(21 Aug 2014, 5:43 pm)aureolin St Roberts in Washington? Most from my school went there too afterwards.
GCSEs were pretty restricted when I was at school, but it opened up to do a load of vocational stuff a few years after I left. There were people who got to do construction trades, design, etc. We had to do core subjects, ICT, PE, Humanities, French, 1x Design & Tech subject, and two option blocks. Options were things like Business, Music, Art, extra PE, extra IT, and triple award science.
ICT was pretty poor when I was at school. In 1999/00, I ended up configuring most of their new network, as they had not a single member of staff with any knowledge whatsoever about NT4 or network configuration. Spent most of my "extra IT" in my last two years actually administering their network and performing maintenance, as I'd completed all the coursework by xmas in the first year of it. A student having domain admin access would be unheard of these days. 
Think I'd have liked being in a year group of Dan's size. Mine would have had circa 200 students, and it was a nightmare at times. Loads of bellends too that were more intent on disrupting everyone's education rather than learn for themselves. No wonder they're either on the brown or locked up these days.
Aye.
At GCSE level, we can choose from the following courses: English (deemed the most suitable option for those who weren't as skilled at English); English Literature & English Language; Mathematics; Biology; Chemistry; Physics; Geography; History; Religious Studies; Media Studies; Latin; French; German; Home Economics; Design Technology; Art; Business Communication Systems (previously Business Studies & ICT - now merged - thankfully I managed to do them separately); Music, or P.E.
Each student gets two hours of their ten chosen subjects each week, with Maths and English both being allotted four hours, making up 24 hours of 'learning' each week.
We're supposed to have two periods of Games per week and one period of PSHE (making up another 3 hours). If you have a good enough reason, you can easily manage to get out of Games, and my reason happened to be that I was taking an extra GCSE (Dual Media) so wanted to use the time to do something worthwhile opposed to running about and wasting two hours of potential learning time. One of the P.E teachers was on Maternity Leave when this came about, and when she came back, she wasn't best pleased - but our parents had both said it was fine, the teacher was fine with it, and the two P.E teachers which remained were both fine with it. PSHE tends to be the lesson where you plan your Duke of Edinburgh expedition (providing you do it), and once you've done it, it tends to be just revision.
In my school, all pupils must take either English & English Literature or English Language; Maths; a Modern Foreign Language (French or German); and at least two Sciences, unless they have been advised that this is not appropriate (in which case, the pupil takes Additional Maths or Additional English).
At AS Level, you choose four subjects and have four hour-long periods of those subjects each week. At A2 (second year of Sixth Form), you drop one of those subjects in favour of additional 'frees'. The subjects available at AS and A2 include English; Latin; Mathematics; French; Biology; German; Chemistry; Media Studies; Physics; Sociology; Geography; Food & Nutrition; History; Design Technology; Religious Studies; Art; Information Technology; Business Studies; Music; and P.E.
In the Lower Sixth (Year 12), students have one period of Games per week (in reality, I don't think this happens), one period of Enrichment and one Tutorial period. In the Upper Sixth (Year 13), students have one Tutorial period per week. The Enrichment and Games period then become designated 'frees'.
I find in my school you tend to get a lot more responsibility and you develop bonds with (most of the) teachers. The students get to know the teachers well, and vice versa. I've mentioned before that I know exactly how to push my Maths teacher's buttons, and he's quite good at pushing mine too, but it all comes across as banter (something which I'm guessing doesn't really happen in most state schools). I've been put in charge of organising several school trips, and I'm still in the process of trying to organise a trip to Prague during December of this year (I'm just trying to get the flights down as cheap as possible - so far they're just over £100 each, down from £135 at the start of this month).
I'm looking forward to going back!
