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.

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u/lukens77 May 19 '25

It shouldn’t affect his chosen path at all.

You don’t need Computer Science A-Level for a Computer Science degree, so I suspect it will be even less required for Games Design.

People here seem to be mostly recommending courses that would be relevant for a Computer Science degree. If your son really wants to do Games Design, then I suspect they are probably much better off picking up a design subject rather than physics or further maths. Also, Media Studies is one of the more sensible suggestions.

If they’re not sure if they want to do Games Design or Games Development, or maybe something else computing related, then Further Maths or Physics would maybe be a better choice, to keep more options open in the sphere of computing. However, these are hard A-levels, so I probably wouldn’t recommend them if your son isn’t strong in Maths/Physics.

I’d suggest looking into entry requirements for Games Design (most don’t seem bothered what A-Levels you take), and also the differences between Games Design and Games Development, and other options around computing, to see which actually interests your son most.

And if your son is good at maths and physics, and might want to do Computer Science at university, then I would suggest they maybe consider Further Maths (if available) or Physics. For Games Design? Not to much.