Making Smart High School Subject Choices
Making Smart High School Subject Choices
Parents and students in South Africa face an important decision in Grade 9; matric subject choices! For many, this decision can be quite daunting and weighty. After all, we don’t want to mess up our child’s future. There is indeed a lot of nuance and complexity to some of this conversation, so I’d like to take a moment to establish a framework for understanding these challenges. Every student is unique, and how these principles are applied to your context may vary, but I believe that getting these things right sets you up for success in your grade 10 subject choices.
Rethink what success looks like
This one is particularly important for parents. Many of us have pre-set ideas of what success in the real world looks like. Time and again, I have spoken with parents who are determined to see their child graduate as a (fill in the blank here with an ‘esteemed’ profession of your choice) whether or not that is a good fit for them. We need to rethink what success looks like. This is about putting your child back in the centre of their education and using their goals, strengths, desires, and skills to help map out a path that is realistic, sustainable and satisfying for them. Success for every student is going to look different and we need to be comfortable with that before thinking about subject choices.
Don’t get subject-choice blinders
Making high school subject choices is VERY different to making choices at a university or work level. I think many of us focus on specific subjects too early. After high school, you want to start to specialise a bit more. But I believe that at high school level, a range of subject experience is often better than early or specific specialisation.
I have always loved the sciences. When I was in high school, I focused almost exclusively on them. But when I got to university, I felt like I was missing something in my learning journey. So during my first year, I intentionally chose to do some subjects which I maybe would not have initially considered. I still picked things that I liked and thought I might be good at, but I tried to broaden my learning experience a bit. I still majored in Chemistry (my first love), but I picked up electives in Sociology, Philosophy and Economics. And the payoff was amazing! I truly believe that experiencing those streams made me a better learner, and have positively shaped my thinking about the workplace and life in general.
Almost oxymoronically, this is one of the reasons that at Koa we offer a limited but very carefully considered set of electives. We believe that the options we offer give a student a healthy and balanced range of subjects.
Here are some other benefits of having a balanced selection of subjects:
It keeps you open to subjects that you might not initially have considered.
It exposes you to a wider set of Soft Skills (which I’ll talk about a bit later).
It helps to keep your future options wide open.
You have a better chance of finding a natural balance of ‘types’ of learning.
You might stumble onto a brand new life passion!
Favour soft skills
I can’t write a blog without mentioning the importance of soft skills! When thinking about your subject options, it is FAR more important to consider what underlying soft skills a subject teaches, rather than the specific hard skills of the content that it covers.
Let me give a specific example. Many of us might think of History as a subject that teaches us about events and people from specific dates in the past. But spend five minutes with our History teacher Jason, and you will discover that History is a subject that teaches us critical thinking, complex analysis, and how to communicate clearly. These skills are valuable for students who end up in just about any profession, from lawyers to contractors to musicians!
Remember, careers are no longer as linear as they used to be. We need to favour subjects with a strong soft-skill approach that is transferable from one type of job to another. Research conducted by the University of Queensland predicts that the current generation will change careers up to 7 times over their working lifetime. This points to a wide array of skills and the ability to learn is crucial.
Know the rules
Right, let’s take a moment to ground this in some practical rules. There are a few elements to subject choices which are not as open-ended as the points above. Here are three quick things to think about:
Tertiary Prerequisites. If you do know what you want to do after school, then it’s important to know whether that course or career option has any specific subject prerequisites at high school level. There are fewer of these than many of us think, but still important to know about the ones that are true. If you’re not sure, call the institution and ask specifically about their prerequisites.
School policies. Your high school will also have a set of policies which govern how subject choices happen. For example, you might need to get a certain percentage in grade 9 for you to be able to choose Core Mathematics in grade 10. There are also rules about how often you can change your subject choices during grades 10-12. Koa hosts annual meetings for grade 9 families to hear more about these, and we encourage all our parents to come and ask questions.
Types of pass. There are three different types of ‘pass’ at matric level. Each of these gives you access to different options after high school. Again, it’s important to get that information from your school, so that you can plan strategically for maximum success.
Engage with your school
We love chatting with our families about subject choices. And again, every learner is unique. So beyond the seminar-style information sessions that we host, we are always keen to meet with individual students and parents to talk about their particular options. I would encourage parents to build trust with their school, particularly the Head of Academics or the ‘homeroom’ teachers (ours are called Pod Teachers) as they often have valuable insight, on top of years of experience with guiding families through the process.
Empower the student
While parents and teachers need to have veto rights when it comes to subject choices, it is important to empower the student in the decision. Their voice matters a lot. As adults, our job is to coach them through the decision and to help them to own it. Being mentally ‘bought into’ their subject choices is going to make a big difference when the workload is heavy. And there is a whole set of valuable life skills they are learning through the decision-making process.
Expect it to change
Naturally, one of the things I ask students during the ‘coaching phase’ of making their subject choices is what they want to do after school. But I want to stress to parents (and teachers) that we should not expect a student to know the answer to that question. It’s much more common, and in many cases even more healthy, for their answer to be “I don’t know yet”. Heck, most adults don’t know what they want to do yet! We should help students to be comfortable with the idea that this is a journey of discovery for them. It’s about learning and growing. Making mistakes and changing their ideas is OK.
I would suggest that we talk to them about their ‘ikigai’. Our job is to help uncover the intersection between things like what they enjoy, what they are good at, what the world needs, and what they can ultimately get paid for.
Here are some interesting and open-ended questions to try:
What sorts of things make you happy and why?
What do your friends say that you are good at?
What type of classes do you look forward to, and why?
Do you see any needs in the world that you might be able to meet?
What skills would you like to learn?
Is there anything that you know you don’t want to do? (occasionally eliminating options is as important as exploring new ones)
Things I am NOT a big fan of
Let me wrap up with a few pitfalls. Things that I see quite often in the subject choice conversation that I think we should avoid!
Aptitude/Career tests. You heard me right! I’m not a big fan of these. I do think that they all have a helpful place and time, but they should not drive high school subject choices. Why? Because they pull us away from key principles like valuing soft skills over hard skills. Most of these tests were not designed to handle our modern context very well. If you need professional guidance, there is much more value in reaching out to someone like Meg from Fully Alive (www.wecanbefullyalive.com) whose focus is more on individuals and purpose than on hard skills and career aptitudes.
Ranking subjects in order of ‘value’. High school subjects do not intrinsically have more or less value than each other. It is true, as mentioned earlier, that some may be prerequisites for specific university courses, but that does not make them objectively better for everyone. It is much more important to focus on the value of hard work, no matter what subject I’m doing. A quick shout-out here to Mathematical Literacy, which is often unfairly undervalued as the counterpart to Core Mathematics.
Assuming that University is the only option. It’s not. And this is more true than ever before. In a fast-changing world, there are many different paths available to our students after school. Naturally, we want to keep doors as wide open as possible, and our goal at Koa is for all our students to have the option of university. But I would encourage parents and students to start investigating all their options.
Putting too much pressure on the decision. This is a good place to land this conversation. Yes, this is an important decision. But it’s not irrevocable. Life is unpredictable. And while we make the best decisions we can right now, we need to be open to change. I would encourage parents and students to use the subject choice process to practise for a lifetime of making complex decisions confidently. Do your research, have open-ended conversations, make intentional choices, work hard, be open to failure, be willing to change, and be resilient. That way we grow and can move on confidently to the next set of decisions.
