Do you think you would pass all your GCSE exams if you re-sat them now?

[dogsandbudgey]

thread inspired by bumping into a school friend I haven’t seen in 20 + years who I was shock to learn went to uni and has done very well for herself, she wasn’t a stand out student by any means so I was admittedly shocked but her success. I didn’t do very well at school, had good common sense but just not particularly academic and very lazy and of course just wanted to party with my friends at the time. I’m now in a fairly wellish paid job but some times I wonder if I went all out and studied hard would I get good grades if I resat them or am I just academically inept lol

With or without revision?

I think I'd pass my A-level subjects plus maths and a few others. Not all of them though.

It probably is, because (apart from maths and science, as I said), I carried on with most of the other subjects I did for GCSE for A level/degree and do have a general interest in/ pretty strong knowledge of them. The only other one I didn't carry on with after GCSE was IT and I recently looked at a past paper for that and did find nearly all of the answers quite self explanatory, tbh, just from general daily usage.

Obviously for English lit you'd have had to have read the texts, but I was working on the assumption that that was the case, i.e if the text was on of Mice and Men, as long as I was given an hour or two to read it before taking the paper I am confident I could answer well enough to get a pass despite having never read it before/been taught it. Obviously if the text was something you have no idea about then you'd struggle but I suppose in this hypothetical scenario you could choose which exam board you'd take, out of all of them I'm pretty confident there would be at least one with texts I've read/historical periods I know about.

According to this you only need about 40-50% to score a pass for most subjects What is the Pass Mark for GCSE in 2025? so, yeah I do think it's pretty achievable.

My knowledge of the Gospel of Luke might need a little bit of polishing up - the sciences not a problme as use them all the time in work and after doign the revision for my sons GCSE - def can pass them

O levels versus GCSEs no contest as to which were harder but the exam techniques are v different now so would need to do a bit of technique work

Having been through them in summer 24 with DS no bloody chance!

Some English lit GCSEs are open book. They must be brand new and unannotated. It would obviously help to know where to find the required quotes.

I invigilate exams and I literally don't understand the questions on some papers let alone how to answer them

I literally jumped out of bed the other night remembering what the 9th GCSE was. It was freakin HE and yes, I'd walk that one to an A* or whatever it is now.