NCEA at school

Mulan restarts school next Tuesday at Westlake Girls; this year she's in Year 11 doing NCEA 1.

She does six subjects -- three compulsory and three optional.  Her three compulsory ones are English, maths and science, and several months ago, before the Covid lockdown, she chose her optional ones as PE, music and dance.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective), a couple of days ago Mulan got an email from the school saying that they couldn't figure out a subject timetable that fitted her preferences, and would she mind changing her plans and taking a different subject.

Apparently, music and dance clash; they'd already enrolled her for music but she needed to choose another subject to replace dance (or drop music).  They suggested that she choose quickly as places were going fast.

I have no idea why the timetable designers set things up so that music and dance clash -- surely those are subjects that would commonly go together?

Anyway, Mama was happy, as she'd preferred that Mulan not do dance.  She'd hoped that Mulan would take more desk-based subjects and was against her doing all three of PE, music and dance.  (My advice had been that Mulan may as well do subjects that she enjoys and can get passionate about.)

Mulan had no strong preference for any other subject, so it was up to Mama and me to make the decision.

We suggested accounting.  I took accounting right through school and also first year uni.  In my opinion, accounting is the school subject that has had the most practical use for me post-school.  Without school accounting I would have struggled with the bookkeeping and tax returns for my (and Mama's) self-employed work.

So, it's now all official: for school Mulan's doing NCEA 1 in English, maths, science, accounting, music and PE.

She'll probably look at joining the school orchestra (cello), and maybe do school sports like athletics, swimming and netball.  (All Covid-permitting!)

Out of school she's also doing dance (ballet advanced 1 and contemporary level 6 exams, and performances/shows), music (private recorder lessons and concert band flute), athletics (competitions) and swimming (lessons).  She delivers local papers once a week.

All this should keep her busy and out of mischief this year.