Wednesday 8 September 2010

What's the hurry? My child can always take GCSEs and A levels later if she wants to

Whenever I write about teenagers studying for GCSEs, several people always remark that there is no reason why qualifications have to be taken at home at the same age that they are at school. Why shouldn't a twenty year old take GCSEs if that is what she wishes? What's the hurry?

There are two main reasons why it is a good idea to get fourteen and fifteen year olds to sit their GCSEs at the same age as schoolchildren. Parents who talk vaguely of their children sitting these important examinations 'later' usually have a mindset which is twenty or thirty years out of date. At one time it was quite possible to take evening classes at a local college, either free or for a nominal amount, and take any GCEs or GCSEs which one had failed at school. It used to be quite common. These days of course, hardly any FE colleges do such a thing. The only GCSE exams which they handle tend to be re-sits and these are generally limited to those who have already taken them at school. They are not for home educated children as a rule. Because by this age, they will probably not be amenable to being taught by their parents, most will need to do the GCSEs via a correspondence course. These typically cost around £300 for each subject.

A far more important reason for taking examinations at the age of fourteen or fifteen is this. Most teenagers at that age do not have the sort of distractions which we have in adulthood. They do not have to work for a living, few of them have partners and children, they do not have to worry about paying rent or any of the other things that adults concern themselves with. They are free to concentrate solely upon their studies. This lack of distractions makes it far more likely that they will achieve good grades. How many nineteen and twenty year olds want to sit down day after day learning about the causes of World War I or how to solve quadratic equations? At that age, there are usually far more interesting things to be doing, like going to the pub or having romantic entanglements! Better by far to study like this as a child than as an adult.

A levels, if taken even a year or two after everybody else, prove an even greater problem. Because of the coursework involved and the higher level of academic work, it is very hard to do A levels except at a college or sixth form. I have in the past mentioned that it is almost impossible to get on an A level course at college unless you already have five GCSEs at grades A*-C, but there is another consideration. If you start studying for A levels over the age of nineteen, you have to pay for them. This is quite pricy. There is also the fact that as a young person of twenty you will be compelled to spend every day with a bunch of sixteen year-olds, not something that many young men and women would relish.

These are some of the reasons why if examinations are going to be taken by a young person, they should be taken at the same time as everybody else of the same age. The idea of 'taking them later' is a bit of a chimera. I have known one or two twenty year-olds study at college for A levels and it has not worked out terribly well. It may happen, but I have never heard of it, that a nineteen or twenty year old takes five GCSEs. This would be very unusual though and probably expensive. The fact is that if a child reaches the age of sixteen without taking GCSEs, then that is probably it as far as GCSEs and A levels go. She will, if she enters formal education at all after this age, find herself limited to BTECs. New Diplomas and vocational courses. Nothing at all wrong with these of course, but is would surely be better for the sixteen year-old to have as wide a range of choices as possible in her future academic career, rather than being diverted into certain channels purely as a result of her parents ideology.

24 comments:

  1. Whereas taking a load of GCSEs and A levels purely as a result of her parents ideology is perfectly fine.

    Can't any of these young people think for themselves then? Of course not. Silly me.

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  2. 'Can't any of these young people think for themselves then?'

    How on earth can a fourteen year-old be expected to be able to think through the implications of studying A levels at college at twenty, rather than the traditional sixteen? Many adults are not aware of the difficulties about this, I don't see that we could expect children to know about it.

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  3. So if either way is the parents decision, why is one way necessarily better than the other? We're parents, not prophets.

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  4. "We're parents, not prophets."

    I don't think the gift of prophecy is needed to know that a child with five GCSEs will have more choices available at sixteen than one without any at all!

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  5. But the time commitment necessary to take five GCSEs precludes some choices.

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  6. While I don't dispute the fact that there are practical difficulties associated with getting qualifications when older, there can be massive advantages too - which Simon doesn't mention.

    Like many people, I did all my qualifications at the 'appropriate' age and trundled off to university at nineteen. I spent a lot of time at university either distracted by the business of being young (relationships etc) or wondering why on earth I was there at all.

    I have observed that mature students tend to have a very clear idea of why they are studying. They often have a lot invested in a course (a partner may be supporting them or they have children to support) and they have often sacrificed a lot to be there.

    Choices we truly make for ourselves tend to be the ones to which we are really committed. Yes it might be harder to embark on the business of getting qualifications when you're older but that is not necessarily a bad thing.

    Of course, the main thing is that there is no need to make up rules about this - people differ and so they need to make the choices that are right for them.

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  7. 'Of course, the main thing is that there is no need to make up rules about this - people differ and so they need to make the choices that are right for them.'

    Exactly. And those choices must be made on the basis of up-to-date, local information.

    Mrs Anon

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  8. 'those choices must be made on the basis of up-to-date, local information.'

    Well that is exactly right. Too often, decisions about this sort of thing seemed to be based upon half remembered images of what was going on at FE colleges in the seventies or eighties. I have seen recently a number of parents who have had the Devil of a shock when they wanted their children to start college and suddenly realise that things have changed dramatically now. I suspect that after the spending cuts, it will be even worse for anybody trying an unconventional route to higher education.

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  9. Webb says-I suspect that after the spending cuts, it will be even worse for anybody trying an unconventional route to higher education.

    the spending cuts are very good news as it means no money to waste on home educators for home visits and checking up on us the budget for home home educators will be the first to face the axe what good news Webb?

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  10. Simon says,

    "I don't think the gift of prophecy is needed to know that a child with five GCSEs will have more choices available at sixteen than one without any at all!"

    While you might claim this in general terms, it is not necessarily so for each individual child. It depends on that child's individual circumstances and priorities.

    Let's imagine a child who comes out of school at fourteen on the edge of an emotional breakdown. It might be that the most sensible course of action to maximise that child's choices in later life is to prioritise their emotional recovery over the quest for qualifications. Pushing the child on with academic work might lead to their having the qualifications at sixteen but not the well-being to do anything very useful with them.

    That is the sort of situation I mean when I say that it doesn't do to give people the impression that there are rules. Yes it is wise to find out what is possible in local FE colleges and so on when making these choices. We certainly have done so and our thirteen year old is making choices based on that information. But everyone is different and for some people that information is not very relevant to their current situation.

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  11. 'Let's imagine a child who comes out of school at fourteen on the edge of an emotional breakdown. '

    Yes, this is true. However, when we are drawing up general principles for mental and physical health, it is rather assumed that we are talking about those of average health. Walking regularly is brilliant exercise for young people and I would recommend it as being a very simple and effective way of keeping fit. This does not mean of course that I am suggesting that a paraplegic should be tipped out of his wheelcahir and told to take a hike!

    Obviously, a child who has had a nervous breakdown will need a different regimen from one who is simply being electively home educuted.

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  12. Whenever I meet new home educators I am aware that they may have travelled a very rocky road to get to home education because they often have. I think you tend to write as if all home educators are facing the same sort of choices in the same sort of circumstances. I was just pointing out that circumstances vary.

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  13. I think it's important to make a distinction between the way the system operates and what is best for the individual and the community in which s/he lives.

    As far as I can tell, the insidious reduction of funding from FE colleges over the last decade or so, has been in order to fund the increasing number of students attending university. What we needed was more graduates, it seemed, and front-loading the education system and phasing out the FE option was one way of producing them.

    What the country actually needs, is not more graduates, but more well-educated people, and that's not the same thing at all. It's true that a bright, able kid is going to do 'better' for themselves and for their community if they have the opportunity to get more advanced qualifications, but widening the opportunity to attend university at 18, and simultaneously reducing the opportunity to catch up on educational attainment later, is not going to get the outcome we need.

    There is nothing 'traditional' about getting GCSEs at 16; that's just the most convenient arrangement for the education system at the present time. For some people, it's an entirely suitable arrangement; for others it's a disaster, and to foreclose the opportunity for people in the latter category to catch up later shows a lack of awareness of how the much touted 'lifelong learning' works.

    Families obviously have to work round the system that's in place, but since the system appears to change at a rate most head teachers struggle to keep up with, there's no reason why a system that doesn't suit its users shouldn't be changed back to one that does.

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  14. 'What the country actually needs, is not more graduates, but more well-educated people'

    Hard to disagree with you there, suzyg!

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  15. Some older children opt to spend their teenage years working on developing other skills and expertise that aren't available on a GCSE curriculum, but which better enable them to enjoy the successful career of their choice.

    Their freedom to do this is one of the great benefits of home education.

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  16. 'Some older children opt to spend their teenage years working on developing other skills and expertise that aren't available on a GCSE curriculum, but which better enable them to enjoy the successful career of their choice.'

    Yes, my daughter did this. This is not an either or situation, most teenagers can study for GCSEs and also manage hobbies.

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  17. "Yes, my daughter did this. This is not an either or situation, most teenagers can study for GCSEs and also manage hobbies."

    But it can be an either or situation if needs be.

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  18. Yes, my daughter did this. This is not an either or situation, most teenagers can study for GCSEs and also manage hobbies.

    not if you want to be really good at a subject not covered by the state system! you need to devote lots of time to the hobbie to get really good at it!

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  19. 'not if you want to be really good at a subject not covered by the state system! you need to devote lots of time to the hobbie to get really good at it!'

    We spent two hours or so a day at formal work for GCSEs. This left fourteen hours every day free for other things. What hobby could possibly need twelve to fourteen hours a day?

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  20. We spent two hours or so a day at formal work for GCSEs. This left fourteen hours every day free for other things. What hobby could possibly need twelve to fourteen hours a day?

    some things that start out as a hobby you often find the child gets really intersted in it or very good at it so need lots of time on it our child is very intersted in stamps and collects them he become quite an expert on them spending many hours pouring over the stamps looks for errors as these stamps with errors cost a lot more to buy he put them all into albums under the correct heading then he want to go to stamp shops and also meet with others who like stamps this all takes up a lot of hours in a day! this subject is not covered by the state school system! he already made quite a profit on many of the stamps he brought

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  21. I think we have been here before! There is a group of home educators who for some reason (be it good or bad) choose not to do the GCSE path. I think you (Simon) have to accept that although you don't agree with it, they have made a positive decision and that is that.

    What is more worrying is those who lack the neccesary info, or who receive incorrect advice- and who then find themselves in difficult positions. The situations may not be irretrievable, but I know several young people who are currently not on the course they wanted to do- because they were turned down due to lack of GCSEs. I am not trying to be a prophet of doom, but I suspect, if you ask me again a year, that a good proportion won't have stuck to the course they are having to do instead. Two of the young people who got onto level 3 courses without all the correct qualifications last year have also failed their courses and are left having to start again. Now I know that many HE-ers without qualifications are highly successful- we have already discussed the "OU route to uni " etc - ...but it is the middle to the road/strugglers who worry me- they don't always seemt do so well ifthey are having to fight against the system too.

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  22. "Two of the young people who got onto level 3 courses without all the correct qualifications last year have also failed their courses and are left having to start again."

    Do you know any that did well in this situation? My two gained a distinction and a distinction*, but maybe they are in the minority?

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  23. It is difficult to know cause of such things; perhaps the college guidelines were right and the young people just weren't performing at a higher enough level, but because the parents concerned "lent" on the admissions people, and waved the HE card, the students concerned got in and then couldn't realy manage it.

    Yes, of course OI know some who have done well; the point I am trying to make is that it is those "lesser lights" who actually find themselves in more difficult circumstances. If you turn out to be brilliant, get to Oxford, build a career, no one will ever care if you don't have a GCSE to your name. If you struggle and find that you can't manage your college course, then not only is it highly upsetting for the student concerned but perhaps they would have had better job prospects in this difficult time if they had some formal qualifications to their names?

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  24. "but because the parents concerned "lent" on the admissions people, and waved the HE card, the students concerned got in and then couldn't realy manage it."

    Maybe that's the difference in many cases. My children took entrance tests and also took along evidence such as letters of recommendation from a creative writing course tutor. Nobody was leant on because they proved they had an equivalent education level. The college wouldn't have accepted them otherwise.

    "If you struggle and find that you can't manage your college course, then not only is it highly upsetting for the student concerned but perhaps they would have had better job prospects in this difficult time if they had some formal qualifications to their names?"

    I suppose they are then in the same position as the many school educated children without qualifications. I suspect in many cases it would be better to start at a BTEC First before attempting a BTEC National as one of mine did. I know many see this as beneath them, but it is a gentler introduction to college and teacher-led learning, especially for those who have never been to school and, all going well, you have a GCSE equivalent level qualification after just a year. Our college combined the BTEC course with Maths and English GCSEs too which worked well for my child.

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