I fully believed this. And why shouldn’t I? That’s what we are told. Follow the school system, pick a humanities – choose between double or triple science.. you should do study a language… valid advice for a child that ‘fits’ the school system. Some schools advocate for sitting one or two GCSE exams in year 10. This means taking the exams a year early. However, most schools pile the pressure on for the Summer of Year 11. My eldest daughter went through Year 11 in a ‘normal’ school. She found it hard – and stressful but came out with a great set of results. I’m also very proud of her.

When we started homeschooling, I became panicked. I was trying to figure out how to get GCSE learning and content for up to 10 subjects. I started listening to a lot of podcasts – some from UKVS Podcast Season 1 – UK Virtual School. I researched local colleges to see if they offered any learning for 14-16 year olds (some do for free). I talked to colleges. I wanted to understand what qualifications she actually needed to get into the next stage. Our goal was to go back into college after secondary school.

YOU DON’T NEED 8-10 GCSE’s! AND you don’t need to take all exams in Year 11. Some children I’ve since seen take them in year 9 and year 10. We can take the pressure off!

So – and I get this is very child dependent. We needed enough grades to get into college – with a couple of ‘safety grades as back up’.

We decided to enroll in a local college. We wanted to do some face to face learning. Our hope was to make some friends. She attended 1 morning a week. This also helped me have some time to work. She went for 1 year during Year 10. She achieved a Level 1 Diploma in Health and Social Care. The downside? It doesn’t count to get into college post secondary school. However I don’t really care. It boosted Evie’s confidence. Now she has an insight into what college life looks like. She has another great story to tell people about the brave things she has accomplished.

We chose to go to faregos.org (Titchfield) Exam Centre once a week in Year 10. We attended face to face to study Travel and Tourism. It is offered as a 1 year iGCSE course. Check out my blog on iGCSE vs GCSE for further info. We also chose to study virtually the Religious Studies GCSE FareGos offered in her Year 10. So that was 2 ‘GCSEs’ underway….

With UK Virtual School we enrolled on a further 5 GCSE/iGCSEs. We knew then we would hopefully achieve 7 GCSE/iGCSEs that WOULD ALL count as entry requirements for college.

We picked History, English Language, English Literature and Biology as iGCSEs and then Maths could be taken in the UK as a GCSE.

In August 2025 Evie got her results for her first 2 exams she took a year early. She got awarded a B for Travel and Tourism iGCSE and a 6 in GCSE Religious Studies. (I will do a blog on Exam boards to help navigate this!) BIG moment to celebrate!!! She then said lets get on and get History out of the way too. So we went back to FareGos in November 2025 and she sat both papers. We get the results in January.

Isn’t that good? Doesn’t that make sense? Moving some of the stress and pressure away from the final ‘normal’ exam period? She’s now got December – May 2026 to study hard to achieve all she wants for her remaining 4 courses.

It took me a good amount of time to un-learn everything I thought was right. I had to reconsider everything I thought a teenager had to do. You can change things to make it work for your child and find another way to learn, whatever their age.