To want 9s not 7s for my child in their GCSEs?

I also have no idea where the idea that only private school pupils get 9s comes from. Of course an individual DC is more likely to get 9s in the independent sector for a multitude of reasons- teaching, cohort, behaviour.

However, state students can and do get 9s. There was a DC featured in our local paper last summer from what is easily one of the worst schools in the country (Ofsted special measures, terrible behaviour, every lesson disrupted, poor teaching). He managed to get some 9s and 8s.

I would have huge admiration for him given the effort and discipline it must’ve taken to get those grades given he probably didn’t even get taught most of the content at school given the behaviour.

Future employers etc will think much more of him than a lazy grammar/indy student who was happy enough with 7s despite all the advantages they had in terms of teaching and lack of disruptions to their learning.

Totally agree- there’s a happy medium between hot housing and lazing about on TikTok.

The OP’s DC is doing an hour of work “every other night”. My DC had more homework than that in year 7. They have plenty of time to work harder while also having a social life and other activities.

Ime those who scrape through GCSEs half-assed struggle a lot more at A level than DC who’ve worked hard and developed good habits and work ethic.

If you rely on Mumsnet, the majority of kids get all 9s. They don’t. Not even most kids on Mumsnet get all 9s. Whatever their mums tell you. However, the sector they go to makes no difference.

There’s me if my dd comes out with 5 Cs I’ll be over the moon 😂

she’s had a very tough time though and she’s not academic in the slightest.

I have an elder daughter of 22 who put so much pressure on herself to achieve the highest and she did, several A stars (we are in Wales and it’s a state comprehensive) that she burnt her self out and ended up with in hospital the night before one of her exams as her mental health took a nose dive

personally I don’t care what my dc achieve as long as I know they tried. They’ve all gone to college, resit what they had to and are now where they want to be, one has a 2:1 degree in conservation, the other who got 7 Cs is now in an industry that he wants, got loads of practical qualificationss and the middle one is a nursery nurse.

i can’t believe the amount of pressure some parents put on their dc to achieve 9s. How ridiculous. I’d rather have a much lower achiever with robust mental health personally

I agree with this.

It a lot harder to be happy if you have fewer choices (let alone none at all), not much money in your pocket and less security.

@WombatChocolate DD is Year 11 Grammar and she finds it really hard because she sees the effect in her friends and in the classroom and refuses to stay bexause she doesn’t want to do chemistry and biology with a lot of peers who have been forced to.
the giving out of exams is fraught bexause she sees the impact getting a 7 can have on her friends and the punishments they receive for doing so

she had her party on March 1st and a couple couldn’t come becuase they are not allowed out between now and exams

the problem isn’t that we shouldn’t be encouraging our children to do their best it is the fact that the new A is a 7 to 9’places unnecessary pressure by breaking down the grade

Something this thread shows is huge culturally different attitudes towards education in the UK.

There is increasingly a divide between those who are aspirational for their kids and want to promote hard work and striving for your best, and people who talk about ‘just being happy’ and wanting kids to make their own choices about whether to work hard and push themselves or not.

It’s so evident in areas where there are grammar schools, that some groups of parents have this aspiration by their over-representation: and lots of other parents would say they are overly pushy parents and ruining their kids lives.

Of course kids have different abilities and will and can achieve different things. But isn’t it a terrible shame if someone who could get top grades achieved significantly below because their school or parents didn’t encourage them enough to aim for their potential.

Teen life is hard and pressures can be big, but there is time in the week for teens to go to school, do a range of activities, see friends and have down time, as well as doing more homework than an 11 year old in secondary school might expect.

There’s a balance isn’t there. No, it’s not right to pile on pressure to achieve what might be impossible or to suggest that the kids are only loved when attainment is top. But lots of people wrongly think this is happening when loving parents encourage and set a context for their DC to work hard and achieve their best - when they set up patterns of hard work and study and build it as the norm.

I think OP worded her first post poorly. If she had said her DC was getting 7s but capable of 9s, I’d like to think less people would have leapt on her. But actually I suspect many would because somehow many see having aspiration and aiming for their best for kids as some kind of dirty and abusive action. It’s the attitude that underpins a lot of problems in society and does the next generation no favours, because how they can they strive for their best, when their parents aren’t willing to encourage them to do that?

All I asked my DD was to do her best. She did, getting one 9 and the rest being 6s, 7s & 8s in her GCSEs. Effort is important, more than grades. I would say to her, as long as you know you have done your best, that’s good enough for me. She’s doing her best at A levels, predicted ABB. That’s good enough for the next thing she wants to do. The teachers tell me she could achieve AAA but DD needs her social life and hobbies or she’s going to burn out. As long as she’s putting in the effort five evenings a week I’m happy.

You can ask for all 9s but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get them. Pp are right, these are not your exams, and not your life path. Your child isn’t you. Treat them as an individual with their own strengths, weaknesses, interests and hobbies, and attitude to learning.

This must be the most unaspirational post I’ve ever read on here. 3 hours a week of revision is not ‘working hard’- it is nowhere near enough for anyone who wants good grades. My DC had more homework than that in year 7.

Of course a grade 7 is good if that is the best a DC can get with hard work, but that is clearly not the case here.

This ‘just pass’ attitude does DC no favours as it limits future opportunities and doesn’t let them see the importance of hard work in other areas of life.

Is your child happy OP? Does your child have hobbies / outside interests? Friends?

Do you love your child? If you do then does your child know that?

This is a human being, not an extension of you.

You get one childhood and that influences the rest of your life. You sound like you are setting your child up to fail in life.

They are doing well, are they happy and settled too? If so pick the battle carefully. Yabu to demand what you want just because that’s what you got

7 is an A
8 is A-star
9 is A-star-star

It's not true that 8s and 9s are inaccessible for ordinary pupils but a 7 is a worthwhile achievement to be proud of. If you aren't celebrating your child's achievements with a 7 then that is shitty parenting imo.

If your child is in a school where the teachers have had to spend a lot of time on crowd control and haven't been able to cover the full curriculum your child might need to do some extra independent study to learn the content for the 8/9 grades.

In 10 years no one will care whether she got a 7 or a 9. A 7 is adequate for any A-Level course and only a tiny minority of university courses look at GCSE grades, the majority select solely on A levels so this is very unlikely to affect her life.

i do kind of get where you’re coming from. My son is very bright and I think capable of 9s however seems pretty incapable of properly applying himself which is very frustrating

Is there anything to indicate that 7 is not his full potential? It sounds like he works hard from what you have said so it could be that 9’s aren’t achievable. The last thing you want to do is to make him feel that her ‘best’ is not good enough.

Tbf I read the sentence and the way it was written did sound like they were intrinsically linked.

It's not impossible for a child to be both.

Your husband is talking nonsense.

I went to a distinctly average secondary. I got a mix of A* and A with one C. Ironically the C was the one I had to work really hard for and was most proud of.

But do you know what? Unless he wants to go down very specific routes, no one cares after school, as long as he gets passes.

He is doing an extra 3hours work a week, that sounds like he is working hard. It's the equivalent of going to school every Saturday morning.

How is HE feeling about it? How does he think he is doing? Is he pushing himself just enough? Is he HAPPY with it all? What, if anything, does he need you to do?

Ask him what he needs you to do to support him. It might be a surprise. I was 15 when my parents had a baby and an unfair amount of childcare fell on me. What I REALLY needed was for them to stop making me babysit every Saturday morning (while they went out for breakfast) because for various reasons that was the best time for me to do schoolwork. Sunday morning babysitting would have been better. They wouldn't listen to me and that definitely impacted on my grades and upset me a lot.

Also, as others have said. GCSEs are about knowing HOW to do the exams as much as what you learn. Make sure he knows how to play.

By the time he gets into college, very few places will care whether he got 9s. They just want passes.

This!⬆️ Mine got a mixture of 9s, 8s, 7s, 6s in the local non-grammar school. No pressure. They were chuffed, as were we. Currently doing A Levels & got a Uni offer. Leave them be - if that's what the teachers who know best think they'll achieve then that's it. Gentle encouragement to do their best & lots of praise is your job as parents - let the teachers do theirs.

This is so, so much better for him than having parents who run around after him and do everything for him.

Well, no student achieves a 9 in the exams. The top that can be achieved is an 8. The 9s are allocated by the examiners after all the marks are in by calculating the top percentage of the students gaining 8s. This ensures that the 9 truly denotes the best pupils and not everyone who achieves a certain mark. It’s a bit arrogant / entitled (sorry, but I can’t think of a better word) for a parent to expect 9s as it’s essentially saying their child is better than virtually all of the national cohort that they’ve never met. You’d need a child who is consistently getting nearly full marks to be pretty confident of that and even then, I’d aspire to it rather than expect it. So, it is unreasonable to think they should be getting 9s. It’s not at all unreasonable to want them to strive for 8s and hope they perform well enough to gain 9s.

Frankly I suspect he could be getting some 9s if he’s only doing an hour every other night at this stage of year 11!

It’s very important to have balance and I’m certainly not advocating a tiger mum approach, but I do think there are times when it’s important to work hard and the few months before GCSEs is one of them.

I’d have a calm chat with him (not a telling off) asking him how he feels about his exams, what his aims are and whether he needs help structuring a more intensive revision schedule.

Of course it’s correct, because most don’t get 9’s. Some do of course but they are the minority. Getting one 9 in a specific subject you’re really good at is one thing, but to get a string of 9’s is highly unusual

That’s not ignoring him though, that’s him being proactive and independent with his school supplies without encouragement from you. Which is great.

However, you said he “gets ignored”. So how exactly does he get ignored by you and your husband? Do you spend any quality time with him that doesn’t involve homework or study?

That sounds difficult OP. I think you need to differentiate between "supporting" and "pushing" your DS. You've said yourself that you don't give him as much attention as your other 2 DC and obviously there are reasons for that,it's not that you don't care. But if you put yourself in his position it may feel unfair, and if he perceives that your expectations of him are unreasonably high and that you're treating him harshly compared to his siblings it could end up being very counterproductive, both for his results and his relationship with you.
I think I would focus on being interested but not over invested if that makes sense? Try to talk to him about what he's doing, let him know you're proud of him, discuss where he sees himself going in the future, what he needs to do to get there and what, if anything, he needs from you to get there. But I would steer clear from the "I want you to get 9s" and "you're capable of better than this" type narrative and work on positive reinforcement.