Year 9: choosing courses for 14 to 16

Somewhere between January and April most schools run the options process: an evening, a booklet, a form and a deadline. It is the first decision a child makes about their own education, and it is both less consequential and more structured than families expect.

What every learner keeps

The Curriculum for Wales does not stop at 14. Schools must secure learning in all six Areas of Learning and Experience right through to 16, which is why a Welsh option form looks fuller than an English one.

Welsh and English must each continue and must each lead to a qualification. Religion, values and ethics and relationships and sexuality education are both mandatory, though neither has to lead to a qualification. Mathematics and numeracy is a double award: one course, examined as one course, that is worth two GCSEs. Science normally takes a double or single award shape too. By the time all of that is counted, the genuinely free choices are usually three or four.

What the option blocks do

Schools arrange the optional subjects into blocks so the timetable can be built, and a learner picks one subject from each block. This is why a wanted pair is sometimes impossible: two favourites in the same block. Ask early, because some schools will move a subject if enough families ask, and none will move it in July.

How to choose

Three questions, in this order, work better than a list of careers.

1. Which lesson does time pass quickly in? That is the honest measure of interest.
2. Which homework does your child least want to start? That is the honest measure of dislike, and it is not always the lowest grade.
3. Has anything ever made them think “I would like to do that”? Not a job: an activity, a programme, a person.

Only then look at the reports. Where enjoyment and results agree, the choice is easy. Where they disagree, that is the question to put to the teacher.

The decision inside the decision

Parents concentrate on which subjects appear on the form and miss the one that actually caps an outcome, which is tier of entry. Maths is entered at foundation or higher tier, and the tier sets the range of grades available at all. That decision is often taken by the school, quietly, on the strength of Year 9 work, and it is much easier to talk about in Year 9 than to appeal in Year 11. The guide to choosing courses for 14 to 16 goes through it properly.

What Fincho does in Year 9

When the student opens Ahead, Pip asks the three questions first and only then looks at grades and practice. It offers two or three combinations and says what each keeps open, with the source. The choice stays the family’s. The school’s own options deadline goes on the exam roadmap once the student adds it.