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GCSE Subjects

Daddy

Dear all, 

My son, aged 14 years,  who has ASD will be starting GCSE's next academic year. He is in mainstream secondary education, has a Education & Health Care Plan, with school receiving funding for additional support.  This year, he had to make his selections for topics. We had requested additional time for the school so we can work with our son to make the right selection, so he is not set to fail. It is very difficult to work with him, as he says "yes" to everything when asked what subjects he enjoys most. We had parents meetings, and discussed suitable subjects (lots of teachers after giving positive feedback about his progress, were saying he is not suitable for this or that subject e.g. Geography, History etc). We submitted the subject selections (it had preference 1, preference 2), after working hard with our son, playing youtube videos of subjects, to really get to understand his passions.  I had discussed all of this with the SENCo Lead at the school. We were advised that he should drop one subject option, so he has additional support for English, which we agreed to. We want our son to progress to further education, like T-levels or BTEC, once we understand what he wants to do in the future. 

Now about the concerns: 

1. I had requested careers adviser, to help understand his aspirations, and to help set a goal for his future - I was told that priority is GCSE students towards the end of their academic year, and would be offered once priority children completed. None was offered. 

2. On his last day at school, my son showed us the letter from the school on subjects allocated to him. To our absolute shock, most of the subjects allocated when none we had selected e.g. Health & Social Care and Citizenship, he did not select these. I am so angry and frustrated with the school, and it feels like they just allocated subjects based on spaces, rather than his subject selection.  It really does feel that he will be set for failure if he does subjects he did not select. 

I sent school an e-mail, and there was an out of office reply, saying they broke up for summer holidays. It is appalling they landed this on us on the last day of school, not allowing any consultation, and us being worried about him throughout the summer holidays. 

Any advice please on how else I should proceed, other than the e-mail I have already sent to the school.

Thank you and much appreciated. 

Regards

Wajid

Parents

  • I cannot suggest a remedy, but can suggest a possible motivation on the part of the school. All schools are obsessed with their performance statistics, which are reflected in OFSTED ratings. These statistics, for secondary schools, are predicated on the predictions for a child's performance made at the end of primary school. Pupils whose performance is suggesting a lower than predicted outcome in a subject, might be transferred to a different subject, especially one considered 'easier'.

    This affected my eldest. They were predicted to  get a grade A at GCSE maths, but on taking it a year early got a  B. This was fine, as they were not intending to go down the science route - and indeed ended up doing a fine art course. However, rather than getting to do an extra subject, as had been promised by the school, they were forced to do another year of Maths. We complained, but were ignored. A totally pointless, for my child, grade A in Maths was achieved; at the cost of a tedious year of repeating all the maths they had already studied and missing out on getting a qualification in a subject they actually wanted to do.

    It is a scandal that schools routinely put the reputation of the school, measured in meaningless statistics, above the welfare of their students.

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  • I cannot suggest a remedy, but can suggest a possible motivation on the part of the school. All schools are obsessed with their performance statistics, which are reflected in OFSTED ratings. These statistics, for secondary schools, are predicated on the predictions for a child's performance made at the end of primary school. Pupils whose performance is suggesting a lower than predicted outcome in a subject, might be transferred to a different subject, especially one considered 'easier'.

    This affected my eldest. They were predicted to  get a grade A at GCSE maths, but on taking it a year early got a  B. This was fine, as they were not intending to go down the science route - and indeed ended up doing a fine art course. However, rather than getting to do an extra subject, as had been promised by the school, they were forced to do another year of Maths. We complained, but were ignored. A totally pointless, for my child, grade A in Maths was achieved; at the cost of a tedious year of repeating all the maths they had already studied and missing out on getting a qualification in a subject they actually wanted to do.

    It is a scandal that schools routinely put the reputation of the school, measured in meaningless statistics, above the welfare of their students.

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