Are BTECs better for disorganised teens?

[lljkk]

Or maybe I should ask, which GCSEs involve the most in-class work vs. lots of home revision?

DS does decent/good standard of work in class but he hates nearly all forms of homework and does only the bare minimum (I know this is common). I have been browsing about books to transform lazy/disorganised teens but I am not the kind of person to make those strategies work (they seem to all involve me being closely involved with managing his homework load). Sorry if that makes me a crap parent, I just can't do it. So am considering other strategies if DS never decides to self-organise.

Do BTECs work differently from GCSEs dependent on homestudy, are BTECs more about standard of work produced in a working environment and less on pouring over books at home? I know DS could do quite well at that.

There is a lot of course work in BTECHs, DDi did a level 2 Btech in IT which is GCSE equivelent and she did quite a bit of work at home. She is now in the final year of a Btech extended diploma ( used to be called National Diploma) in ITand does a massive amount of work at home as well as in lessons at college. She is doing aBTECH as exams tend to throw her she is dyspraxic and also has another learning difficulty. She is disorganised about a lot of things but is very focused on homework and is determined to get good grades. She has 3 offers fron unis so it is not holding her back. However if your DS doesn't like homework I would say a BTECH is not for him.

In terms of telling apart harder from easier GCSE topics:

The data are almost 10 yrs old but somewhat useful, and fits with most of the anecdotal evidence (summary1, summary2).

Also, survey of students.

lljkk, does your DS like sport? or drama? These might be good options. I am not saying they are easy but may require less sit down type homework. Art or textiles is loads of work at home. Music is a lot of work from what I have heard and better if you play an instrument to a fairly high level eg G5 or above.

DD has dyslexia and we have gone for 3 practical options to lessen the written workload. The new GCSE marking rules penalise dyslexic students with marks knocked off for spelling/grammar even in other subjects than English Language -5% I think.

Being very disorganised is often an indicator of dyslexia or a specific learning difficulty. You could make an appointment with the school SENCO to get advice and support for your DS. Some schools also run "organisation" clubs to help or offer a mentoring service for disorganised pupils.

Your DS could choose to do foundation rather than higher tier GCSE in weakest subjects but be aware that this means C is the highest possible grade. It might take some pressure off though.

I think it's difficult to say which "involve the least homework" as so much of it depends on the way the school organise and teach the course and how much good ground work has already been done.

For example, when in Yr8, my dd was doing exactly the same piece of homework for MfL as ds was doing in Yr11, so by the time dd gets to GCSEs, I suspect she won't have to do anywhere near as much "homework" as ds did, because he hadn't had the grounding in KS3, and was playing 'catch up'. That said, it was easy 'catch up' for him because he finds it relatively easy to learn a chunk of text to regurgitate in the test without really ever being able to speak the language.
There is a lot of time needed to do art, but quite a few pupils don't see it as that as they love the drawing and don't see it as "work" in the same way an essay is.
If you just 'get' maths, then there's not a lot of homework needed, but if you don't understand maths readily, then it's going to take hours of going over things (tutors?) to unpick it and work things out.

Maryz

I didn't realise your school now go on to 18, it used to be 15 didn't it.

Over here, you can, technically, go to college full time from age 14 but more often a class is sent to college for one afternoon a week for vocational courses.

Maybe I should set up a sort of boarding house for Irish students wanting to take vocational qualifications in the UK, not sure how I would finance it, and once they have qualifications would they be recognised at home?

Ponders how this could be combined with the drive through shop.

You could try and do what MIL did with SIL when she didn't want to stay at school and sit O levels. In those days you could leave school at 15 without any form of academic qualification. MIL got SIL a job waiting tables. After a few days of this SIL said that she hated it. MIL told her that this was the only kind of job available to her if she didn't pull her finger out and stay at school.

It was a great motivator for SIL to knuckle down, get some O levels and get a better job.