12 GCSEs

[Thingsthatgo]

My DS is in year 7, so we have a while to get our heads around it, but he will be expected to sit 12 GCSEs as he is top set for everything.
They do statistics in year 10, then maths, further maths, 3 sciences, English lit and language, a MFL and three options.
That's bonkers surely? No one needs 12 GCSEs. I will find out if there are any consequences to withdrawing him from a couple of them.

i did 11 and it was fine

No, but breadth of learning is a benefit to students and unfortunately most schools won't teach subjects just for the love of it - there needs to be an exam at the end so they get some recognition.

DD2 went to a school where they did split GCSEs – maths, science x 3, ICT and PE (option) in Y10 then English Lang, English Lit, further maths, Spanish, history, geography (options), and statistics in Y12.

13 GCSEs, which certainly give breadth but unnecessary imo.

I did 12. I don't think that's bonkers at all. I had 2 As and the rest were A*s.

The curriculum as you describe it sounds completely manageable. 11 in Y11 and one of those is FM. I can't honestly see any problem at all for an able student.

I would also counsel caution in terms of uni, if that's the likely future plan. Your DS will be compared contextually to the peers at his own school for the purposes of uni admissions, so taking fewer subjects than normal may compromise his position in the cohort. That's quite apart from getting into a wrangle with the school at an early stage which is never a great idea.

Thank you for all your thoughts. He is very academic so probably it'll be fine. Just didn't want him under huge amounts of pressure because he can be a perfectionist. Good to know that statistics and further maths are not a big leap from maths.

@Thingsthatgo DD2 is not a mathematician but she is a scientist and she has found the further maths and statistics GCSEs useful in her degrees, for sure. Stats in particular proved handy in her epidemiology modules.

FWIW she got the same grades in the further maths GCSE and the Statistics GCSE as she did in her maths GCSE. She says it was more work volume-wise but only a little bit harder content-wise.

Is it only set 1 that do the extra maths bits? You could probably discuss moving down a set before GCSE if you didn't want him to do that. I personally think it offers a good challenge to those who find maths easy.

And alternatively if he prefers humanities like my dd, I’m sure he can say no to further maths. Her class do a bit in class and also have an afterschool class. And as others say, a lot of it is just extending the knowledge so being taught it can help with the GCSE maths. My dd is top set and was asked to do further maths but said no and it wasn’t a bother.

DD did 12 including the FSMQ in Additional Maths. It was quite a lot but she was fine and did well. If your son is planning a practical subject like Drama or Art, like others have said you should be aware that this can include quite a lot of extra time spent on rehearsals etc.

Although drama and art are usually out of the way before the rest of the revision really heats up.

Yes, true! It takes up a lot of time throughout the year, though.