Unofficial Christ's Hospital Forum

I was planning to take French, German and Latin at A level, but there were only two of us who wanted Latin, and during the summer holiday between UV and LVI the other girl changed her mind. As it was the term when DR was taking a sabbatical and Miss Blench was running the school, I was politely told that it would be unreasonable to expect her to run an A level Latin course just for me. I can honestly say that I never regretted not taking Latin - I did History instead; in retrospect I wish I had done English, because I would have liked to know more about the origins of my own native language. However, in practice I have never really used the other languages that I did study, both at CH and later. The main reason was that languages alone are not a qualification for anything. In fact it is almost taken for granted in Europe at least that people will speak more than one language. I would have found it useful if I had either some technical knowledge or business training as well and I did eventually take a bi-lingual secretarial course when my children were small. So perhaps there is some method in the apparent madness of forcing children to study maths and science rather than French. If the child has any language ability it is easy enough to find evening classes in French - more so than in some other languages (Finnish, for example!).Unless you want to work entirely in the field of interpreting or translating, or perhaps language teaching, pure language needs some practical application - and different languages are useful for different fields - I wish my German had been good enough to read theological books (it isn't). Also I wish that I had learned some Greek for the same reason, but that can be fairly easily corrected, because courses in New Testament Greek are available and it has a sufficiently limited vocabulary not to over-tax my elderly brain.

Go for it! (and less of the elderly from someone of your tender years) I believe the OU still has courses at levels 2 and 3 in red=ading classical Latin and classical Greek.

Does the school offer Ancient Greek at GCSE or AL ?

Ancient Greek is offered as an 'extra ' course. I don't think it leads to a GCSE but I could be wrong. I don't think it is offered at AL.

At the reunion last year I spoke to the classics grecian and she was doing Latin & Greek. I believe the Flemmings still teach it. Mr Fleming started at the school mid 80's and introduced Archeology at A-Level and Classical Civ O-Level, I was one of the firts to take that. At the time his wife was head of classics at Brighton & Hove high school for girls. She moved to CH to become one of the first Housemistresses in Horsham as well as teach classics. She now does the talks to prospective parents at opendays

Greek was already on the curriculum in my day with a guy called Trappes Lomax. I think Denison taught it as well.
It was a neat A level as in my year only two people did Greek

I'm afraid it's like Latin.

All Greek to me !!!!

GCSE Greek returns in 2009. Apparently!!

I seem to remember hearing something about doing it 'The Greek Way' !

Wot's that all abart ????

What about Spanish ? Does anyone know if that is a GCSE ?
My son (going into 3rd form) seems to think he might be doing it next term but I can't seem to see it listed in the GCSE list.
I'd rather he did that than German (and so does he) but looking at the list he might not be getting that choice.

Spanish can be chosen as a gcse option in LE

But it isn't taught in Third Form.

Is it too late to join this conversation? just wondered if anyone else was still worried about this restricted choice for GCSEs? My son has had to choose between Geography and History (in order for him to take art and TP) which seems really sad. If they just allowed one more choice then he could do history too. Surely they are capable of taking 11? It's not as if he's choosing lots of frivolous options - he has already had to give up music, latin and German. I was thinking of talking to the Head of Academic Studies about this (again!) but am sure it will not do any good at this stage!

I've only just realised that this forum exists and wish I'd known about it when my son joined in 2007! I have felt quite isolated as a CH parent and it's good to know that people out there are discussing things - though I suspect it might make me feel even more anxious!!

Hello MidBMama, glad you found us! My daughter is starting her gcses this year too, and she wanted to do geography and history, but, like your son, had to choose so that she could do her other subjects. It seems such a shame that they are having to restrict their options at such a young age

Welcome to the forum, MidBMama.

I hope you will find time to surf through all the varied posts on here.

Is it too late to join this conversation? just wondered if anyone else was still worried about this restricted choice for GCSEs? My son has had to choose between Geography and History (in order for him to take art and TP) which seems really sad. If they just allowed one more choice then he could do history too. Surely they are capable of taking 11? It's not as if he's choosing lots of frivolous options - he has already had to give up music, latin and German. I was thinking of talking to the Head of Academic Studies about this (again!) but am sure it will not do any good at this stage!

Hi MidBMama

It's never too late to join a conversation! And in my opinion, it's not too late to speak to the Head of Academic Studies again either!! It may well be too late for the current LE, but if parents are concerned then at least the school should recognise the feedback. Perhaps a way could be found to allow the more academically able pupils to take another subject up again next year? I have to say that the fantastic GCSE results achieved by last year's GE (and congratulations to all of them!) tends to belie the argument that pupils were struggling to cope with the number of options previously allowed.