Missing mock GCSE’s

Although to be fair, this year they will be given some advance notice of question topics so maybe your dd will have the most realistic preparation for mocks!

My school let the self isolating ones (half the year) take them at home but will be cautious about taking those marks at face value for CAGS. Anecdotally, some students stuck rigorously to exam conditions, even when having a panic attack, others copied the mark scheme word for word 🙄 and some parents did it with them 🙄. I feel for these students as they have not had the mock experience or have not been credited with their hard work. However, they sit mocks in feb/Mar too to practice the paper 2s.

Yes good post Malbecfan. Op you may be aware that the spec for most GCSEs changed for 2018, so the only past papers fully available to schools are 2018 and 2019.

Chances are they will do the second one for a post Christmas mock. In a normal year they might well have done it as a yr 10 mock. I hope you see the issue now. Maybe suggest to your dd that she ignores what she has been told or tries to forget it! Not easy I know.

In my subject, there are 3 available papers, one of which was only released last month so there is no mark scheme yet available. For various reasons, we don't want to take the paper ourselves to derive a mark scheme because we would not necessarily pick up every thing that the exam board wants, allows or tells markers not to count. So for a mock to be as realistic as possible, we had a choice of 2 papers.

Had your DD been at my school, she would have sat the same exam as the others. Over the coming months, they will all complete the other paper for which there is a mark scheme, and once results day has passed for the November exams, we will also give them the 3rd exam for practice.

Unfortunately, due to the wholesale changes a few years ago, and the move away from January exams, we simply don't have the stockpile of old papers that we did prior to 2017. Yes, we can cobble things together from old specifications but mocks should be as close to the real thing as possible, hence using an old paper. I hope that this helps to explain matters.

Thank you for asking a reasonable question, based on responses practice vary from one school to the other.
Cleary if schools are giving the same papers over different sittings/dates it should be made clear that all candidates have to keep their mouth shut up until a clear point in time !
Discussions around exams content are endless, just look at the recent threads on ISEB, the comment about the immaturity of the OP's DC is not even fair !
Be kind !!!

But here you just proved my point- you don't appreciate the hard work your DD's teachers have been putting in to their mocks. I

I genuinely appreciate the hard work of all essential/key workers during covid times but will not be sending them all Christmas cards.

"And no, I won’t be sending any Xmas cards to anyone. Merry bloody Christmas "

But here you just proved my point- you don't appreciate the hard work your DD's teachers have been putting in to their mocks. I tried to enlighten you but you took offence. I tried to tell you it isn't unfair when you said it was.

I am indeed a teacher but I work in an academically selective jndependent school so I have small classes, plenty of time to mark and plan, and most importantly grateful parents. Nothing like the hard working teachers in state schools who are so overworked and under appreciated it's ridiculous. Just always so shocked to see comments from parents who have no idea how hard their kids teachers work. You were a classic case, so I told you so.

Oh my giddy aunt I give up - fat thumbs today! Best go back to marking papers!

ARE doing absolutely no favours - now aren’t

@thunderbun do shut up! You aren’t doing absolutely no favours to the teaching profession. You are being an absolute arse and a nasty one at that.

@Inastatus it was a reasonable question - esp as schools do have different ways of doing things and this year especially for many schools; the norm has gone completely out the window.

@Inastatus

I agree that @thunderbun has come across and rude and totally unnecessarily aggressive.

I've read this a few times and I'm always a bit surprised, maybe DD's school does teaching/mocks differently to others? Or what am I missing?

At DD's school they only do one paper per subject for any set of mocks, and just seem to make sure they have taught the units for that paper. So for most subjects there is no issue. Then they do 'second mocks' for some subjects to do the other paper if they want to.

I can’t speak for other subjects or schools but we do all 3 papers for our mocks like they would in the real exam. We teach half the ethics in year 10. Then Islam and then Christianity and back to ethics in last part of year 11. So by the mocks they have covered half the ethics topics and 1/3 of Christianity.

We do it in that order as most kids find the ethics the most interesting so we do it first to engage them, but some of the ethics topics is more appropriate for end of year 11 age than beginning of year 10 age.

OP: Am not being arsey... just telling you to get real and pointing out how entitled you come across as!

But this is as ever the story of how many parents have absolutely no idea about how hard teachers really work. Just spout out about how unfair everything is that the teachers don't have infinite time to dedicate to their individual child. When each teacher probably has about 8-10 different sets of 30 kids across the school.

Perhaps you will now see the light and as it is Christmas time you will actually send a Christmas card to said teachers to perhaps acknowledge how hard they are working

[quote OverTheRainbow88]@Bagadverts

Yes totally agree.

But, most the time by the time they do mocks, they haven’t covered all the topics. So we have to spend a lot of time scanning past papers and changing them to make sure they don’t contain topics we haven’t covered yet.[/quote]
I've read this a few times and I'm always a bit surprised, maybe DD's school does teaching/mocks differently to others? Or what am I missing?

At DD's school they only do one paper per subject for any set of mocks, and just seem to make sure they have taught the units for that paper. So for most subjects there is no issue. Then they do 'second mocks' for some subjects to do the other paper if they want to.

In maths most people don't cover the whole syllabus anyway so that isn't an issue.

@Bagadverts

Yes totally agree.

But, most the time by the time they do mocks, they haven’t covered all the topics. So we have to spend a lot of time scanning past papers and changing them to make sure they don’t contain topics we haven’t covered yet.

OP I have no idea. I wanted to support as I think it is an absolutely reasonable question this year when the government may do a U turn and teachers end up having to negotiate Cags.

Group chat is difficult. In theory your DD should have either left the chat when exam discussion started, or asked them not to. Though i can see why either of those might be difficult.
Luckily(?) my DD hasn't been well enough for school based discussions with anyone so this situation hasn't arisen for her.

We always use the same paper , but keeping a careful eye open for suspicious things - which in maths can be correct answers with incorrect working out.
I would say in my experience far more students do badly on retaken mocks , as they don't seem to take it as seriously, then do better.

@thunderbun

I think most non teachers don’t realise the extent of sorting out mocks and marking, so that’s probably why it’s expected to get a different paper.