Year 8 Options Process

Dear Parents,

the school diary sent home to you at the start of this school year included an evening meeting on 22 March to discuss the Year 8 for Year 9 ‘options’ process. I am sure that you will have seen the recent coverage in the media about the government’s plans to introduce the ’English Baccalaureate’ as a qualification/measure at the end of Year 11. As the plans stand at present this would give additional certification to pupils who achieve GCSE grades in English, two Sciences, Maths, History or Geography and a Modern Foreign Language. There are also plans to measure school performance by the percentage of pupils who achieve A*-C grades in these subjects, and you may have seen in the recent league tables published by the government indicating that Ribblesdale pupils achieved 14% last summer. In fact only 14% of the year group studied this combination of subjects at GCSE. It also reflects entirely pupil choices made 3 years ago.

In the light of the government’s proposals and following much discussion I have decided to postpone the options process until the spring of Year 9 (2012) when we will be better informed about how your children will be accredited when they complete their courses in 2014. The present curriculum in Year 8 will continue into Year 9 with all pupils continuing all subjects so that you and they are able to make informed choices at the appropriate time. Of particular concern is that all pupils study the correct subjects in key stage 4 so that they are able to meet the entry requirements for the institutions in which they plan to complete their statutory learning to age 18.

I hope that you will understand the reason for this decision and I felt that it would be best to communicate this to you as early as possible. Some pupils will have been hoping to reduce the number of subjects they studied in Year 9, but equally, they would not want to adversely affect their progression opportunities at the end of Year 11 by making choices without having all of the relevant information.

Yours sincerely

S A Smith