To GCSE or not to GCSE
The last two Friday afternoons have taken Friday Club into strange new territory. Friday Club has always been an exam free zone - pretty much an academics free zone - apart from some phases of language learning and the occasional talk by a visiting teacher or expert. But as kids get into their teens, the spectre of GCSEs starts to loom. And many families start to think about their position on these currently ubiquitous if questionable qualifications. So we have had two meetings for parents to gather around the fire in The Barn to talk about GCSES - whether and how to get them if you are home educated. It has been a good pooling of information and ideas - parents with older kids passing on what they’ve learnt to parents with younger kids. We have also heard from the older teens in the group about their experiences of and attitudes towards GCSEs.
Our discussion revealed so many different ways to think about GCSE and then do or not do them. Some kids take as many GCSEs as you would at school - but often spread out over a number of years so that it does not dominate life in the way it does at school. Some kids find out how few you can get away while still being able to access higher level courses - it’s amazing how much more flexible colleges are when you speak to them compared with their official line on the website. Some take none at all and continue their home education life as before but perhaps getting more focused about how to make a good living out of their interests and skills. And the ways of getting GCSEs are various too: on your own or with your parent or in a pair or small group with other kids; with a tutor for a bit or all the way or not at all; with a text book or online provider or just a bunch of past papers and mark schemes.
One of the advantages of home education, in relation to qualifications, seems to be that you can make a plan which suits the specific kid and the family - and that might well be different even for siblings within the same family. One of the disadvantages it that you have to pay for them - it seems crazy that the government cannot financially support home educating families, in at least this one small way!
Meanwhile - it is perhaps revealing that the kids were not present at these meetings. They were busy with the much more important and interesting business of talking about the birds and the bees with their favourite musician Bea Everett -in a series of discussion session which they all petitioned for - I wonder if they would do the same for GCSEs? Maybe parents should wait and see!