igcse French

celyn90

tyllwyd wrote: »

My daughter is quite disappointed with the gcse options offered at her school. I had the idea of enrolling her as a private candidate to do French igsce so that would give her an extra option in school. She is reasonably good at the subject but doesn't have any special background in it.

Has anyone done anything similar? What are the pros and cons? I want her to have a qualification so that it doesn't restrict her options later but she is not likely to go on to study languages at A level.

What does she think and would she be happy/cope with the extra work?

I think if she can and she is happy then it will benefit her. She can always drop it if it gets too much.

I did extra A-levels at evening classes whilst I was at school (at the time when you could do the whole A-level in a year at night school rather than AS/A2). I responded much better to the more adult environment and learnt the art of studying for fun rather than for a grade (it didn't matter what I achieved in English lit/sociology as I was going on to study science and maths at Uni). I still study for fun now

This independent study effort was picked up straight away in my University interviews - despite being in unrelated subjects; so it made a big difference to me

Best of luck, cel x

tyllwyd

celyn90 wrote: »

What does she think and would she be happy/cope with the extra work? ...

Well, she is happy with the idea - instead of saying 'you have to do French and drop art', we are saying 'we'll put time and money into arranging for you to do French outside school, so if you are willing to put in the work in order to pass the exam, that will give you the opportunity to carry on with art', and she can see what we are asking from her. Whether she will feel the same in a few months time remains to be seen!

Lunar_Eclipse

tyllwyd wrote: »

But that means overall the balance of her gsces would be towards the sciences not the arts, which is what she loves and is talented in. It's fine for kids who love science and can't wait to give up art / music / drama, but that's not the way she rolls! (She blurted out to her head of year that her ambition was to be a singer/songwriter but that didn't go down too well!)

I understand her/your feelings, but an important thing to remember is that you can have a successful musical career without taking music GCSE, but I doubt you could achieve the same in a scientific field without the dual/triple Sciences. GCSEs are supposed to be broad and about keeping one's options open. Physics is probably more closely related to Maths than Biology or Chemistry for example.

Music and Drama lend themselves well to extra curricular success. We've discussed music GCSE with our school. They require children to be at a minimum of Grade 4 on an instrument before starting the GCSE course at the beginning of Y10. Higher is better obviously. We have a keen singer, who hasn't had any formal lessons (currently Y7), so it looks like music is out for her, despite a natural talent and ear for music. Apparently piano is desirable for the composition element in the GCSE and there's a correlation between piano skill level and grade achieved. So singing exams or working up to grade 8 on an instrument of choice would lend itself well to a music career, without the need for the GCSE.

Acting is another that can be pursued well outside school, or in a a specialist school.

Art is probably the one required at GCSE to study at a higher level.

daska

I'd agree with Lunar Eclipse. Art is pretty dependent on a portfolio and, while that can be developed outside school, the problem is getting sufficient opportunity and inspiration in the variety of media, style, subject etc. Schools tend to take you through it in a pretty systematic way.

DSD opted, against all our advice to opt for drama, art and music. She thought it would be fun but she soon realised that the majority of the other kids were genuinely enthusiastic and often talented as well - the best of them do a huge amount outside school, competing between themselves to get parts in local am-dram, getting bands together at the local rock-school, putting in hours of practice because it's fun and seeking the extramural activities simply because they love it. Those activities are open to her regardless of whether she is doing a GCSE in music or drama. FWIW, the successful actors and musicians I know don't, for the most part, have huge numbers of qualifications and where they do they are conventionally academic, they've got where they have through hard graft (and a huge dose of luck, one achieved fame though being in a film most famous for how awful it was LOL).

LucyLocket

The ebacc isn't too much of a decision for us because the language is compulsory at DD's school and DD loves History, so with her other compulsory subjects it's a given.
However I'm really interested to read this.

2) Could she opt for dual Science and thus choose 4 options? That doesn't limit her future options (even Medicine) like a lack of, or a poor first language GCSE result could.

DD's school state unequivocally that anyone who intends to do any Science at A level should use an option to take the three separate Science subjects rather than settling for the double. DD thinks it unlikely that she will want to study Science at A level but isn't certain, so we've been thinking she needs the three separate Sciences in order to keep her options open.

Frankly the choices look so restrictive that I'm starting to think I won't worry about the GCSEs and I'll just start her on a couple of extra A levels at home now so that she'll have a pair spare come uni time :rotfl:

silvercar

Dunroamin wrote: »

Sorry, that's totally illogical. If IGCSE is harder (which it is) then it's obviously more valuable.

More valuable in that you have learnt more.

It is not more valuable in terms of university or employer perception, where it just counts as another GCSE.

tyllwyd

Lunar_Eclipse wrote: »

I understand her/your feelings, but an important thing to remember is that you can have a successful musical career without taking music GCSE, but I doubt you could achieve the same in a scientific field without the dual/triple Sciences. GCSEs are supposed to be broad and about keeping one's options open. Physics is probably more closely related to Maths than Biology or Chemistry for example.

I don't disagree with you that you need sciences for a scientific career, but since she will be taking triple science plus ICT as part of the core options, that makes it difficult to find time in the timetable to do the subjects she actually enjoys, which is the problem we've got.

Music and Drama lend themselves well to extra curricular success. We've discussed music GCSE with our school. They require children to be at a minimum of Grade 4 on an instrument before starting the GCSE course at the beginning of Y10. Higher is better obviously. We have a keen singer, who hasn't had any formal lessons (currently Y7), so it looks like music is out for her, despite a natural talent and ear for music. Apparently piano is desirable for the composition element in the GCSE and there's a correlation between piano skill level and grade achieved. So singing exams or working up to grade 8 on an instrument of choice would lend itself well to a music career, without the need for the GCSE.

Yes, she already has singing and guitar lessons outside school. But music is something she might well decide to follow as a career in some shape or form, so we'd like her to have the broader background that a music gsce would give her.

Acting is another that can be pursued well outside school, or in a a specialist school.

Art is probably the one required at GCSE to study at a higher level.

Again, she does study acting/dance/singing outside school at a musical theatre weekend school - she would love to study drama gcse but she is resigned to the fact that there isn't time to do it at school. She really enjoys art, and since the rest of her timetable is very academic, she'd like to have the chance to do something more practical. She benefits from having a teacher show her different techniques, and having access to the materials and opportunity to develop what she can do.

You still haven't convinced me that studying a language outside school to give more time to study the arts inside school is a bad thing! If she can learn music/drama/art outside school with private tuition, why can't she equally well learn French the same way?

claire16c

LucyLocket wrote: »

DD's school state unequivocally that anyone who intends to do any Science at A level should use an option to take the three separate Science subjects rather than settling for the double. DD thinks it unlikely that she will want to study Science at A level but isn't certain, so we've been thinking she needs the three separate Sciences in order to keep her options open.

That seems very odd. Thousands of people take Science A Levels and do double award Science beforehand? So it seems strange the school is saying that. Most schools dont even offer doing 3 seperately.

If I was your daughter I would do the double award - I mean you are still studying all 3 sciences, and then it would allow her to do something else she enjoys at GCSE.

Does she have to take ICT? That always seems to come up as one of the worst courses in terms of what is taught, and what people actually need to know about IT in real life.

I dont think theres anything bad about doing a language outside of school, but Im not sure how useful it would end up being, I did A Level German but have probably forgotten 75% of it. If she wants to do something musical, Id suggest she does the core options and music and then pick what she likes after that.

JC9297

tyllwyd wrote: »

I don't disagree with you that you need sciences for a scientific career, but since she will be taking triple science plus ICT as part of the core options, that makes it difficult to find time in the timetable to do the subjects she actually enjoys, which is the problem we've got.



Yes, she already has singing and guitar lessons outside school. But music is something she might well decide to follow as a career in some shape or form, so we'd like her to have the broader background that a music gsce would give her.



Again, she does study acting/dance/singing outside school at a musical theatre weekend school - she would love to study drama gcse but she is resigned to the fact that there isn't time to do it at school. She really enjoys art, and since the rest of her timetable is very academic, she'd like to have the chance to do something more practical. She benefits from having a teacher show her different techniques, and having access to the materials and opportunity to develop what she can do.

You still haven't convinced me that studying a language outside school to give more time to study the arts inside school is a bad thing! If she can learn music/drama/art outside school with private tuition, why can't she equally well learn French the same way?

I think the poster who was talking about doing drama or music outside school was making the point that you don't have to do a GCSE in them to persue them.
I'm not sure why you think the balance of her GCSEs would be towards science rather than the arts if she chose, for instance, french, history and art alongside the core subjects, as all her options would be arts subjects.

WolfSong2000

For what it's worth, I managed to get out of doing a language at GCSE (mind you, I am appalling at languages) and it didn't hurt my university application at all. If your daughter enjoys it, though, then definitely look into her doing the GCSE outside of school. I did this at A-Level with philosophy. I was dead keen to do it, but my college didn't offer it...for AS Level I was able to take an evening class at the college, and for the A2 I had a sympathetic teacher who taught me once a week for an hour - I had to do the rest myself. As my college didn't recognise it as I was having the lesson in my lunchbreak, I also had to do an extra ICT course. Came out with a C in the end, so not brilliant, but my God it was good preperation for uni in terms of learning to work independently, etc.