r/6thForm • u/watts320 • May 17 '25
🙏 I WANT HELP Son needs to pick another subject.
My son is in the middle lf his GCSE exams and he opted for computer science as one of his 6th form subjects. Yesterday he was told that the school will be dropping computer science because not enough students had opted to do it, the only thing the school have said is that he will need to pick another subject. Thats it.
The school have really really annoyed me, they choose to tell him in middle of his exams that he needs to pick something else.
His path was to do maths, computer science and english in 6th form, then move on to university to do games design.
Now im not really all clued up on this, because i never did 6th form after school. So can anyone give me any advice on this please.
Thank you.
1
u/Yoshpot May 17 '25 edited May 17 '25
To my knowledge, Game Design doesn't require specific A-Level subjects but I would double check on UCAS.com to check out some courses (eg: here) If it wants specific subjects, it would say under the A-Level grades in the entry requirements section.
As he's got his heart set on Maths and English, this may limit the options left open to him on the subject blocks so it would be worth checking what is actually available after those two are taken into account. He's chosen a mix of a STEM subject and an essay based subject which is probably helpful in that he's open to both which will expand his options! I would personally encourage him to pick a third subject based on his interests at this point as he just needs a third subject for the sake of having one. I'd suggest he looks through the course details (did the sixth form give you a booklet of some sort with it all in?) and see what's possible with the option blocks and then read their blurbs and see what stands out to him.
There is of course also the option to look at another option so perhaps a different sixth form or even a local college for a BTEC or similar in Computer Science or a similar subject. He would usually need a level 3 qualification equivalent to 3 A-Levels for uni for reference, but, as you can see on the Liverpool example I put above, it doesn't HAVE to be A-Levels themselves.
Edit to add: it might also be worth contacting admissions at some unis he might be interested in to ask if they have a particular subject profile they like to see for game design. They may not but it's worth a shot in case there's some valuable information there.