GCSES
When I began home-educating my first child and he was no more than four years old, I was always amused by the frequency with which people would give me a very worried look and say, 'But what about his GCSEs?'. He seemed far too young for me to be even thinking about GCSEs, never mind worrying about them! But this is something a lot of home-educating parents do worry about, even when their children are still very young, and they can be made to feel so inadequate (or come under so much pressure) that they will often put their child into school at around age 13 on the basis that they cannot possibly teach to GCSE level. The good news is that there are many ordinary parents in this country who have very successfully guided their children through GCSEs and come out the other side with a decent set of grades in hand. Many of these young people have gone on to excellent universities, including Oxford and Cambridge. Others have used their qualifications to access apprenticeships or Btech style vocational qualifications. GCSEs are, remember, a general certificate of secondary education; they are designed to be passed by the average student and no-one should be intimidated by them!
So, the first thing to say is don't panic or even be daunted by GCSEs. They are not as scary as they are made to appear. The school system unfortunately whips up teachers, parents and pupils into a state of anxiety and stress when GCSEs approach, giving them an importance they simply shouldn't have. As home-educating parents we can approach them rationally and see them for what they are: simply a useful qualification to get our children onto the next stage of their education or training. In school, children do little more between the ages of 14-16 than focus on getting the best possible grades in their exams. This focus is not necessary, and it does not generally contribute to the kind of broad, deep education Catholic parents are aiming for with their children. Spreading GCSEs out over two or three years, taking only 6-8 and not obsessing about getting the highest possible grades helps to put these exams in context: they are only one part of your child's education, and a small one at that. Subjects which will not crop up on an exam (e.g. sound philosophy and apologetics) are often more important, as are all those personal hobbies and interests your child wants to pursue. Life shouldn't go on hold for two years because of GCSEs! Try to put aside completely the idea you might have of these exams (either from your own school experience or the usual approach of most schools) and look at them with a fresh eye. They are not the aim or summit of your child's education at age 16, merely a small part of it.
Here is some practical advice I put together for a group of parents about getting started with GCSEs.
Where to find advice
The best recommendation I can make here is to direct anyone considering GCSEs to the home- education exams wiki. Almost all your questions on how to go about it will find answers there.
Once you've got your head around the basics, the next thing to do is to join a home-education exams group, where you will find hundreds of parents who have a quite astonishing combined knowledge of how to get a child through GCSEs, and how to do it well. Simply go to the IO (formally yahoo) chat group here or, if you prefer Facebook, there is a group here.
A word about textbooks
Don't buy any textbooks until you have worked out which exam board you will be using (this will depend partly on your choice of exam centre - schools especially will often only accept you for certain exam boards), and asked for advice on one of the groups.
If you are buying maths or science textbooks, be sure that the edition you buy contains answers. These are sometimes printed in the book itself, sometimes on an accompanying CDROM, and sometimes remotely at a publishers website. If you do find yourself with an answer-less textbook, it's always worth asking on the IO group as someone on there may well have them and be willing to share them. Often, when a book says 'contains answers' it only has answers to end- of -chapter or 'within-chapter' questions, not both. Teachers' packs which contain answers are notoriously expensive (often in the £50 - £100 region) and usually unnecessary as they aim at providing assistance to classroom teachers.
What about changes in specifications? One of the main drawbacks with the GCSE system from a home-educator's perspective is that if you have bought a textbook for your first child and a few years later another child is sitting the same exam, the chances are the specification will have changed (or, in humanities, the set texts will be different). In some cases it is easier just to buy the latest book, especially if you are just starting out and have little experience. Later, when you understand the subject better, you will be able to use an older textbook and simply check out what has actually changed (the changes are often small, and are always listed on the exam board website), then just adjust accordingly.
Doing plenty of past papers is probably the most important factor in gaining a good grade. Going into an exam with a good idea of what the paper will look like, where your particular questions will be found, what order they will be in and how they are meant to be answered makes the whole process a lot less daunting. If you can't find the papers you want on the exam board (CIE requires a teacher password which is unhelpful for parents), you can try asking on the Io group linked to above, or go to a free site such as freeexampapers, xtreme papers or papacambridge.
Our own experience
We have been putting our children in for GCSE exams for over twelve years now. This means we have had a child taking exams every year for over a decade, because we spread the exams over two years and our children are all about two years apart. When we set out, we had a pretty low opinion of GCSEs as we had been following an American style Classical Education approach (based on Laura Berquist's book 'Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum') and we were genuinely worried that following a UK based education would be something of a 'come down'. We presumed the exams would be a walkover and that our son would stroll through them. That was our first mistake! There was in fact a great deal of learning to be done on our part (figuring out how to navigate exam boards with their strange language about specifications), and, further, we realised that the exams were often more challenging and rigorous than we had expected (our expectations were very low!). Our first son thus entered his first set of exams woefully unprepared and we all found the whole experience pretty stressful. However, he rather miraculously ended up just where he wanted to be, in the local state selective grammar with a very good set of A levels so we chalked that up to experience and moved on.
Since then we have entered five more sons for the exams and we've learned a lot, not just about how to navigate exam boards easily but more importantly about the need to keep these exams in perspective and not let anyone get worked up about them, least of all you or your child. To achieve this might require a change in attitude: you have to stop worrying that your child's life will be ruined if he or she doesn't get 10 A* GCSEs (because it definitely won't be) and you have to stop caring about what other people expect, or feeling that you children need to compete with schooled children. We've had children who have gained a fantastic set of GCSE and A level results and gone on to competitive universities; we have others, just as capable, who have opted for 5 GCSEs and a vocational qualification and happily work with their hands in artisan crafts. What we have learned is to ask, 'What does this particular child need in order to do what he or she wishes to do?' That may involve a raft of high GCSE grades and it may not; it may involve A levels and it may not; it may involve a degree, and it may not. Home education is about working out what each child needs and responding accordingly. This means that we as parents have to not set out with a fixed idea of where our children are going and what they need to get there. We need to accept that their vocational development is an organic (and divinely ordained) process, one which we have the privilege of facilitating, but one which we do not (and should not seek to) control. That, for us, has been the key to navigating the GCSE system in a successful yet (virtually) stress free way. I find it hard to believe now, looking back over a decade, why I ever took GCSEs quite so seriously and wasted so much anxiety over them.
Are GCSEs compatible with a Catholic education?
I often hear people commenting that GCSEs are not 'Catholic' and are therefore not suitable for Catholic home educators. Taking GCSEs is often frowned upon by parents who feel that a more authentic approach to Catholic education is to follow an overtly Catholic programme (i.e. one produced in America, since no such thing exists here in the UK). In support of this, parents are often told that a US qualification will be just as useful an educational currency over here as it is in the US. However, as yet all we know is that a High School Diploma (enhanced with SAT tests and subject specific exams) can be used to gain entry to a UK university. What we don't have yet is much evidence that an American qualification will get a child into a 6th form for A Levels or onto an apprenticeship. The argument goes that since a HSD takes your child up to 18, this won't be necessary, but there are many courses available in the UK for 16-19 year olds which cover a whole range of both academic and vocational paths, and it is possible that a young person may want to take advantage of these (they do not need to be started at 16; they are free so long as they are started before the 19th birthday) and will need GCSEs to do so. It is also increasingly the case that young people choose not to go to University (whether because of the increasing debt or the lowering of academic standards), making alternative paths even more essential. This is an area in which we would benefit from more information and statistics. One option for parents who opt for a High School Diploma is to arrange for their child to obtain GCSEs in English and Maths as these are generally required to secure funding for post 16 courses and are easy to prepare for.
Perhaps more importantly, though, I have come to question the whole presumption that one needs an overtly Catholic course to provide children with an authentic Catholic education. All the major American Catholic programmes use standard, secular text books for most subjects (e.g. Saxon maths) as it is generally recognised that maths is maths, physics is physics, Latin is Latin and so on. Anyone is free to use those specifically Catholic textbooks recommended by the American programmes in order to teach sound catechist and apologetics. Catholic education resides not in our textbooks but in our approach - in how we use the textbooks, in how we present material, in how we teach, including having a Classical methodology if that is our preferred approach. These things are not the preserve of any one group or programme; they are available free to any Catholic parent who takes the time to understand them, and they are not at all incompatible with (or compromised by) working towards English qualifications. I can honestly say that I have found nothing in the 30+ exams we have taken so far which has negatively impacted on our freedom to provide an authentic Catholic education for our children. What I have found is a considerable degree of freedom and flexibility to tailor each child's education from 14 onwards. No two children in our family have taken exactly the same exams or followed exactly the same route: if we are concerned with tailoring education to the individual, this flexibility seems to me to be a tremendous advantage.
Here you can read an article I wrote about our experience swapping from the American classical to the GCSE system when our oldest child reached the age of 14.
When I began home-educating my first child and he was no more than four years old, I was always amused by the frequency with which people would give me a very worried look and say, 'But what about his GCSEs?'. He seemed far too young for me to be even thinking about GCSEs, never mind worrying about them! But this is something a lot of home-educating parents do worry about, even when their children are still very young, and they can be made to feel so inadequate (or come under so much pressure) that they will often put their child into school at around age 13 on the basis that they cannot possibly teach to GCSE level. The good news is that there are many ordinary parents in this country who have very successfully guided their children through GCSEs and come out the other side with a decent set of grades in hand. Many of these young people have gone on to excellent universities, including Oxford and Cambridge. Others have used their qualifications to access apprenticeships or Btech style vocational qualifications. GCSEs are, remember, a general certificate of secondary education; they are designed to be passed by the average student and no-one should be intimidated by them!
So, the first thing to say is don't panic or even be daunted by GCSEs. They are not as scary as they are made to appear. The school system unfortunately whips up teachers, parents and pupils into a state of anxiety and stress when GCSEs approach, giving them an importance they simply shouldn't have. As home-educating parents we can approach them rationally and see them for what they are: simply a useful qualification to get our children onto the next stage of their education or training. In school, children do little more between the ages of 14-16 than focus on getting the best possible grades in their exams. This focus is not necessary, and it does not generally contribute to the kind of broad, deep education Catholic parents are aiming for with their children. Spreading GCSEs out over two or three years, taking only 6-8 and not obsessing about getting the highest possible grades helps to put these exams in context: they are only one part of your child's education, and a small one at that. Subjects which will not crop up on an exam (e.g. sound philosophy and apologetics) are often more important, as are all those personal hobbies and interests your child wants to pursue. Life shouldn't go on hold for two years because of GCSEs! Try to put aside completely the idea you might have of these exams (either from your own school experience or the usual approach of most schools) and look at them with a fresh eye. They are not the aim or summit of your child's education at age 16, merely a small part of it.
Here is some practical advice I put together for a group of parents about getting started with GCSEs.
Where to find advice
The best recommendation I can make here is to direct anyone considering GCSEs to the home- education exams wiki. Almost all your questions on how to go about it will find answers there.
Once you've got your head around the basics, the next thing to do is to join a home-education exams group, where you will find hundreds of parents who have a quite astonishing combined knowledge of how to get a child through GCSEs, and how to do it well. Simply go to the IO (formally yahoo) chat group here or, if you prefer Facebook, there is a group here.
A word about textbooks
Don't buy any textbooks until you have worked out which exam board you will be using (this will depend partly on your choice of exam centre - schools especially will often only accept you for certain exam boards), and asked for advice on one of the groups.
If you are buying maths or science textbooks, be sure that the edition you buy contains answers. These are sometimes printed in the book itself, sometimes on an accompanying CDROM, and sometimes remotely at a publishers website. If you do find yourself with an answer-less textbook, it's always worth asking on the IO group as someone on there may well have them and be willing to share them. Often, when a book says 'contains answers' it only has answers to end- of -chapter or 'within-chapter' questions, not both. Teachers' packs which contain answers are notoriously expensive (often in the £50 - £100 region) and usually unnecessary as they aim at providing assistance to classroom teachers.
What about changes in specifications? One of the main drawbacks with the GCSE system from a home-educator's perspective is that if you have bought a textbook for your first child and a few years later another child is sitting the same exam, the chances are the specification will have changed (or, in humanities, the set texts will be different). In some cases it is easier just to buy the latest book, especially if you are just starting out and have little experience. Later, when you understand the subject better, you will be able to use an older textbook and simply check out what has actually changed (the changes are often small, and are always listed on the exam board website), then just adjust accordingly.
Doing plenty of past papers is probably the most important factor in gaining a good grade. Going into an exam with a good idea of what the paper will look like, where your particular questions will be found, what order they will be in and how they are meant to be answered makes the whole process a lot less daunting. If you can't find the papers you want on the exam board (CIE requires a teacher password which is unhelpful for parents), you can try asking on the Io group linked to above, or go to a free site such as freeexampapers, xtreme papers or papacambridge.
Our own experience
We have been putting our children in for GCSE exams for over twelve years now. This means we have had a child taking exams every year for over a decade, because we spread the exams over two years and our children are all about two years apart. When we set out, we had a pretty low opinion of GCSEs as we had been following an American style Classical Education approach (based on Laura Berquist's book 'Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum') and we were genuinely worried that following a UK based education would be something of a 'come down'. We presumed the exams would be a walkover and that our son would stroll through them. That was our first mistake! There was in fact a great deal of learning to be done on our part (figuring out how to navigate exam boards with their strange language about specifications), and, further, we realised that the exams were often more challenging and rigorous than we had expected (our expectations were very low!). Our first son thus entered his first set of exams woefully unprepared and we all found the whole experience pretty stressful. However, he rather miraculously ended up just where he wanted to be, in the local state selective grammar with a very good set of A levels so we chalked that up to experience and moved on.
Since then we have entered five more sons for the exams and we've learned a lot, not just about how to navigate exam boards easily but more importantly about the need to keep these exams in perspective and not let anyone get worked up about them, least of all you or your child. To achieve this might require a change in attitude: you have to stop worrying that your child's life will be ruined if he or she doesn't get 10 A* GCSEs (because it definitely won't be) and you have to stop caring about what other people expect, or feeling that you children need to compete with schooled children. We've had children who have gained a fantastic set of GCSE and A level results and gone on to competitive universities; we have others, just as capable, who have opted for 5 GCSEs and a vocational qualification and happily work with their hands in artisan crafts. What we have learned is to ask, 'What does this particular child need in order to do what he or she wishes to do?' That may involve a raft of high GCSE grades and it may not; it may involve A levels and it may not; it may involve a degree, and it may not. Home education is about working out what each child needs and responding accordingly. This means that we as parents have to not set out with a fixed idea of where our children are going and what they need to get there. We need to accept that their vocational development is an organic (and divinely ordained) process, one which we have the privilege of facilitating, but one which we do not (and should not seek to) control. That, for us, has been the key to navigating the GCSE system in a successful yet (virtually) stress free way. I find it hard to believe now, looking back over a decade, why I ever took GCSEs quite so seriously and wasted so much anxiety over them.
Are GCSEs compatible with a Catholic education?
I often hear people commenting that GCSEs are not 'Catholic' and are therefore not suitable for Catholic home educators. Taking GCSEs is often frowned upon by parents who feel that a more authentic approach to Catholic education is to follow an overtly Catholic programme (i.e. one produced in America, since no such thing exists here in the UK). In support of this, parents are often told that a US qualification will be just as useful an educational currency over here as it is in the US. However, as yet all we know is that a High School Diploma (enhanced with SAT tests and subject specific exams) can be used to gain entry to a UK university. What we don't have yet is much evidence that an American qualification will get a child into a 6th form for A Levels or onto an apprenticeship. The argument goes that since a HSD takes your child up to 18, this won't be necessary, but there are many courses available in the UK for 16-19 year olds which cover a whole range of both academic and vocational paths, and it is possible that a young person may want to take advantage of these (they do not need to be started at 16; they are free so long as they are started before the 19th birthday) and will need GCSEs to do so. It is also increasingly the case that young people choose not to go to University (whether because of the increasing debt or the lowering of academic standards), making alternative paths even more essential. This is an area in which we would benefit from more information and statistics. One option for parents who opt for a High School Diploma is to arrange for their child to obtain GCSEs in English and Maths as these are generally required to secure funding for post 16 courses and are easy to prepare for.
Perhaps more importantly, though, I have come to question the whole presumption that one needs an overtly Catholic course to provide children with an authentic Catholic education. All the major American Catholic programmes use standard, secular text books for most subjects (e.g. Saxon maths) as it is generally recognised that maths is maths, physics is physics, Latin is Latin and so on. Anyone is free to use those specifically Catholic textbooks recommended by the American programmes in order to teach sound catechist and apologetics. Catholic education resides not in our textbooks but in our approach - in how we use the textbooks, in how we present material, in how we teach, including having a Classical methodology if that is our preferred approach. These things are not the preserve of any one group or programme; they are available free to any Catholic parent who takes the time to understand them, and they are not at all incompatible with (or compromised by) working towards English qualifications. I can honestly say that I have found nothing in the 30+ exams we have taken so far which has negatively impacted on our freedom to provide an authentic Catholic education for our children. What I have found is a considerable degree of freedom and flexibility to tailor each child's education from 14 onwards. No two children in our family have taken exactly the same exams or followed exactly the same route: if we are concerned with tailoring education to the individual, this flexibility seems to me to be a tremendous advantage.
Here you can read an article I wrote about our experience swapping from the American classical to the GCSE system when our oldest child reached the age of 14.