GCSEs.... again.

I officially became a home educator in 1998, when my daughter turned five. I had of course been taking her sister out of school for a few days a week to teach her, before this, but 1998 was when I assumed sole responsibility for the education of a child of ‘school age’.


At that time, it was commonly supposed among many home educators that GCSEs would not be around for much longer and that there was little point in getting their children to sit them. After all, there were other options. Studying with the Open University was one of these, another was going to a further education college at fourteen or fifteen to take GCSEs and then A levels;  if the child wished to go on to university that is. Fifteen years later and some parents whose children are not at school have much the same kind of attitude; that GCSEs are on the way out and that even if they weren’t, they are not that important anyway.

Now I am not one who thinks that university is the be-all and end-all, the ultimate aim, of a child’s education. One of my children took A levels and went to university and the other did not. I regard both as successful, in that they both decided when they were young what it was that they wished to do. They then went on to achieve their very different goals. It was however important to me that both had the option of going to university if that was what they wanted. Which of course is where GCSEs enter the picture.

There was a time when many colleges ran GCSE courses in various subjects and if you wanted to skip GCSEs entirely and study for A levels at an FE college; well, that was also possible. You might have to work at it a little, but it was often possible to find a way round the entrance requirements. Many teenagers managed to study A levels without having very many or indeed any GCSEs or GCEs at all. Times change, of course. I have been prompted to reflect upon this by looking at the college to which my younger daughter went in 2009.

Harlow College used to be, to put the case bluntly, a really shit place. It was full of kids who were just marking time and the drop-out rate was astronomical. When my daughter applied, the college was just raising their standards. Nobody was allowed on any A level course, under any circumstances, unless they had at least five GCSEs, all at grade C or higher. There were no exceptions to this rule and it had the effect of fewer students dropping out of A levels half way through the course. A few home educated children tried to get in without GCSEs and were turned away. Even so, three years ago, there were still colleges where you could get onto an A level course without GCSEs; it was still happening.

I have dealings with Harlow College and I see now that anybody wanting to study for A level mathematics there now needs six GCSEs, one of which must be mathematics with at least a grade B. I am sure that this will reduce the drop-out rate still further, but it has the side effect of making the place even less accessible to home educated children. Ringing around, I have found the same kind of thing happening in other colleges in various parts of the country. We are moving towards a situation where sixteen year-old home educated children simply will not be able to study for A levels at colleges or sixth forms unless they have a clutch of GCSEs. This has serious implications for those who might wish to go on to university.

Of course, there are other routes into university apart from A levels. There is the IB, but this cannot be done at home. There is that old standby, the Open University, but anybody using this method stands a good chance of queering the pitch for a later application to the student loans people. Some courses, mainly those in the arts, can be entered through portfolios or auditions, but A levels are by far the commonest way in. It is worth parents bearing these factors in mind if their children are not at school. Obviously, it would be an unfortunate situation if a decision about not doing GCSEs had the later effect of preventing a child from going to university at eighteen if she wished to.

As I said earlier, fifteen years after I began as a home educator, some people are saying precisely the same things as were being said about GCSEs in 1998. Things have changed radically since then though and this must be borne in mind when reading success stories from the past of children without qualifications who managed to get into colleges and universities anyway. These routes are closing down rapidly and the time may come when formal qualifications such as GCSEs are absolutely vital if a child wishes to go into further or higher education.

Dramatic news about home educated children

Over on Mumsnet, the most popular British parenting forum with five million hits a month, a well known home educator has made some pretty dramatic claims about the academic attainment of home educated children in this country. Her claims are specific, unambiguous and clear. She says that hundreds of home educated children known to her have obtained places at top British universities without taking GCSEs or A Levels and without studying at the Open University;



‘these young people (who played computer games all day if they wanted, and had no formal work, and nothing most of you would recognise as educational, remember)’



Among the universities that these home educated children who did no formal work, nor anything most people would regard as educational, went to were Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh and the London School of Economics. They studied things like mathematics,  medicine, veterinary science and classics.

Now these are startling claims and,  if true, nobody would be more delighted than me. I am always excited to hear of home educated children getting on in this way. I have emailed the woman directly to ask for details of all this, but she has not replied. I am putting the thing up here in order to ask readers if they know about any of this. If there are hundreds of such cases, then I am guessing that some at least must be well known to others. last year I contacted the universities mentioned above and asked about this very question. Not one had given an offer to a young person without any formal qualifications in the last two years. Competition for places at medical school and to study to be a vet is so ferocious that every year teenagers with four or five As at A Level are routinely turned away.  Would a university really offer a place to study mathematics to a young person without even a GCSE in the subject?

I am not of course asking for the names of the young people concerned. It would be enough to know the name of the university, so that I could find out more about the process for applying if young people have no qualifications at all. I think that this would be a great help to others who were hoping to follow this route to admission. I was very surprised to see Edinburgh mentioned, because their one, inflexible rule is that anybody applying to them must have at least a GCSE in a foreign language. They make no exceptions at all to this and it is hard to see how you could manage that with ‘no formal work and nothing most of you would recognise as educational’.

It is certainly true that some autonomously home educated children get places at university. Janet Ford’s son managed this, as did Shena Deuchar’s daughter. However, one took GCSEs at twelve and the other studied with the Open University, so these are not the sort of people that we are looking at here. I hope that readers will be able to shed some light on this, because if this is not true, then it means that a deliberate attempt has been made to mislead other parents on the biggest parenting site in the country. This would, to say the least of it, be unfortunate. I might mention that my attention was drawn to this by a friend of mine who is a teacher. Her feeling was that the whole thing is a complete nonsense and that it is all made up. I am open minded for now, but would certainly like a few details before I make up my mind.

A final word about university

I think that this topic has been more or less worked to death, but after Alison Sauer drew my attention to a few universities which she felt would be promising to those with no formal qualifications, it seemed churlish not to look into the matter. I have now been in touch with the four universities and all but one are complete duds for the purpose of the home educated young person without GCSEs, A levels or an IB.

I spoke to people at each of the universities, which were Oxford, Cambridge, St. Andrews and Nottingham Trent. I am quite a persuasive fellow, but I have to say that Oxford and Cambridge clearly thought that I was off my head for even asking about such a thing! My mention of a "well kept lab book", which Alison Sauer said would be regarded by some as far better evidence of scientific understanding than an A level in the relevant subject, provoked, I am sorry to say, laughter at all the universities except for Nottingham Trent. I followed these enquiries up with emails, so that we would have something more than my own recollections of the conversations. Oxford said;

In almost every case, we will very much be looking for specific qualifications at a high level, although we do accept a wide variety of possible qualifications

In the email, we are told, 'in almost every case', which seems to suggest room for manoeuvre, but when I spoke to the woman, she told me she was not aware of a single case. Cambridge were even more definite. They said;

It is unlikely that any of the Colleges at Cambridge would consider an application from anybody who did not have some form of formal qualifications. Application to Cambridge is extremely competitive, and colleges need to be able to ascertain whether or not an applicant would be able to cope with the very academic courses that Cambridge offers. Without formal qualifications it would be incredibly difficult to judge this, and any applicant without examination results would be competing on a very high level with other applicants who would be offering some form of examination system.

This seems pretty certain to me. When I spoke to the guy there, he had never heard of anybody getting in without the accepted qualifications. St Andrews were also definitely sure that nobody had got in without qualifications, at least in the last few years. Which leaves Nottingham Trent.

Nottingham Trent University is what is know euphemistically as a 'new' university. It was until 1992 a technical college or polytechnic or something or that sort. It must not under any circumstances be confused with Nottingham University, which is, and has always been, a university. Now I don't think that anybody could accuse me of being at all snobbish or elitist, certainly not about matters of education, but I have to observe that a degree from Nottingham Trent is broadly equivalent in value to the old-style CSE............at about Grade 8. I was accordingly not particularly surprised to find that Nottingham Trent are prepared to be a little more flexible than some of the, shall we say, older universities. Not for Physics mind, which seems to be about the only proper academic subject they teach there. But for some of the courses, there is a distinct possibility that one could get in on a portfolio or even just by having favourable past experience. I had a long chat with a woman there and she specifically mentioned Horticulture: Garden design and Fashion Design as courses which one might possibly be able to join without any formal qualifications. She certainly remembered more than one person who had done so in the past. She was equally sure that nobody would get onto the Physics course without at least a GCSE in the subject and almost certainly an A level as well.

So the situation does indeed seem to be, as I have said all along, that for a traditional, academic course such as Physics, then even at the modern universities, you will be out of luck. The one ray of hope is that some universities, even Oxbridge, are prepared to consider the first year of a BA course at another university as being equivalent to three A levels. I understand that this would depend upon both the university and the course. I suppose in theory that this could be done of Open University points, but I am guessing that you would need at least 120 to pull this off and even then you would stand more chance with A levels.