Lower 6th A'level initial exam results terrible for DS, is this normal?

imo with the maths there is less spoon feeding at a level. Ds’s maths teacher used to say to him: think about what you have in your maths toolkit and how you can apply it to the question. My dd is taking maths and further maths and including home study does about 20 hours if maths per week, practice is vital.

@shelbys if he is bringing homework home, how many free periods does he have in school and is he actually using them? Both my sons did/are doing 4 A levels and still had 5 hours of free periods in the school timetable. Is he working in those?

The mini tests are to work out whether they have understood the content so I would be asking what he got on those tests. Has this come out of the blue for your Ds or not? I will be honest and say maths is harder but as noble has often said it requires work. Children can start to slip at the start of the year, shown by the mini tests, for some this is a wake up call and their teachers usually tell them they need to be doing more studying so they nip it in the bud. Some take this on board and some don't.

As I said they usually have plenty of free time both in sixth form and at home. He could now choose to spend it some of it going back over stuff he has done and practising maths. Looking at the papers he has done where could he have gained more marks? At Ds's sixth form they get the student to look at the mark scheme and then correctly work out the answer and that work is on the exam paper in a different colour so they can see where they need to focus their revision in future. Good luck, no one ever said A levels were easy but he has time to turn this around and pull up his grades which it sounds like he wants to do, which let's face it, is half the battle.

It's a bit late to be finding this out but it's not unusual.
Yes A levels are a big step up/ A few years ago the A levels were modular and it was common for youngsters to do badly in the first exam and get a real shake up.
However I do thing you have been let down by the college if there has been no warning that his performance was falling short.
A good school will make it plain to all the Y12s right at the start of September that they need to up their game and work much harder. Any that are not getting the marks on each topic should be told what they need to do. Perhaps your DS has been told and hasn't mentioned it to you?

My kids (both the Maths whizz and the other one) both said the Maths teaching went very quickly. There was little time to consolidate one topic before moving to the next. It’s a whole different pace. And thus requires extra hours put in at home.

They haven't gone really fast, this is the pace at A level and your son got 8s and 9s for these subjects so is clearly capable. Is he revising effectively? Lots of them have end of topic tests and some students rely on memory as it is only the last 3-4 weeks of teaching and it lets them down. Maths is harder and needs daily practise to achieve a high grade. He has time. How much does he want to improve his grades?

Is he using his free periods to get his homework done? Is he doing the extra work set? Is he doing any work at home? At weekends? If you work out how much free time he has per day then work out how much he is spending doing school work. Ds2 finishes today at lunch, he comes home but uses those free periods this afternoon at home to do any work. That still leaves him with at least 5 hours this evening to piss around doing whatever else he wants which in his case includes learning stuff for his uni subject so he can write about it on his personal statement.

And the teacher should clarify exactly what homework and independent study DS should be doing and where to find it and when to discuss it with the teacher if he doesn’t know how to do it

Don’t worry about you not being a maths expert. The teacher will talk to DS while you are there.

I’m guessing maths is essential for his future uni subject so he has a good reason to up his game. Tutor should be able to help too. But please get into the detail with his maths teacher. I’m always surprised at how many parents are very reluctant to do this. Your DS maths teacher can probably give you a very full account of what your DS understands/doesn’t get, and what he does/doesn’t do at the moment and why he got D/E while perhaps he might have got a better grade. This information should help, along with the teacher explaining what DS should do to improve.

The message from the disappointing grades is that your DS is not working/studying effectively enough at the moment. Concentrate on finding out what could be done about this ( the discussion with DS and Maths teachers) and encourage him to do it so he can do as well as possible in his exams.
Dont get too distracted about when predicted grades etc are made, tackle the issue which is probably down to effort/ practice, assuming the teachers are happy to help DS understand the concepts and provide suitable work.

Sounds like my DD - she is planning on taking it as a 4th a level to see how it goes. She is very clear though and we have discussed that if she struggles with workload that will be the one that's goes. As it will be harder for her to obtain an A than in her humanities.

I have a younger child who likes Maths but it doesn’t come that easy. I am strongly discouraging them from doing Maths A Level as it’s not needed for their humanities degree plan. It’s up to them of course but they need to go in with their eyes open.

Having a similar issue with my DD doing A levels in Year 12.
Parents evening went well, and she was predicted As. But In her recent assessments she got D and E….
I think she’s just not putting the hours in. As others have said, just good attendance and doing the homework is not enough.

I am hoping it will be a wake-up call for her.

However Uni applications won’t go in until Autumn so I think they will take predicted grades from later in the year. But I also think we have to be realistic with the Universities we look at.

Maths A Level is a huge leap if you are not one of those ‘maths genius’ types. I had one child who is, and who did FM A Level too. My other child got 9 at GCSE Maths and goodness they struggled with the A Level. We spent a lot of money on a tutor as it did not come naturally to them. I was very proud when they scraped the A they needed. But it was a hell of an ordeal.

My child who did Physics A Level found it challenging but not as much as FM. But they are doing it at university so it’s ‘their’ subject.

I feel for your son. Maths is hard.

Most schools adjust their predicted grades for UCAS applications if students show improvement. Presumably your DS will have end of year exams as well which the school will use to adjust their predictions. Even early entry uni applications don't have to be in until October - I doubt they will just use the first set of mock results by then.

Yes, noblegiraffe posted it here -

www.mumsnet.com/talk/secondary/4007205-How-maths-GCSE-result-predicts-A-level-maths-result-important-for-grade-6-7?latest=0

I saved the original thread as a reminder to myself about how much harder A level maths is.

copying the chart here (hope that's okay?)

So a GCSE 8 in maths doesn't easily translate to A or higher in A level maths. Nearly 40% of students with a 8 in GCSE get C or less at A level :-(

I have been told by a friend's son who breezed through GCSE (9 in maths) and doing A level maths now that he's having to spend substantially more time just to keep up with the class. He didn't have this situation in GCSE.

@LilyMumsnet just to say, it should really be in the Further Education topic as OPs son is in Year 12.

I was a pretty bright child who coasted through school & did well in my GCSEs without having to try. A-Levels were a huge shock. Having said that in one of the Biology modules that I got an E in having done zero revision I then retook it & got 96/ 97% which was one of the highest marks for that paper in the country apparently. I revised the week before & got very lucky that my revision topics & what I remembered from classes came up. Moral of the story revise!!! 😆