Andy Millar:

I believe very very strongly that schools should be broadening your knowledge, not narrowing it for some adults' idea of a possible 9-5 job for you - when your idea or the job itself might change completely after a few years anyway! Also, GCSEs are a fantastic "taster" for finding a whole range of things which you (or particularly your parents) might not have dreamed could become a life long interest, whether in work or not. Hence the fact that I encouraged my children to do as many as possible. The actual GCSE qualification is pretty much irrelevant for anything except one thing (see below), it's the new insight that you get on the way that's important.

How would you react to a secondary school student who doesn't have much interest in the school curriculum but has serious interests in subjects not taught in schools along with a considerable amount of knowledge of them?


For example, I had an interest in the technical aspects of computers and software during my secondary school years, and would have loved to have taken computer science for GCSE, but at the time computer science was yet to be created and schools only offered ICT which I found to be boring and unchallenging. My interests and knowledge simply did not fit into the school curriculum and experience has revealed that teachers don't really seem to care much about subjects outside of the school curriculum. Another interest I have is politics and economics which I inherit from my mother as this is her specialism. Economics existed as a GCSE at the time. It's a bit basic but it's one that I would have liked to have taken if my school had offered it.


Another issue are foreign languages and how many children in Britain know a particular foreign language but most state schools neither teach them nor offer GCSE exams in them. I'm hoping that with Brexit schools will start taking non-EU languages more seriously.

Andy Millar:

I believe very very strongly that schools should be broadening your knowledge, not narrowing it for some adults' idea of a possible 9-5 job for you - when your idea or the job itself might change completely after a few years anyway! Also, GCSEs are a fantastic "taster" for finding a whole range of things which you (or particularly your parents) might not have dreamed could become a life long interest, whether in work or not. Hence the fact that I encouraged my children to do as many as possible. The actual GCSE qualification is pretty much irrelevant for anything except one thing (see below), it's the new insight that you get on the way that's important.

How would you react to a secondary school student who doesn't have much interest in the school curriculum but has serious interests in subjects not taught in schools along with a considerable amount of knowledge of them?


For example, I had an interest in the technical aspects of computers and software during my secondary school years, and would have loved to have taken computer science for GCSE, but at the time computer science was yet to be created and schools only offered ICT which I found to be boring and unchallenging. My interests and knowledge simply did not fit into the school curriculum and experience has revealed that teachers don't really seem to care much about subjects outside of the school curriculum. Another interest I have is politics and economics which I inherit from my mother as this is her specialism. Economics existed as a GCSE at the time. It's a bit basic but it's one that I would have liked to have taken if my school had offered it.


Another issue are foreign languages and how many children in Britain know a particular foreign language but most state schools neither teach them nor offer GCSE exams in them. I'm hoping that with Brexit schools will start taking non-EU languages more seriously.