dancing10 Posted April 4, 2012 Share Posted April 4, 2012 Can anyone out there give me any ideas please. My daughter is now choosing her options at school, she starts year ten in September. Her school is an independant school and dosnt offer any form of dance (eg gcse dance). My daughter dearly wants to do this, i have rung our local colleges who used to offer a day release scheme for children wanting to study dance in years ten and eleven but the government has removed the funding so this is no longer running. please try to offer me some ideas x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anna C Posted April 4, 2012 Share Posted April 4, 2012 Hi Dancing10, My dd is in year 8 but is doing GCSE dance as a "twilight" course at a nearby school. We have to pay termly for it and it's not cheap, but she really wanted to do it. As she will have done the exam by the end of Year 9 I was happy to let her get it out of the way early. It is quite homework intensive though so I think if she had been taking it along with the rest of her GCSEs, I might have discouraged her. Like your dd, my dd's school doesn't offer dance as a GCSE or A Level so this was the only option. Might there be any other schools in your area which do the course after school? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fiz Posted April 4, 2012 Share Posted April 4, 2012 My youngest's ballet school used to offer it as an option, but she did not chose it as it is not dance or performance based. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anna C Posted April 4, 2012 Share Posted April 4, 2012 The "new" syllabus is more dance based now - or so I have been told by the GCSE teacher. The written part of the exam is much smaller now than it was previously and there is now more dance. :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janice Posted April 4, 2012 Share Posted April 4, 2012 Dd school does not offer gcse dance but she really wanted to do it so she looked at schools in the next town (are town only has the one school) she found a school that does a BTEC dance course for it pupils in year 10 and 11. She e-mailed the school to enquire, who inturn contacted her school. Her teachers where impressed with dd and they went out of their way to arrange for her to attend the other school one day a week. I think her normal school has to pay and I have to take her and pick her up. But she is loving the course. She is the first and only one who does this as it was not an offered option. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robin64 Posted April 7, 2012 Share Posted April 7, 2012 GCSE and A level dance does involve performance and choreography. I have been to watch the exam performance pieces at DD's school because they always put together an evening to show them. The standard was high. We are lucky though because DD's school has a strong dance dept with a good studio. It is a state grammar school. DD chose it for the dance element because the school my eldest DD goes to doesn't offer dance. I think the advice to track down a course and see if there is a possibility to take it in a different school is good. Try and find out previous results though - schools and teachers do vary. If your DD is doing lots of dance outside school it might not be necessary to get the GCSE. Also if it is an added extra watch out for workload because certain GCSEs require quite a bit of course work (eldest is doing art and textiles) and yr 10 and 11 are homework heavy anyway without any extras. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anna C Posted April 7, 2012 Share Posted April 7, 2012 I agree Robin64. I don't think my dd would have managed it as a twilight course had she been taking the exam in years 10 or 11. She's only just managing it in year 8 but I must say it is useful as it's getting her into the GCSE mindset early. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rowan Posted April 7, 2012 Share Posted April 7, 2012 DD's school (state comprehensive) offers GCSE dance only as a twilight subject for year 9/10. DD unfortunately couldn't do it because she was already taking GCSE music as a twilight subject in year 8/9 and the year 9 times clashed with GCSE dance. If we had known about her school's GCSE dance earlier, she would have picked this over the music, but as she was already a year into music, it seemed pointless to change. I don't know if outsiders can join the GCSE dance course though. The school was happy for her to try to fit in the GCSE dance on top of the GCSE music by offering her catch-up sessions on the dance syllabus that she missed, but in the end, DD didn't want to do it because the timings meant she would have to miss her own "proper" ballet lessons after school and she didn't want to do that. If it had been available during the normal school day she might have taken it as an option, but it's not. Some dance schools offer GCSE dance; the RAD HQ does. I don't know if you've looked into that too. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anna C Posted April 7, 2012 Share Posted April 7, 2012 Some subject clashes really mystify me. Most of dd's dancing friends are also musical too and I don't think it's that unusual. I always wonder why schools let "arty" subjects clash like that? :-( 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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