As a bit of background - DD is dyslexic and can get very overwhelmed with lots of noise and movement around her. She also finds traditional studying very tiring, but can spend hours watching youtube videos about subjects which interest her and retains a lot of information this way. She finds essay based subjects really hard, and has just been awarded 50% extra time for essay based exams, (with 25% for everything else). She is predicted all 7s and 8s, although she thinks that is a bit over optimistic in the essay subjects, and is interested in studying something like neuroscience at uni, born from an interest in finding out about her own dyslexia. She is currently at a non-selective school in a grammar school area, but doesn't want to stay for sixth form.
Up until recently she wanted to study A levels in maths, chemistry, and biology, but more recently has become interested in music instead of biology. She already plays the violin at the standard required for the highest marks at A level performance, which makes up 30% and 30% is composition, but the other 40% is partly made up of essay questions. The biology A level, however, seems to be intense, with a lot of vocabulary and as DD has difficulty with processing words and spelling them, it may prove a difficult A level for her.
She has a place at an independent school whose original offer was very high (they based it on adding together GCSE grades, but as DD is doing 8 rather than the 10 the students do at this school it meant she had to do well in all 8 subjects) but having done well in interview they have offered her a place based solely on getting 7 in maths, 6s in the two sciences and passing English Language, which should be well within her grasp. It isn't a overly academic school, but gets a good spread of results, from A* down, so I think she would do the best that she is capable of there. This school also has very good dyslexic support and pastoral care. However, they didn't have anyone do music A level last year, and I don't think there is much experience teaching it. The specification they teach also doesn't play to DDs strengths, so she doesn't want to study music there and would do biology.
She has also applied to a grammar school, which is very large and a boys school, so rather noisy. We know it well, as my DS was there until year 11, and the pastoral care is good. She would study music there, and the music department is very experienced, and music students hang out there at break and lunch, so she would have a calmer place to escape to if need be. The class sizes are very big, however (24 in Chemistry this year) whereas there are about 6 in a class at the independent school. Music would be smaller, and I don't think maths class sizes are quite such an issue. The entry requirements are now higher than the independent, but should be within reach. She has a back up choice with lower requirements just in case it all goes wrong in the summer!
She has a music workshop day at the grammar school next week, and an afternoon at the independent the week after, although I have just found out that she will be in a physics lesson not a chemistry one, and then we have to decide about the independent by 19th March. If she chooses there, basically that is where she will go.
I think if she was choosing based just on the school she would choose the independent, but I think the pull of music A level is getting stronger, so she really doesn't know what to do. She hasn't actually been given a place at the grammar yet, so I think she needs to chase that up too. I'm at a loss as to which would be best - I would be happy with either choice I think, although I do worry a bit about the biology.
Hopefully she will go on the two taster days, love one, hate the other, and it will all fall into place, but I have a suspicion that is not going to happen.
Does anyone have any words of wisdom they can share?
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