The parents' guide to secondary school: KS3 and KS4 explained

Moving up to secondary school marks the start of a new Key Stage for children. Between the beginning of Year 7 and the end of Year 11, they’ll progress through Key Stages 3 and 4. We take a look at what’s involved in each Key Stage.

The foundation subjects are:
 

• Computing
• PE
• Citizenship

Schools will also offer a number of other GCSE subjects, and pupils choose which they’ll take alongside the core and foundation subjects in Year 9. They have to offer at least one subject from each of the following areas:
 

• Arts (e.g. art and design, music, drama)
• Design and technology (e.g. DT, graphics, cooking and nutrition)
• Humanities (e.g. combined humanities, history, geography, RE)
• Modern foreign languages (e.g. French, German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese)

In most schools, students will take at least one GCSE from each of these categories. Often, their choices will be restricted, for example by their timetable (so if music is timetabled at the same time as German, they’ll only be able to take one), or by ability (for example, in some schools, only the highest-achieving pupils take two languages).

In science, students may take single, double or triple science. Confusingly, this doesn’t mean they have separate lessons and take separate GCSEs in biology and/or chemistry and/or physics. Rather, each GCSE incorporates all three subjects: so double science counts as two GCSEs, and triple science as three, with the teaching time increasing proportionately. It’s common for only the brightest students to take triple science.

Academic students will also be encouraged to take the English Baccalaureate, or EBacc. This is not a separate qualification, but a combination of six different GCSEs: English, maths, two sciences, a language and either history or geography. They earn the EBacc by getting at least a grade C in each of these subjects. School league tables show the number of pupils achieving the EBacc, and top universities also look favourably on the qualification.

It’s up to schools to decide how many hours of teaching they allocate to each subject, but the core subjects typically have more teaching time. This is because they are ‘double weighted’ in league tables to reflect their importance (in other words, each GCSE result in English, maths and science is worth two GCSEs in other subjects), so it’s in schools’ interests to make sure students get good results in these subjects.

Other compulsory subjects in KS4 are RE and SRE. As in KS3, parents can choose to withdraw their child from some or all of these lessons. GCSEs may be taken in these subjects, but are not mandatory.

It’s normal for students to do two hours of homework a night in KS4. This will increase as their GCSEs get nearer, when they’re expected to revise as well as completing set homework tasks.

BBC Bitesize has a range of starting secondary school resources offering support and information about all aspects of secondary school life for parents and children.