Choosing subjects

Choosing subjects for Year 10, (around 14 years old), is one of the first big decisions your child has to make in their life - but no one expects all the answers straight away. This is a stage where you and your child will need to discuss choices:

• Your child has to make choices about subjects and might end up studying a unique mix.
• There are choices to be made about styles of assessment - should your child choose an option with lots of coursework or will they be better off with exams? 
• At the same time as studying for exams, you and your child will be thinking about the next steps - should they go on to advanced level study, training or work?

Compulsory subjects

Your child will need to choose subjects they can enjoy and can do well, but by keeping the range of subjects balanced, it will leave your child more options when it's time to decide on courses and jobs in the future. The subjects your child will have to do are:

• English
• Mathematics
• Science
• Information and communication technology (ICT)
• Physical education
• Citizenship
• Religious education, careers education and sex education (these are compulsory, but not part of the National Curriculum)
• Personal, social and health education  

Optional subjects

There are some other optional subjects that your child can choose. These might include history, geography, art, music, health and social care, and leisure and tourism. Most of the courses will lead to a qualification. For some subjects, your child will be able to choose between different kinds of qualification. Some courses may not lead to qualifications, such as personal, social and health education.

We always offer as much choice as possible, but there are two practical issues that we have to face:

• It is unmanagemable for any school to offer all types of qualification for all subjects.  However, we shall be collaborating with our other secondary partner schools so that as many options as possible are made available.
• Timetabling everyone's needs becomes very complex.  If we cannot give your child all their first-choice options, this is because the teacher responsible for a particular subject would need to be in two places at once, or becasue the timetable cannot fit in a particular choice.

Courses that don't lead to a qualification

Your child will study some courses that don't lead to a qualification. These might be:

• Compulsory courses. These are physical education (although we do offer a GCSE in this subject), careers education, sex and relationship education, and drugs education. 
• Work experience. Work experience is offered to all pupils in year 10.   

Which Way Now?

Which Way Now? is designed as a workbook which leads Year 9 students through all the stages of making their option choices at age 14. Most sections contain exercises called action points to help students relate the information to their own thoughts. This is an ideal website to direct your child to so that they can have a look at the options available for themselves.

http://www.connexions-direct.com/whichwaynow/