A levels after sixth form
I like how people say there are limited job prospects. Other than going into the field via NHS or academia, you can use the degree to apply for any role or go into teaching (the same with any degree). Any job that accepts degrees in any subjects include:
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Administration
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Government services
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Social work
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Some areas of healthcare
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Most areas of business (HR, marketing, accounting, sales)
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IT roles
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Some areas of contrusction
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Most areas of property
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Most areas of beauty and wellbeing
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Creative/design and media (if you're good)
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Theatre and film (if you're good)
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Music (if you're good)
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Anything related to writing (if you're good)
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Storage
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Logisitics
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Armed forces and police force (if you pass certain tests, have a clean record, and are of a certain age range)
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Some environmental services
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Hospitality
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Manufacturing
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Management (if you have the relebvant experience)
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Retail
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Care work
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Travel and tourism
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Charity
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Entertainment (if you're good)
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Translation (if you are fluent in more than one language)
If you decide to go back to college (adult college), then you can do courses that are relevant to the following:
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Animal care (other than vet)
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Some areas of construction and certain trades
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Some areas of beauty and wellbeing
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Some areas of engineering
You can go into the following areas with specific professional qualifications (irrespective of what previous qualifications you have):
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Accounting
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Actuary (if you have a math background e.g. A Level Maths)
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Law (solicitor via SQE)
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Most areas of finance
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Delivery and transport (licences)
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Sports coaching
Worst case scenario, if you did the degree and discovered that you need an alternative degree to do something else, you can do a master's or a conversion degree (unfortunately limited to specific subjects) to move into another field. However, that's a bit further ahead.
If you're looking for alternative degrees that accept your current A Levels outside of life sciences:
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Anything in business expect for financial mathematics and actuarial science (for obvious reasons)
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Law
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Anthropology
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Archaeology
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Sociology and criminology
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Most psychology degrees
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Nonquantiative economics degrees
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Education
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Theology
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Politics
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Philosophy
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Agriculture
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Art and design
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Some geography degrees (usually ones with emphasis on human geography)
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Film
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Game design
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Hospitality
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Journalism
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Media studies
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Nursing
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Social work
As you have done A Levels in biology and history, you can also do the following degrees:
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History
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A number of areas in life sciences including some degrees in medicine, vetinary science, and dentistry (albeit a limited number of them)
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Any psychology degree
If you're keen to do A Levels in chemistry and maths, then you're looking to become a private candidate (I need to put up blog articles of this, since it's getting repetitive parroting the same advice over and over).
A Levels are governed by 3rd party exam boards. If you want to get certificates in A Level, you would need to pass the exams through the exam boards. You can do this as a private candidate; how you study for the exams is up to you (either through an online course or self study).
To sign up for an exam, you would need to:
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go to the website of your selected exam board (OCR, EdExcel, or AQA) for the subject you want to do
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go to the private candidate section and look for an exam centre approved by the exam board
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find a list of exam centres to contact and liaise with the exam officers there
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book and pay for your exams (registration opens in November and closes in April; costs include exam and admin and they are standardised for all exam centres)
Practical assessments are a pain to do because in contrast to exam centres, assessment centres are few and far between (literally). You will need to google for these centres, and the fees for practical assessments are about £1000 (exam and admin fees can be £250 if apply early and £350 if late). You need to apply before January in order to squeeze the assessment in.
Tip: most people don't like EdExcel for science, but I have never done it with EdExcel so you have to ask around for opinions. I have been on EdExcel and AQA for maths, and I strongly prefer AQA for maths. I would do the same for science, but that's just me. Ask around for such opinions.
Study methods include self paced online A Level courses (if there isn't a local offline adult college that offers A Levels - these usually take 2 years) or self study. There are online A Level courses that aren't self paced, but they are usually restricted by age.
If you decide to go for online A Level courses, you have to search the course by the exam board they go with because that's what the material will be based on. Quality in courses will range based on the tutor as opposed to the specific online college (finding reviews for specific subjects and courses at specific colleges is a complete pain since so few people contribute toward these). Price ranges from £395 to £900.
Self study include buying the overpriced textbooks and studying it yourself. This is definitely the cheaper option, but not necessarily the best.
The main difference between online courses and self study is that you get online tutor support and about 10 assignments on average with online courses, whereas you're by yourself in self study. Whether this is enought to justify the price tag for you is another matter.
Note: there are online courses that will arrange your exams and assessments for you (with the added fee), but they will be restricted to specific exam and assessment centres and on specific dates. You will need to ask around for this.
There are roughly 20 relevant online colleges that you can find via Google, and they are usually not that difficult to find.
As both of the above methods are self paced, you can complete them in any amount of time within a 24 month window (not necessarily because the material will be invalid by then, but online colleges restrict the window). You can easily cover all the necessary theory for an A Level subject in 6 months if you want (300 hours/1 month at 10 hours a day is the recommend amount of study time, but I would double that to allow for revision), which could mean you can do both A Levels in 1 year if you wanted to.
For maths, I would try to finish the A Level early, so you would have at least 3 months to revise and do as many practice papers as you can to prepare for the exam.
Do note, you will need to budget for miscellaneous items when studying e.g. calculators for maths, lab equiment for chemistry, revision guides, exam practice guides, any online revision packages, etc. The total of these misc items usually don't exceed £200 if you shop in the right places.
If you do have the opportunity to study A Level chemistry at your 6th form college, try to do it there where possible because it is a complete pain to do any of the sciences outside of college. Maths is easier because it's a purely theoretical subject and it involves no practical like history, philosophy, literature, economics, business studies, etc.
Maths is definitely worth doing as an extra subject outside of college (if things came to that) because it would open so many doors in terms of degree options, since it's one of the most required subjects out there. Chemistry is good, but it's nowhere near that of maths, nor is it as convenient. With chemistry, you're looking at chemical engineering, chemistry, or anything in life sciences.
I personally have a few questions for yourself:
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If you're so passionate about chemistry and maths, why didn't you do the subjects in the first place?
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What job do you intend to get after university/A Levels?
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What degrees are you thinking of doing and do they specifically require maths and chemistry? (Fat chance they don't, but I want to ask anyway)
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If you like maths so much, are you considering doing further maths on top or are you just thinking of getting some used maths textbooks for extra practice?
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What made you decide to pick biology, history, and psychology in the first place? The combination seems to be very different to chemistry and maths
I'm in your position...I'm supposed to be going into a psychology degree this Sept but I think that actually psychiatry is what I'd actually like to do...meaning I would need to get an a level in both biology and chemistry, whereas right now (if all goes well) I should have A levels in psychology, English lit and media.
So what are you planning to do? You want to study psychiatry?
Yes, I was always decent at science with particular interest in biology. But obviously with psychiatry I'm going to have to go down the medicine route to be able to study it and that would start with getting A levels in biology and chemistry (which I didn't study in sixth form but fortunately got 9's in at GCSE).
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