As I said yesterday Beth is back from University and while she was back she popped round to look after Ben while we took Bex to an open day at the local college. Bex wants to study engineering at University so we wanted to look into courses that might be better for her than simply taking A Levels. Also we are so totally unhappy with her school that we really don’t think staying on there into 6th form is such a good idea.

When we finally tracked down the right person to talk to he asked bex what she thought she would get in her GCSE’s. She told him that she had already taken her Science GSCE’s and had got A’s and A*’s for the four units she had taken. When she then told him that her predicted grades for Maths and English were all A*/A/B’s his little eyes lit up!

He called her a genius and told her the best course for her would be the advanced diploma in engineering which is a two year course and counts as between 3.5 and 4.5 A levels. He outlined what they would cover in the course and as he did it was the turn of Becky’s eyes to light up!

She was so keen in fact that we went down to the refectory and took advantage of our free drinks vouchers and sat and filled in the application form there and then. I fully expect that her school will try and talk her out of it when they get the reference request – probably while extoling the virtues of the International Baccalaureate that they are trying to force all of year 11 into.

Apparently the Course tutor is a woman and she is very keen to get girls like Bex onto the course and has been running a recruitment drive to do so – Hopefully that will mean a touch of positive discrimination will go on!