Preparing for the future

BY IMAAN 10N

On Thursday 8^th March 2018, at Ealing Road Site, year 9 students were introduced to the courses offered at Alperton Community School for GCSEs.  This Options Evening allows year 9 students, with their parents, to shortlist their preferred subjects as each department displayed its course outline and examples of student work.

Students from year 9 explored the wide variety of subjects on offer as they considered what they needed for their future aspirations. Nimca stated her first options are media and drama as she is currently studying them and find them lots of fun as they have exciting topics and lots of new skills to learn.

When asked what new subjects have been introduced, Riya said “Latin and psychology has been introduced this year.” As the school has already started to expand, with the current year 7 cohort being a 10 form entry, a larger variety of courses have been introduced to meet the needs of students. When asked about her opinions on this, Miss Patel, a media teacher, said “Options Evening is a great event as it allows students to ask questions to subject teachers and students currently doing the subject, allowing them to make a more informed decision.”

However, some year 10 students feel that this is really unfair. Paulina, 10N, said “they didn’t introduce these subjects for us and in the future there will be more introduced that we never will experience.” This has stirred many opinions from within the school community.

The new subjects, however, seem to be more challenging and require many more skills which students may not have as yet. Latin, an ancient language, is challenging because students are not used to hearing the language, whilst psychology requires research and application of this in studies conducted.

These additions to the GCSE offer has been a delight to many year 9 students who possess skills of hard-work, determination and resilience, one of ACS four ‘R’s. The evening, overall, was beneficial to the year 9s who have to hand in their options and reserved subjects by Tuesday, 27^th March 2018.