Is a pass in English lit OR lang good enough? If students fail one / both, do they need to resit both?

[donothaveadoughnut]

As per the title, really. Hoping this won’t be an issue for us but my DC is definitely stronger in lit than lang.
And for other DCs who need to resit, do they make them do lit as well as lang?

I think it’s just Language they’d need to resit. That’s the one which often has a grade requirement (along with maths) for other things.

You need a pass in English Language or you need to re-sit it.

English Lit is a bonus, but not a requirement.

If they don't get a 4 in Eng lang, then a higher grade in lit won't answer, as in, they will have to resit. But if they get a 3 or less in lit then they don't need to resit that.

But of course an employer or an apprenticeship may be happy with a 4+ grade lit instead of lang. That would be at their discretion though.

Here are the govt requirements: Students don't resit lit, they resit lang only.

If they get a 3 or below in English language but a 4 or above in English lit then they don't have to resit language to meet the government condition of funding, HOWEVER, because they didn't get a 4+ in lang, some colleges will make them resit it anyway even though the government doesn't require them to. This is because some jobs and unis won't accept lit instead of lang so they'll be disadvantaged in the long run.

I think that a failure in English language is going to rule out pretty much any job that requires any GCSEs.

Daughter passed lit but not language. Resat it and got her best ever grade.

Not at all.

A mate of DS2's got a 3 – school allowed him to join sixth form to start (science) A levels and resit in the November and he got a 6; went on to take a degree at a strong uni.

Also my own DS1 couldn't pass the GCSE but he has taken and passed L2 FS which has opened up jobs needing GCSEs to him.

Obviously it's not ideal to have to retake but it's certainly not the end of anything.

My daughter's friend passed Lit but not Language and her College accepted that and didn't make her retake.

As above a pass in Lit alone is often enough to avoid resitting and Lit alone is enough for many purposes. A lot of job ads etc require "English", without specifying lit or Lang.

However we were told that anecdotally the Nov resits tend to be a little bit easier than the main round of exams. If he does get a 3 in Lang I would try to encourage him to do the first resit in Nov, if nothing else. It's only a few weeks of lessons really and would mean he'd never have to worry about whether the Lit will accepted or not.

There are certain jobs and uni courses that require higher grades, eg Medicine might need a 6 in either Lit or Lang.

Lit is optional at GCSE and I can't think of any college that even offers it as a resit.