Interim Report from school

Fantastic! Well done to both of you.

They may have noted down that it was his preference and then had that chat once his results were in hand as (a) he may pull it out of the bag and (b) until they see what he actually achieves for his other subjects it may still be an option. The exams officer would not normally know his grades unless he took them with him to the meeting. Is it something he does wish to carry on with?

I do not think if he has other subjects where he is scoring higher than a D that anyone at school would be encouraging him to take that subject into 6th form. There must be a mistake with the grade or he has expressed his wish to do that subject at A level.

All Welsh (state) schools do the WJEC exams.

Sorry I see you said in your OP that school is now broken up.

Ask him what board he is doing,. Agree he must know. Double double check it is a GCSE - if indeed it is a BTEC or Cambridge Nationals then yes, a D could be the top grade (distinction).

Going through past papers (available online with the mark scheme) is really helpful. Do one, mark it, see where you went wrong, address that.

@Trampoline11 as he is year 11 he should know which exam board he has been put in for so if you can start with that it would help us point you and your son toward resources if needed.

Has your son had any feedback through his work as to what his current working grade is?

Ds had issues with the whole target grade being based on Yr6 SATs grades so although he was punching 3 grades above his "target" grade the system wouldn't accept you could achieve this (his teacher was Senior Leadership too and couldn't over-ride it) but instead would cross through the grade and hand write what he would get.

Re past papers, if he has completed any he needs to go back through them and see where he dropped marks. Once he identifies where he needs to improve he can then look at how to do that and where. There are lots of things on YouTube but the exam board details helps as it makes it more specific.

You really can turn it around in a very short space of time which is what he has, but it is completely achievable. Let's face it, over a school holiday how many hours is he awake? Minus off meal breaks, generous toilet breaks, work out what is left, break that down into manageable chunks with breaks in between. He can do this. You haven't failed him because you care enough to ask here for a start. He sounds like he is doing well in other subjects.

@Trampoline11 Send me a DM with your email address and I’ll send them over now.

Yes agree, the exams officer if not a teacher, so would be a strange person to discuss subjects with.

If he is going to get a D grade it's an odd choice for A level tho agree, not necessary to do Computer Science GCSE to take the A level. But if you are taking it I would expect a better grade if you planned to take it further.

TBH at DS2's school, you are not usually accepted to take any A level if you got less than a 6 in GCSE - which is about equivalent to a B OP.

Has his school broken up for Easter? If not, then on Monday I would call the school and check what he is expected to achieve in CS (not his target, never mind about that) . Don't worry about FFT or that he was an LAC - the key thing is, will he get a good enough grade to go on to A level. If not, he should think about another subject. What subjects is he on track for As in? They would be my choice.

I'm baffled.

The only thing that makes sense to me would be the Comp Sci being a BTEC rather than an actual GCSE.

Otherwise the grade is out of kilter with other grades (whether target or predicted), and no one in their right mind would be recommending it for college if he is effectively 'failing' it at GCSE.

But OP says definitely GCSE. So I have no idea.

I'm baffled by the exams officer suggesting it as his main subject if he's going to get a D.
First of all, the exams officer is not normally a teacher.
Secondly, they don't normally make suggestions.
Thirdly, a D at Gcse isn't really indicative of a good a level choice. We actually don't insist on comp sci GCSE for A level but only because we have feeders who don't do it. We ask for a 6 in maths.

Ok, well that's out then. It just seems really strange that you're having a low grade prediction alongside being urged to take the subject further.

Is it absolutely, definitely, a GCSE? A lot of schools offer GCSE Computer science or Cambridge Nationals in either ICT, creative imedia, etc.

The Cambridge Nationals are graded from Distinction to pass, and so a 'D' would be fantastic. I wonder if there's a mix-up here?

OP, here in Wales, the Welsh exam board GCSEs are still graded A-E, in England it’s 9-1.

My DD is also doing the WJEC GCSE. A large part of the mark is based on the continuous assessment she’s been doing since the start of the course. She knows what marks she has had for that, your DS should know that too.
DD has also been doing past papers to practice for the in-class assessments which will count towards her grade. One was last week, she has another in May. Does your DS have past papers? If you DM me, I can forward them to you.

It's unfortunate that it's the holidays now, but I think you need to email his computer science teacher with:

1. His target is a D but is he in with good chance of doing better than that?
2. Do they think he has the ability/knowledge needed for A-level?
3. What does he need to be doing to improve at this late stage?

I don't know how sixth form/college applications work in your area. Here the school would have provided predicted grades to the sixth forms in January, so it would probably have been flagged well before now if he was applying for an inappropriate course.

Possibly it will turn out that he's on course for C or better, but the teacher didn't see any need to do anything beyond tick that he was on course to meet his target. (I think one reason my DD is not doing computer science is that the KS3 teacher always ticked that she was meeting the expected standards, when she was exceeding them in everything else - we have a suspicion he ticked the same box for almost everybody.)

We get target grades, which are based on the FFT and then each report we get a working at grade which indicates if they continue working at that standard then that is the GCSE grade they are predicted to get.

His target grades have only changed once in Science, I'm assuming because he didn't do any Science SATS. His working at grades have gone up and down a few times.

Do you have a working at grade or just a target grade?

So what is his actual grade at present - still a D?

It's the grades which are confusing us. Grades in England are usually 9-1 unless you're doing Btec

Morning,
I think as parents we feel very responsible for not understanding how these things work at schools and the systems they use.
You said in your OP that he needs 5 C’s for college. Later that he’s got target grades of 2As, 2Bs & 2Cs plus this D. The teacher said he’s likely to attain his D target grade. Did they say if he’s likely to attain his other target grades? If so, he’s ok for the 5Cs for college. Or did they say he’s not likely to reach those? Call and ask what he needs to be doing to ensure he gets those targets grades. Ask them if there’s anything specific he’s not understanding that would improve the D.

The target grade doesn't matter - it's how they're actually doing which matters. If a target grade of D was set at the start of KS4, what they're saying is "we think he ought to be able to get this grade on the basis of what we know about him at the end of year 9", but if in reality he's performing at grade E or B then that's what they'll put forward for his GCSE grade.

Have you been given predicted grades at any point, or just the target grades? If just target grades, hopefully they've told you whether they're on target, or exceeding it.

Schools vary a lot on what information they give, and some explain very clearly what any target/projected/estimated/predicted grades mean. Others seem to expect parents to know - which when the system is different in every school, is unreasonable. It's also the case that in some cases, different departments are interpreting the meaning differently! I suspect that's less likely to be the case where the meaning is being communicated clearly to parents.