GCSE options

[asunnywintersday]

Hi. I'd appreciate any thoughts please. My ADHD /ASD daughter is about to choose GCSE options. She enjoys History and has a great memory for facts and dates but is very poor at essay writing and English is a real struggle. On the other hand she has never been particularly interested in Computer Science, but the style of questions in past papers seem much more accessible given her skill set and I know she might grow to like it. I'd love to hear from anyone whose child has been through this. I'm leaning towards Computer Science and getting some extra tutoring if necessary but she really does enjoy History much more. Thank you 🙏

History is essay-heavy but the structure of the essays needed seems quite rigid to me so she might be OK with that. DD’s school (private) spent a lot of time teaching them how to write essays in years 7-9 so she seemed quite prepared for this.

Is that the only option?
CS is not an easy option.
Yes, history is very essay based. That said one of DS's friends is doing history with writing issues - he types it. Would typing alleviate some of the essay issues for your DD?

I'd look at Geography, or a practical subject as alternatives - but that is obviously dependent on what is available and what has already been selected!

Thank you both.

Sadly Geography is not an option or that would have been first choice. It's a small school with a limited subject offering, so really the choice is between History and Computer Science. Her strongest subjects are Maths and Science. It's a tricky choice but I want her to have the best chance at passing.

If she enjoys history and is good at it then let her choose that. Computer science is hard and if she struggles with it now or is not really interested in it then it's not going to get easier for gcse.

Yes history is essay based but once you have a solid method of writing essays you just adapt it to the question.

My son also has adhd/asd and is predicted 7 in his history gcse this summer - he also found essays/English harder than maths, but he loves history. He is planning to do it for A Level too so the essays haven't put him off!

For an idea of what Computer Science will be like I can recommend Craig n Dave on youtube. Both my sons did GCSE, A level and one of them did a degree in it. https://www.youtube.com/@craigndave/playlists

Also with History there is a structure to the essays and if she is good at remembering facts and dates then revision would be relatively straight forward. Both my sons got grade 9 in it because they had a mini essay plan for each topic as they knew which way they would argue it. Look at a past paper for whichever board the school does and see the format and look at the mark scheme. School provided a WAGOLL -what a good one looks like for all marked answers from the 3 marker to the 20 marker which was colour coded with the assessment objects they have to consider. Therefore easy to replicate. They did OCR and most do AQA.

Thank you all. Very useful advice. Will certainly have a look at Craig’n’Dave!