where to go after year 11?

Freddie589 said:
your all saying it, but why not :) it sounds like a great job i love building and doing it for a job would be amazing :)
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Go to a charity shop and buy a 20 piece children's jigsaw. Spend 8 hours one Saturday putting it together as many times as you can. Try to imagine whether it would be any more fun if it took longer to do the jigsaw and you had to use a screwdriver.
 
Freelanc3r said:
The last of high school.
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Ok cool, so that'll be last year that you are legally obliged to attend school? The equivalent of our 4th year/16 years old. Thanks.

OP. Stay in school. Get as many qualifications as you can. I tried to leave in 4th year and was talked out it just like everyone is trying to do here, and that was even when there was jobs a plenty going around.

Fast forward 7 years and I have a Masters Degree and my options of what I want to do have grown exponentially.

Stick in and work hard. You'll be fine.
 
If you're a hands on person I'd recommend an apprenticeship with a large firm. Apprenticeships can often lead to good advancement up the ranks if you stay with the company. Some of the people I work with are on £60k+ and started of as apprentices. Hell I'm told the station director at Heysham started with an apprenticeship at the company and is now on £90k+.
 
Do sixth form, as others have said, system building isn't really a career you should be aiming for.

I wanted to be an IT technician when I left school, got the qualifications to go into it but It wasn't for me, you'll be surprised of what you're capable of when you put your mind to it.
 
To be honest, if you don't have an exact career in mind, choose A-levels / similar that interest you but also at least hold some academic worth.

I did Business studies & media studies A-levels. Worked full time for 8 years and am now 3 years into a masters in environmental science :p (also had to do a Sci foundation year due to lack of sci A-levels).


Basically, don't fret too much, but don't skulk around wasting good free education ;) (wish I hadn't!).
 
Superewza said:
Can i ask why a lot of people are advocating taking a levels at a school? Why not a college?
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Err, do it where you want. As long as you get adequately taught. Sixth Form = College when it comes to the end result. One is simply tied to a secondary school.

As for aspiring to do manual repetitive labour. People in this thread have covered it.
 
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[TW]Fox;18213442 said:
You don't want your eventual career to be in building gaming systems - trust me. You think you do now, but really, you don't.
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You also don't want to do a networking qualification, trust me.

Well, not an academic one anyway. Do maths, engineering or physics. Then do the Cisco stuff.

I started in networking and went in to finance. Guess which I enjoy more?
 
To reiterate, system building isn't a career. Stay in education, be it academic education or try and get into a apprenticeship.

Digitalle said:
Ok cool, so that'll be last year that you are legally obliged to attend school? The equivalent of our 4th year/16 years old. Thanks.
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Yeah, it's our 4th year. Though, the ages aren't quite the same as I went to uni when I was 16.
 
willhub said:
Go to 6th form.

When I left school in 2005, I don't know if 6th form existed then? Or if it was just my school did not have one, it's screwed me over that's for sure, I never really knew about 6th form tho.

A levels give you UCAS points, and if you ever get in the position like me, in Uni, wanting to apply for a 1 year placement/internship, your choices are EXTREMELY limited as allot are looking for 300+ UCAS points, and unless you do a National Diploma and get like DDM or something you're not gonna get enough points.
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Not extremely limited at all, 300+ UCAS is way higher than the norm.
 
You need to find your interest in life. It doesn't matter if you're not very skilled in it at this point, as long as you're quite certain that you'd really enjoy as a career.

I was exactly like you when I was young.. quite a lot younger than you are now but most people don't know what they want to do until they're quite older, I loved building PC's and networking them all up, even builts PC's and set up a Network for an Internet Cafe, and that's when I thought It will never work out as a job... It's a hobby.

Over 50% of the people in my course has dropped out half way through the first year of my Course (I do Software Development), just shows you how many people come into University without preparation (ie. not knowing exactly what they want).

I suggest during summer, start researching and talking to people with careers or course that do what you might want as a career, have a read about it and maybe try it out yourself if you can.
 
Superewza said:
Can i ask why a lot of people are advocating taking a levels at a school? Why not a college?
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Not all schools have a 6th form but the people who are posting to go to one probably did so that's what they are used to. In the town where I grew up there were three main secondary schools and none of them had a sixth form so we all went to the six form college.

Personally I think that attending a college is better than attending six form in your school because it allows you to an interim between the strictness of the school environment and the freedom of university. The majority of the people I saw go off the rails and over do drinking etc at university were those who went to six forms and hence were not use to being self motivated and just couldn't take the new freedom.

To the OP, as ha been said system building is fine as a hobby but it's not a good idea to make a career of it. Look at what courses are available to you and note that it probably isn't a good idea to specialise to early.
 
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Ricochet J said:
If you're a hands on person I'd recommend an apprenticeship with a large firm. Apprenticeships can often lead to good advancement up the ranks if you stay with the company. Some of the people I work with are on £60k+ and started of as apprentices. Hell I'm told the station director at Heysham started with an apprenticeship at the company and is now on £90k+.
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How convenient!
 
I joined the Royal Navy straight from school. Right from being 5 I'd wanted to be in the Armed Forces, I did 6 years and left when I was 22.

If I had my time again I would probably try FE, Even though I HATED every minute of school and am not really acedemically gifted.
 
Meh....after working on Helpdesks for the last 2 years I'd actuallly LIKE to go back to just building systems :p

Even though i've built something in the range of like 5000 if not more now 0_o
 
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