Anyone else with year 11 dc who needs a rocket up their arse re gcse's?

It has now been two weeks since ds1 broke up from school. He has part 1 of his As biology in a week and a half and he has done 2 hours work in total. He spouted a whole load of sh*t about how well he wanted to do, how he really didn't want to have to retake in June and yet he has done nothing. Who thought it would be a good idea for exams to be held after the Xmas and New Year celebrations? I want to scream!!

Whilst I'm ranting..... why can kids not just have the school holidays off? My other two have loads of homework as well. Doesn't anyone relax and have fun anymore?

Rant over.......

We have decided to with a bit of bribery and corruption and getting Ds a bose speaker if he gets his targets. This will be his birthday present. Dh has written a contract for him.
Ds went out and bought a diary and has planned every day until he goes back. He had a p/t job and he is working every day next week and every day until Xmas.
Been good today and he had done a biology paper, but has now playing guitar hero for 5 mins
Then apparently doing ict and off to work. He has turned off Facebook as well.

I have 24 I am accountable for and they are terrifying me! But you know, from a teacher's perspective I have felt convinced every year that my students would all crash and burn. Many lazy students, especially the ones you can describe as 'lovely, but...' pleasantly surprise me, every year.

Disclaimer: they do actually have to do SOME work

DS1 is now in y12, and tells me he's revising daily for the AS modules he'll be sitting in Jan. Four hours a day was what we agreed but I suspect fb gets a good session as well.
This time last year, he was telling me 'it'll be fine' and I was tearing my hair out.
He ended up with I think 7 As, missing a couple more by literally 1 or 2 points. Not brilliant - certainly not fulfilling his potential but enough to keep him at his grammar school for sixth form.
I've just asked him if there was anything we could've said to persuade him to revise more. The answer: 'no,' because, no matter what we said, 'they were just GCSEs.' In fact, it seems some of his teachers declared they'd never been asked for their GCSE results - as, he insists, did DH .
I think I'd agree - there's nothing anyone can do, they have to stand or fall by themselves at this age, and the stubbornness is unbelievable.

He does seem a different person in so many respects now, though - I think mixing with the 'mature' y13 helps, and studying subjects he's interested in and in more depth seems to be engaging him much more.
I seem to be rambling now, but I suppose the crux of it is that you have my deepest sympathy, but you really have little or no influence on outcomes here.

an him, he just couldn't understand how he got a C when he got 22/30 in the exam and his friend with 25/30 got an A or A*

We had a letter this morming and they made a mistakes and his history should have been A

This could have beeen me last year. Tried everything, nagging, reasonableness and finally bribery - only thing that motivated her. She was still VV laid back and as far as I could tell did little revision, but got good grades in the end.

I am pleased to say that one year one she is working a lot harder. I think maybe she grew up a bit, but also I made her look at the grades she will need for the course she wants to do at uni which was a bit of a wake-up call. So as long as you can get through this year, it may just get easier next year

DS has got his mocks back one or two a bit disappointing ie
Maths B should be A/A*
History C target A but that is another thread
Bilology and Physics A*
Chemistry B but he knows where he went wrong
RE A
English C and B target A

German C target A - he does struggle with german so he is actually pleased with the result
He does have dyslexic problems and for the first time he was given some extra time,

I THINK the [penny has finally dropped with my D and she has her nose in a book reasonably frequently

I did a LONG thread on this a while back, hang on will link

I've got a bit of both - twin DSs one of which is very driven academically, the other very driven sports wise and needs a kick to do any work! It's mocks after christmas though so they will be revising then (hopefully!) and if they don't do as well as they hope then fingers crossed they will work harder for the real things!
DS1 is 20 btw and when he was doing his he didn't do any work until he had to and got his grades and at uni now :)

A mixture here. DS very able at Maths and Science and should sail A*s there. He wants to do Maths FM and Physics and Chemistry A levels and Astrophysics at Uni.
It's the English and other "boring subjects" that are the problem. He will sit revising Physics and doing practise AS level Maths when he needs to do some English.
It's hard to criticise because he works so hard but he will regret it if he doesn't get a string of good grades.
Mocks started last week and he has exams all day every day this week.

Been there done that too !
DS is now in what I would call lower 6 th ,

He coasted through GCSE year , all laid back and content , UNTIL about Easter , when he suddenly changed and got on with it. He's not a high flyer , and is at a basic secondary , but he got all B and C grades and is now all laid back and content in 6 th form .
Here we go again !
He needed 5 x C and above including English , Science and Maths ,To enter 6 th form , and managed that .

We are two years on from the OP. Also have a 'lovely chap but...'

He actually did fine in his GCSEs - clutch of A* - B. His ASs were more dubious.

However, a we had a parents' evening this week (the last one ever), and he has pulled the finger out and knows what he needs to do for his A2s (and seems reasonably committed). Because of his relatively poor AS performance, he is on second tier for university, but this should only have a small impact on his overall career choices.

I like to think that some children are late developers, and that you can lead a horse to water...

It has been a stressful few years with DS, but no amount of jumping up and down on my part has changed anything for him. He is just not wired the way I would like him to be - but he is a lovely chap.

cat64 maybe you could mention to him that the actual exam might be a 'really tricky' paper too.

It's a difficult one -drawing that fine line between encouraging and nagging. DS did mocks in November and did well with what I thought was minimum revision and cramming the night before. He failed one exam pretty miserably but apparently so did most of the class. Been assured by his teacher that this will not be repeated and he has done enough in his other modules to get at least a C which is good enough as it is not one of his strongest subjects.

Have drawn up a revision timetable which runs from today until the end of January when he has his final exam. He has just gone to his room to revise the two subjects timetabled for today so am hopeful this will work even if he doesn't stick to it 100%.

At the end of the day we cannot do it for them but it's a definite worry. Strange, I don't remember my mum or dad being overly involved with any of my exams or revision or that of my siblings. Mind you, they seemed to do most of their revision/homework on the bus on the way to school Times have certainly changed.

DS did his mocks last week and finally picked up a few books!
He will get his results last day of term!

marks place.........

place marking... DS is pretty self driven and (so far) we have been "hands off" re nagging etc. We'll see what the mocks bring (they are this week and next causing him hell with clashes with school music stuff!).

He's not v happy at the moment- for a start the teacher couldn't find the english paper so they ran into most of lunch time, had 50 instead of 60 mins and straight to another paper via a quick sarnie! We will see....

He's both diligent and able, but doesn't seem to be able to "keep all the balls in the air" in the same way his sister did- for instance mid year last year he got a D in Chemistry, and then an A in the summer....but dropped something else down instead...without any logic to it.

I'm not allowed to get involved in anyway though (eg just mentioning what happened re the english)...