AIBU to think Bs at GCSE are ok?

[catwalker]

Some issues with DS and GCSEs/6th form. He didn't get the grades he was predicted (As and As) but then I didn't expect him to as he doesn't put much effort into anything apart from his x box. He got mainly Bs, a couple of As, a couple of Cs and a couple of Ds. I was quite happy until I started reading the secondary education forum where people are tearing their hair out because their dc's didn't get straight As and may have blown their oxbridge chances. I get the impression that anything less than an A just isn't worth the paper it's written on. He could have done loads better but Bs are OK aren't they?

Talker thank goodness these DC have someone like you to advise them.

The student I'm refering to has been badly advised by his school. They are singing from the hymn sheet that all qualifications are equal. To be fair, his parents would have no idea that this isn't the case. They are, quite rightly, just very proud of him.

Dh anf I have told him that by chosing the subjects he has, he is making an uphill struggle for himself (which is, frankly, an understatement), that he should reconsider.

Ok Thanks mrswoodentop -have googled . I had no idea this was ongoing.

Yes, a bloodbath out there. Someone emailed me yesterday with his CV. He is in his 30s. He wants to work for only £10k a year. He put the salary in. Has a new family to support. Then I get the people who want to work for nothing (which is of course a class issue because only if you have parents who can support you can you easily make such an offer).

On the question of the ex polys we know you need to be very bright to get into Oxbridge and you can be a bit less so to get into the ex polys so if you have to get the best candidate within a company and owe duties to shareholders companies of course look in the places where the best candidates are. Of course you might miss some brilliant person at the ex poly but the system just doesn't operate on the basis that we look at 5000 CVs and interview everyone and then assess the 5000. you get 5000 CVs or even fewer if you have an exlectronic filter which doesn't let the non 2/1s in or whatever and then look at a limited numb er hopefully from a wide enough range of places that you get to see a broad range but not so large a number that you just could not practically manage it.

On the basic question plenty of clver people do worse in exams than they should as being a teenager is terribly hard and they may have no interest in their work. That makes it harder for them particularly as we do not award university places on the basis of already received A level grades. It does not make it impossible however. If you have capacity to work hard and other strengths you can do pretty much anything.

I think a lot of women are low paid because they simply have low expectations of themselves. Whereas I think I'm one of the best at what I do in the UK and that seems to have helped me.

(Caste: Yes, radio 4 had a programme about it at the weekend too. India has done reasonably well at stamping out caste (class) prejudices - against the untouchables etc. However some (by no means all) Indians in the UK are still using it. The interesting point is whether it should be a special category which prohibts discrimination on caste grounds or not. A lawyer against the new law was quite rightly saying the English class system is at least as bad and we don't ban discriminaton on grounds of class, accent, weight, looks, IQ etc etc)

My step sister left an old Polytechnic (not one with a good reputation) after doing a business studies course, she got fairly poor A'level grades I believe. GCSEs were not stellar either. She went for interviews with a well known computing firm before her degree results were announced. More than 50 people were interviewed, hundreds more applied apparently. She got the job and has been commended on her work to date.

She's personable, very attractive (undoubtedly I think this helped), charming, very good fun and hardworking and very likable. The sort of young woman that many would want in the office for all these reasons although perhaps not PC to admit this.

I think the job is a graduate one but not the most demanding or well paid but it's a start. I predict she'll do very well and rise through the ranks fairly quickly. Obviously a lack of stellar qualifications didn't hold her back from getting an interview, is this so unusual? I think she did a lot of leg work and research beforehand and went to the offices to deliver CV etc

Surely the vocational qualifications are better if you definitely do want to go into that vocation? The problem being transferability if you don't.

I've seen lots of jobs asking for NVQ 2/3 etc.

Mine was told that a BTEC in a certain subject was equivalent to 2 GCSE's. This subject fitted into the slot with subject that my DD refused to do (language) so she took it inspite of me trying to persuade her against it.

In the end she got what is supposed to be equivalent of 4 A by way of an Distinction , it was her soft option. Saying that, even for medicine they told us it was worth 1 A* so not a total right off. She regrets it now (especially when they started mentioning the English BAC suddenly the day she got her GCSE results) but she hated they way languages were taught in her school and felt she hadn't learnt anything in 3 years. She said she will do a language GCSE some time in the future at nightschool for fun.

Excuse the bold that was unintentional .

Good for her adamschic. In fact she'd probably better doing a non-GCSE language course. Some are brilliant. I did Spanish at the City Lit, for fun really in the evenings and could speak more Spanish and knew more grammar after one evening a week for a year than I did in French after 3 years of it (to GCSE level) at secondary school.

However much advice people get some only hear what they want to hear. I remember a MN thread where people were convinced that a 2:1 was equal, from wherever it happened to come from. They won the thread because they simply wouldn't accept that a 2:1 from Durham was better than a 2:1 from Hull but, at some point, they would find out they were wrong.

When you're in a job nobody cares, nobody looks to check, you have to prove yourself. As long as you can get to that first job interview that's all that matters really. It might be that a 2:1 from Hull compared to a 2:1 from Durham will prevent that but unless some uber competitive specialised situation I don't think so.

When I was 18 I knew that Oxford and Cambridge were regarded as the best but thought a degree from anywhere else was pretty much the same. No idea about Russell Group etc.

The thing is, now most degrees cost students £9k a year, they should be standardised across institutions so a 2.1 in English Language from Hull should be the same as a 2.1 in English Language from Durham. The entry requirements should be the same. And employers should not be allowed to discriminate between them.

Once you have the job you are OK (as long as you perform well)-it is the first hurdle that is difficult.
DS1 found getting the first job difficult but that soon led to a better one and he has just been 'head hunted' for a job he has started this week. Only 2 of them were invited for interview.
I know that DS2 will find it very difficult when he graduates, but once he has a toe in the door he should be fine-getting the toe in the door is the difficulty.
Performance then outweighs qualifications.

I don't see how that works Insomnia-you need to read up on it, go to the open days, ask questions, get advice. The teaching isn't the same, people will want to go for the better teaching, so places like Durham can choose the best. Employers choose the best person for the job-it isn't surprising that they go for a 2:1 at Durham before the same from Hull. If your plan worked everyone could just go to the one nearest home.

I certainly agree that once you're in a job if you are good, clever, personable etc then that is what matters. I always tell my children that at the end of the day lots of things matter as well as exams and it is not worth getting in a state about it. Just relax. However it does matter at the start and to get into places in the first place where you went, what exam results you have and all the soft factors like looks. Why did my eldest get the job she did? Was it because of her exam results, the blonde hair, the outgoing personality, the hobbies she found in common over lunch on the assessment day with the person who interviewed her, the fact that by chance she happened to be born very outgoing? Who knows. It was probably a mixture of factors.

Brains and school matter too and exam results though. She met someone from school randomly when we were out at the weekend. They were asking what various girls were doing. Every single career mentioned was a good one. Was that because if you put girls in a peer group as teenagers where tourism/travel GCSE is not even available and everyone goes to the good universities then they are going to do that ? Obviously that does help.

If your plan worked everyone could just go to the one nearest home.

I hope so - I think a lot of kids will have to anyway. Even in the early 90s with a grant that covered a lot of things I veered away from going "down south" (which included Oxbridge) on the basis that it would be too expensive to live there.

Interestingly, perhaps I 'suffered' less discrimination from employers going to an ex-poly to do law (as opposed to other academic subjects), which is pretty vocational and standardised in terms of the topics the uni has to cover to be a 'qualifying degree' i.e. so that you can go straight to BVC/LPC without a conversion course.

Also we had brand new facilities like a new library, lecture theatres and lots of computers and attracted numerous lecturers who were eminent in their field. I also felt they taught law in a refreshing, innovative way. I'm surprised to see my alma mater usually is permanently languishing around the bottom of league tables as I thought it was great while I was there.

You don't actually have to choose tourism/travel. I don't know whether it was available or not. My DSs friends from school have all been to good universities and got good careers-all from a comprehensive. I really don't know where you think all these bright DCs go to school if there is no selection and the parents can't/won't pay. You seem to have a weird idea that all comprehensives are bog standard and immediately your DC attends they will be dragged down and end up with soft options.
The truth is that my DCs comprehensive is in an area where many parents commute to London, many parents have degrees (some even from Oxbridge!), they are very clued up on exam options, universities and careers. My DCs, collectively, have been to Russia, Canada and Iceland with the school-not to mention French exchange to South of France, French war graves, activity weekends in Wales etc etc. When they came to arrange work experience one DD went to Hollywood! I can't remember where they went to university from my DS1s year, but I remember Oxford, Warwick, Loughborough, LSE,Bristol and Exeter.
I do wish you would stop treating comprehensive pupils as no hopers and the first generation to go to university and likely to have no drive and ambition, Xenia -it is distinctly irritating. They are exactly the same-except there is no selection and they don't pay.

I'm surprised to see my alma mater usually is permanently languishing around the bottom of league tables as I thought it was great while I was there.

Not really surprising-they move up and down. It does however mean that the best attract the brightest. You will never get a system where they are equal and people go to the nearest-it doesn't even work with schools!

Have you ever set foot in a good comprehensive on a normal working day Xenia?

I went to a Northern (gasp) Comprehensive (double gasp), and then to Cambridge, where I achieved a good 2:1. I'll bet Xenia thinks I got there only because of some sort of equality scheme.

Nice one, Olivetti. Bet you're unemployed though.

I was worse than that Olivetti-I went to a northern secondary modern- and on to grammar school and university. If I look up old class mates they have great careers all over the world, children at university etc. My best friend at the secondary modern had a father who had an Oxford degree and a mother with a Cambridge degree and the friend is now a Headmistress of a very successful school. My other best friend had a brother and sister at boarding school. Of course not all were as successful, but Xenia does get stuck in stereotypes.

Not yet. Touch wood.

I don't think I've said anything about comprehensives. I just said that in some schools children aren't told that some GCSEs are not useful ones to have for certain career choices and that where you go to university and your results do matter a lot in the present scrum for the tiny tiny number of jobs for graduates that there currently are. 50% of Oxbridge students come from state schools almost most of those are grammars. This was not a thread about comprehensives at all. the fact my local one gest 34% A- C at GCSE and seems to major in tourism and travel GCSE (and I see it is 52% this year). They also do Motor Vehicle, Textiles, Resistant Materials GCSEs. I am not saying those are wrong GCSEs , just that some pupils may not be aware they are not right for certain courses... Ah Citizenship GCSE Is another one they do (that does not seem to stop their hard core graffit artists (the school is covered in it inside)).

I am not stuck in stereotypes. I am the one telling the impoverished fed up housewives who depends on income from a low earning man to get out there and earn a fortune. You don't need a single GCSE to earn a lot of money but you do need self belief and capacity for hard work.

You also always tell bright happy confident mothers to get out from behind the kitchen sink because they must inevitably be in servitude.

You also say bin men are all ex-cons with tatoos.

You also no-one can have a regional accent and get a job.

Etc.

You appear to be totally stuck in stereotypes, offensively so.