Hi all,
A few weeks ago, we started looking into the subject of GCSEs or some sort of formal qualifications for Stephanie at 16. She wants to go on to Drama school and the places we have selected require between 4 and 6 GCSE’s (or equivalent), including Maths and English.
Although they have said they require basic education to that level in Maths and English, they have also said that the biggest part of their selection is the Student themself and the impression they makes at the interview, their levels of confidence in themself and knowing what they want to do.
I suppose we always knew from the start that we would go down that route.
We have spoken to several home-educating families who have assured us that formal qualifications are not really necessary and have cited several stories where young people have got into colleges and even Universities to study their chosen subject without the afore-mentioned pieces of paper.
Having decided to go down that route, I have also met quite a few families who are starting on the same journey. I found an incredibly useful forum, where all the people are looking at GCSEs, IGCSEs, Open University and other alternatives.
That forum has been extremely useful to me.
My biggest challenge was and to some extent still is:-
Where do I start?
Before we started home-educating last year, I had spoken to one parent whose daughter was taking 5 GCSEs and she had some this via a distance learning course. She was taking the exams at a local school.
Our first point was Stephanie herself and what she would like to do, so we could see what she would like to study for her own interest and what might be useful to have.
As she wants to do Drama, we concluded that the following would be a good starting point: Drama, English Language, English Literature and Maths. She is interested in the Sciences, so we added on Chemistry, Physics, Biology as well as German, ICT and Geography.
When we first started Home Education, we had bought books to work towards Business Studies and ICT GCSE and found them to be dull, dry, boring and thorougly un-inspiring.
My husband works in IT and even he found the ICT material to be really hard going.
OK, having got the initial list of subjects, the next step was to find how we could study these, where we could take the exams and how much they would cost.
GCSEs and Coursework!
The first challenge we came up against was the coursework element to most of these subjects. At the moment, the course has to be authenticated by a teacher or a tutor or a recognised organisation.
Of the people I have spoken to about this, most seem to have gone down the route of buying a course from a distance -learning provider and then submitting the coursework to them for them to authenticate.
I have to say there are some very good courses out there from organisations such as Oxford Home Schooling and the National Extension College. I have heard mixed reports about both. It seems that both course materials are very good. The learning experience seems to be determined by the tutor you get allocated. If you decide to go this route, the advice from other parents seems to be to take the tutor option, so you can get the coursework authenticated and you can also submit work for assessment as you are going along.
The biggest factor for us with this route was cost. The course cost between £200 and £400 depending on what you are doing. You still have to find an exam centre and pay any exam fees. For 8-10 subjects, that was going to be a lot of money.
Our concern was also that we would get started with these materials and then find that we did not get on with them or that Stephanie decided it was a subject she really was not that interested in or the materials would end up not getting used or completed and we would have wasted a lot of money- and that was nothing to do with the quality of the teaching materials or the support from the organisation. That was about us!
There are other providers offering this option and the cheapest we found was £150.
Interesting turn of events.
The government is proposing that all coursework for GCSEs should be done in school, under the supervision of the teacher. This is a brave attempt to stamp out cheating and the practice of students buying essays over the Internet, however it does not help home educating families.
We will see if this rather ill-thought out idea makes it into education policy.
Other options:
as I have spoken to other parents, some people have had success with approaching a local Further Education College. Although their rules generally say they do not take anyone under 16 for GCSEs, it seems that some are more flexible for subjects outside of Maths and English (which would normally be taken in school).
Others have suggested waiting until your child is 16 and then enrolling into Further Education college and taking the GCSEs over a year, before going on to do other things. Then it is all free and your child would probably get the £30 a week allowance from the government for 16-18 year olds to stay in further education.
How bizarre is that? Kids get paid to go to school!
This is turning into quite a lengthy post, so I think I will continue with my findings and my musings in another post.
I hope this is useful to you.
With abundant blessings.
Amanda Goldston
Tags: exams by Amanda
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Most overseas students who want take English qualifications (the system is different in Scotland and Northern Ireland) take IGCSEs. They are very highly thought of by overseas teaching institutions.
