Cjhan

We are considering moving back to UK after 2 years in US. Haven’t settled and family issues back home. Our daughter will be 16 and ready for 6th form in UK having completed her Freshman and Sophmore years in a Connecticut high school. Has any one got any experience of this? Will she be accepted as she won’t have GCSE’s? Thank you.

C.2s

I can give you a reply from someone who worked in 6th form college admissions and interviewed thousands of prospective students. (Although this was about ten years ago and things might have changed.) I think that the answer is "It depends." None of the rules about admissions are set in stone, but you may find some people try to insist that she spends a year doing GCSEs.

The various providers of education at this level (predominantly schools with attached 6th forms or standalone 6th form colleges ) compete with each other in much the same way as any business sector. If there are a number of potential schools/colleges in the area they'll be competing harder than in areas where there aren't many competitors. Because they get paid based partly on the total number of students they take on AND partly on the number that actually pass the course (s), they compete for two things :
1. As many students as possible*
2. The students that are perceived to be the best
I say 'possible' because each institution obviously has a limited number of spaces based on the number of teachers and classrooms etc.
So if your daughter wants to study at really popular, oversubscribed school she might find that they insist on meeting the general entry requirements (which was usually X number of GCSEs at grade C or above), and she might find the same thing with specific courses that are particularly popular or perceived as particularly difficult (for example Maths might require grade A). The reasons for this is that there's a sort of tension between the Admissions staff who have targets to attract X number of students, and the faculty staff that are more interested in the number that pass the exam, and also to be fair to all students.

If I was interviewing your daughter I would probably take a quick look at the extent to which her academic experience in the US can be treated as equal to the GCSE standards, but I would be equally interested in her as a person. If I needed to convince a reluctant faculty colleague to accept her on their course I'd be looking at what evidence there is from her school before she went to the US. I'd maybe try to argue that the experience of living abroad gives her a different insight (if that's relevant to the subject she wants to do).

However, maybe spending a year doing GCSEs might actually be best for her? I know it might seem like she would be "a year behind" but sometimes it can be for the best in the long run. Apart from anything else if you are thinking about this September you are already making a late application (most people will already have done it), and also there's all the disruption of moving... maybe a year would give her time to decide calmly what subjects she wants to study? Obviously she, and you, know the answer to this best.
​​​​​

Cjhan

Thank you for your reply. I guessed the process would be along those lines . We plan to move next summer after she turns 16 . I’m thinking of looking into her doing GCSE maths and English in the US. We are in Connecticut , anyone know if it’s possible to do GCSE’s remotely online with private tuition? Thanks

brits1

Hi our youngest left Aus without any Tee’s as he did not finish his final year so had really nothing to show for 11.5years of schooling in Aus, he started 6th form at our local high school studying an advanced Btec and 2 GCSE’s English, Maths, he passed all of these and then went to Uni and now is a teacher, I worried myself to bits but it was really “alright” me our son was just fine

Cjhan

Thank you so much for that. It’s always helpful to hear other people’s experience. I hadn’t thought about BTech options.

brits1

A pleasure it is a real worry for some when children are involved in a move and can make “things” seem so much more “scary” especially if you are not use to the education system if the country you are heading to (as was the case for us) what I found was that the education system in England is very experienced with overseas students and that the learning system offers a huge variety of routes for learning my son and I visited 3 6th form colleges he was interested in and also had appointments with their course managers, we took along his work from Australia so they could see his standards of work and offered multiple options for his study, he decided on Uni and the courses were arranged and he did not look back our oldest son had completed his Tee’s and he went straight onto university. Good luck with everything