School responds to claims of ‘GCSE options mess’ – as petition by parents has more than 300 signatures

The principal of a Northampton school has responded to claims about changes to the GCSE option choice process for year nine pupils – which has seen a petition started by parents with more than 300 signatures.

A year nine parent contacted this newspaper to express their dismay about how The Duston School, in Berrywood Road, changed their GCSE options programme “just days” before the students made their final choices.

The parent said that in November 2022, the year nine pupils had to make their indicative choices of which GCSEs they would like to take so staffing could be modelled for the next year.

At the time, they were aware the final decisions would be made in February 2023.

“The decision was made up of picking between geography and history, and then two additional GCSEs of whichever subjects they wanted to take,” said the parent.

“There was then no communication from the school to parents in the run up to the final choices being made in February until two days before the virtual parents' evening was scheduled on February 2 – to say it was going to double up as an options evening.

“That evening, none of the teachers discussed GCSE option choices and there was no presentation.”

The parent then said the day after parents’ evening (February 3), the link for year nine students to pick their final GCSE options was sent out.

On February 3, the pupils were told that rather than having two free choices, they would only pick one additional GCSE as statistics became compulsory – which the parent claims was the first time anyone had heard of this and it differed from the information on the school’s website.

The parent also claimed that for some students, the choice to do a foreign language was also removed based on their progress and they were left with no alternative but to take both GCSE history and geography – which other students had the choice between.

“No information was provided on these changes ahead of time and the information on the website had been updated, but it must have been very soon before the final decision had to be made by students,” said the parent, who had been regularly checking the website to research GCSE choices with their child.

The parent said: “The communication from the school has been nothing short of appalling.

“Our year nine Facebook group was full of confused and angry parents, and I’m livid that my child has had one of their options taken away.”

The Monday after the option choices had to be made (February 6), the parent believes The Duston School stopped answering their office phones due to the sheer volume of parents ringing to complain – who then resorted to emailing.

“In response to the complaints, an email was sent out explaining the different pathways and the mandatory GCSE statistics course,” said the parent. “The reason given was that the pandemic has impacted the year nines’ learning and more time needs to be made for core lessons – but this is the first us parents heard of this.”

A petition has been set up for parents to show the school how disappointed they are and, at the time of writing, it has 330 signatures.

Sam Strickland, principal at The Duston School, was approached for comment by Chronicle & Echo and said: “It is disappointing that a parent has elected to report a school matter to a local news outlet.

“Pupils at The Duston School were asked to make indicative first and second choice GCSE options in the autumn of 2022 to support the school in making staffing based decisions.

“At no point were pupils told they will have the option to pick two GCSE subjects and follow these two options as part of their GCSE option choice process.

“We were clear with pupils that the actual option choice event would take place in February 2023.”

The principal continued by saying each year there are changes to the curriculum and a decision had been made to change it for the forthcoming 2023-2024 academic year.

The new pathway approach had been discussed at a governor level with the Chair of Governors.

“We have taken considerable time to review where our current key stage three pupils, and especially the current year nines, are due to the impact of the pandemic and we have extensively reviewed how the current GCSE approach we employ works,” Mr Strickland continued.

“Under the current model pupils receive fewer hours in all of their subject areas than they will under the new model.

“We have elected to slow the curriculum down and give staff and pupils more time to work on their GCSE subjects, which is to the benefit of the pupils and their future life chances.”

This decision will see pupils have five hours a week in maths, English, and science, and three hours a week in their other GCSE subjects.

Mr Strickland added: “This gives our pupils approximately 40 more additional hours of contact time for every subject with their teachers than previous approaches we have taken over the course of the GCSE programme of study.”

Every pupil studies English language and literature, double science, maths and statistics, and one open option choice subject – worth a total of seven GCSEs.

On top of this, pupils are then entered into one of the following four pathways.

The first pathway, which is what the majority of pupils will continue with, is studying their chosen foreign language and a choice between between history and geography. This gives them an additional two GCSEs, bringing the total to nine.

The second pathway is for some students who will take both history and geography, and no foreign language. They too will leave the school in year 11 with nine GCSEs.

The third pathway is for students who need additional maths or English lessons to support their GCSE grades. They will take history or geography on top of that and leave the school with eight GCSEs.

The final pathway is for those who need both additional maths and English lessons to support their overall grades, and they will leave with seven GCSEs.

The principal said: “As a school, we are happy to discuss the pathway any given pupil is entered on to.

“However, we are also very clear that pupils need to secure grades in maths, English and science as they need these qualifications to access Post 16 provision, universities and the grades in these subject areas are often scrutinised by employers in the future.”

Mr Strickland believes the GCSE option choice process has been “fully communicated with parents” and like all previous years, the school has written to all parents detailing the process.

This is in addition to a recorded talk outlining how the process works on The Duston School’s website, as well as a talk for each individual subject area.

He also said the school held a virtual parent consultation event, in line with the school’s approach to all events of this kind.