.

Humph!

I’m just quoting myself to add that I may well be talking through my arse as I have no experience at all of double science and how it relates to a levels, so please ignore if this is bollocks 😬

some stats from another thread:
https://www.cambridgeassessment.org.uk/Images/674348-progression-from-gcse-to-a-level-2018-2020.pdf
See table 2, starting page 10.
Students who have studied separate sciences at GCSE are more likely to get an A or A-star at A level than those who did double-award science. eg for chemistry if you have >= 8-8 in double award, 44% go on to get A / A-star, whereas with single science chemistry GCSE, grade >=8, it's 65% A / A-star at A level, so a fair bit higher.
There may be two contributing factors: firstly, students studying 3 sciences may be correlated with attending a higher performing school, in which more students get A-stars, or upper sets of the same school, i.e. the upper couple of sets are encouraged to do triple science but the lower sets, double award. This would be a case of correlation but not causation.
Secondly, students studying triple science should have completed 150 hours more classes and a similar amount of self-study more than those who did double award (A GCSE is supposed to take 150 hours teaching + similar self-study). So they come into any A level science with about a 100 hour head start per science relative to those with double-award. Not possible to disentangle the relative importance of these two factors from the available info. Those who hit A level with double science under their belts have a slight disadvantage relative to this who've done triple which could be overcome with hard work.

This was a long way of saying: if intending to do science A levels and triple science is on offer at GCSE, I would take triple science and drop history.

We have just had a meeting on this! In simple terms we were told the double covers all the core content and the triple covers additional topics which are nice to know especially if you are interested in the sciences. You can do any science A level with the double award and won't be held back. If you don't love science and would prefer to do another subject, we were told that would be a better option. We are doing double so we have more choice with the remaining subjects.

Yes. Better behaviour in the triple classes and greater expectations of them.

@12tog Apologies I hadn’t got as far as reading the full syllabus yet. My son will be doing Edexcel IGCSE also, and I was just swayed by the fact I thought he’d prefer to do less exam papers…but will look again now.

@zippynotbungle I think you've muddled gcse and a level on guided hours and self study there. Akevels have equal amounts because they only do 3 and have study time. Gcses absolutely do not expect another 30 odd hours on top of the full timetable of guided hours. Perhaps 1 to 2 hours per subject per week to make an extra 10 hours or so total. So 8-10 gcses takes the same amount of hours in total as 3 a levels, but gcses have a much higher guided hours percentage.

@Boomboom22 Happy to acknowledge that 150 hrs self-study for a GCSE might be more than average but it doesn't change the conclusion that triple science students are better prepared and do get higher grades on average, and the difference is not negligible.

1-2 hours self-study a week per subject as you suggest, over 2 years with a 38 week school year works out as 76-152 hours. Added to 150 contact/teaching hours, that would translate to 75-100 additional hours per science for triple compared double, so 100 as a ballpark estimate was roughly correct and will be the case for some students.

Loads of young people are successful at A level after only taking double science (as it used to be called). They may just have to put in some extra work to cover the topics that the triple science students have already covered.

When DD took GCSEs double science candidates did papers 1 and 2 (6 exams in total) and the triple science candidates took papers 1, 2 and 3 (9 exams in total). So, the double science students covered two thirds of the work that the triple science students did.

Triple science took up an option block at her school so the double science students could choose 4 options and the triple science students could only choose 3.

Data to back up my claim is here

https://www.stem.org.uk/sites/default/files/pages/downloads/Science%20Education%20in%20England_%20Gender%2C%20Disadvantage%20and%20Ethnicity.pdf
references are on the last page.

I do not think this is correct.gcse history is not needed for A level.In fact looking even at university 3rd year modules, there was no pre-requisite for history modules.Even a mathematician without a gcse in history could sign up fir 3rd year history optional modules. Definitely not the sane tge other way round.

I’d take advice from the school. My school (an academic top private) advised me to take double sciences because the A level sciences are taught from a double science baseline, and it allowed me to squeeze in another subject at GCSE. I ended up doing all three sciences and Maths at A level (got top grades) and went to Cambridge for a science subject. That was 15 years ago though.