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14+ Choices

In Year 9 you will be making a choice about which subjects to study in Years 10 and 11. This will be the first time you have had the opportunity to make your own choices about what you want to study – so it is important that you get it right!

Making choices involves making decisions and these will probably be the biggest you going to have to make in your school life so far but don’t worry – there’s lots of advice, information and help about.

Although you will still have to do a range of compulsory subjects in year 10 and 11, there will be many other options open to you to possibly choose from such as the new Diplomas, optional GCSE’s, work related qualifications and REACH. Some of these optional subjects will only be offered within your school, where others may be available across the City or by what are called local ‘consortia’ – e. g. groups of schools in your area that get together to run courses

To see what optional subjects are on offer through the schools that get together to run courses, either in consortia or City-wide, go to the ‘Opportunities’ section of this site and search using the age filter

Optional subjects in all the schools in the City are delivered in two whole day blocks in key stage 4. For example, dependent on which year group you happen to be in key stage 4 (year 10 or 11), you might be doing all your options over Tuesday and Thursday or Wednesday and Friday.

To see how the optional subjects offered in the City is organised into different learning pathways take a look at the Pathways to Progression table for more details.

The most important thing when choosing your options is that you make choices based on:

  • All the information available, not just bits of it!
  • What you are good at and are interested in!
  • It fits into the career plans you are considering, if this is necessary!
  • Not on what your mates might be doing, unless it happens to match with the above!

Below are some further sources of information and advice that may assist you to make well informed choices about your key stage 4 options:

CARD Learner Handbook

Which Way Now

Personal Progression Map (ALPS)

Black Country Connexions

Jobs4U

Know Your Self, Self assessment of interests quiz

Fasttomato, interactive careers guidance