Short Courses
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Short Courses
At my sons' school they do what they refer to as "short courses" in ICT and RE at the end of Year 10. They're included in the school's GCSE results tables, but presumably they don't count as much as full GCSEs? Can anybody advise?
This has been fairly standard in my DDs school for a while now, the reasoning seems to be that as all pupils have to study RE and ICT as part of the National Curriculum they might as well gain some credit for it. They can usually extend to a full GCSE (or even a double in ICT) if they want as one of the options. My daughter has already taken modules in some of these in Yr 9 (more successfully in RE than IT I fear)
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Yoyo123/Guest 55 - I'm not sure I quite understand the point in short courses being classed as half a GCSE. If you did say 9 full GCSEs and two "halves", would you then say you had 10 GCSEs? Or if you needed 5 Bs to do A Levels and had 4 Bs in full GCSEs plus 2 Bs in half GCSEs, would that count as 5?
Eldest child is in Y9 so I'm trying to get to grips with the next part of the curriculum! In my day you did 9 "O'Levels" in years 10 and 11 (or 4 and 5 as I knew them), then did 3 A'Levels and one more O'level in the sixth form. My Y9 boy seems to have started work on his ICT and DT GCSE's, will do his Maths GCSE next year, has to choose 2 options in year 10, one more in year 11 and is expected to do at least one AS level before he goes into the sixth form. I'm horribly confused!!
Eldest child is in Y9 so I'm trying to get to grips with the next part of the curriculum! In my day you did 9 "O'Levels" in years 10 and 11 (or 4 and 5 as I knew them), then did 3 A'Levels and one more O'level in the sixth form. My Y9 boy seems to have started work on his ICT and DT GCSE's, will do his Maths GCSE next year, has to choose 2 options in year 10, one more in year 11 and is expected to do at least one AS level before he goes into the sixth form. I'm horribly confused!!
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In most cases they are just "extras" - don't do any harm (and as previous posters have said, will add to the overall GCSE total) but probably not of any great importance, unless perhaps a pupil tips into the magic "5 A*-C" by virtue of a couple of short courses.... I really wouldn't start worrying about accumulating UCAS points at this stage, many of the more selective universities still look at actual A level grades anyway and half a GCSE here or there won't make any difference...
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- Posts: 89
- Joined: Wed Oct 22, 2008 11:31 pm
- Location: North West Kent
hi solimum - i didn't mean it (reference to UCAS points) in reference to GCSE's it was just something that popped up into my head to let people know that ABRSM music grades (and all the other boards) can give you UCAS points when applying for Uni - apparantly a grade 8 (according to my year 13's in practical and theory) is the equivalent of an AS
Yes short courses are just generally fillers to boost the schools GCSE numbers
Yes short courses are just generally fillers to boost the schools GCSE numbers