to be fuming at GCSE results?

[cherrypez]

Quite prepared to be told I'm BU. DD, year 10, got a B, some Cs but also a D and two Es. Considering she is capable and was predicted As and Bs I'm mightily pissed off with her as she admits she didn't revise. I'm starting to feel a bit guilty for being so cross with her. Should I look at it as a lesson learned and hope she pulls it together for year 11? Or pile on the pressure?

Does she get to resit them in Yr 11? If so, I wouldn't go as far as being "fuming" with her, but I imagine she will be mortified and will throw herself into revising properly next year. I got a D in my Science mock GCSE and was horrified (rightly so considering I was on the school Chemistry team ffs!) because I knew it was down to my lack of effort in studying. I went on to get a double A in the real thing because that initial grade freaked me out so much I revised my arse off after that!

Oh and you cant really pull the pressure now she has her marks looks to see if she can appeal and then she can knuckle down next new term what age is she ?

Why is she doing so many exams early?

I'm not surprised she didn't do as well as you had hoped.

GCSE grades do matter, unfortunately. I was the admissions tutor for a university dept (not oxbridge) until recently, and the first thing I looked at was GCSE grades because unless people are applying for university post-A level, GCSE and AS grades are all that universities have to go on as an indicator of academic potential (A level predictions being worth very little). It partly depends on the subject - most university medicine departments would automatically bin any application where the applicant didn't have a straight run of As (probably A*s) at GCSE. In other subjects it matters less, but it still counts - doubly so if someone is applying from a good school. If I got an application from a school where I knew that almost all pupils got As at GCSE, then without some very significant extenuating circumstances any applicant without a number of As and with Cs and Ds would be rejected straight away.

But don't go overboard, OP: my niece screwed up her GCSEs and her mother hectored her for months (including at large family parties, which was excruciating - and took some brass neck considering her own dismal academic record at that age). My niece then proceeded to screw up her A levels, and get kicked out of the university course she managed to get onto with a clutch of E grades - which is impressive because it's almost impossible to get booted off university courses these days. Her mother's bullying (which is what it became) was completely counterproductive.

My daughters just got her final exam results today, she's finished year 11. She did half of her exams last year, and the other half this year (her whole year did the same). I thought it was a stupid way of doing it because she sat one of her first exams just a few months after starting year 10! When I was at school you did 2 years of study and a final exam, how can you do exams after only a few months work? Saying that though, it does mean that they have the chance to resit in year 11 and if they don't get the results they were expecting I suppose it can be an early kick up the arse to sort it out.

It appears to have changed back now, my youngest is about to start year 10 and will be sitting all of her exams at the end of year 11.

I think there's far too much pressure put on Year 10 pupils to achieve the sort of results more realistically gained in Year 11. However, not doing as well as predicted can have a galvanising effect if the results have come about from not doing enough work in the first place. So I wouldn't be fuming, as such, or necessarily ladle on too much pressure (that can easily feed rebellion) but instead, have a calm conversation with your dd about how she feels she can turn these results around in Year 11 and the potential consequences on her future plans if she doesn't.

In Year 10, my ds2 seemed to think he could pass exams without troubling himself to do any real work. His predicted grades were atrocious and it was the admissions tutor at his preferred college who actually gave him the necessary kick up the arse. Only at ds2's interview he was asked what he planned to enrol to do and when ds2 told him, the tutor (clearly recognising a lazy but bright boy) laughed and suggested that on the basis of current performance he'd be lucky to get into an extremely basic vocational foundation course. ds2 thought this was outrageous but promptly got his head down and started working hard. End result was 9 very good GCSEs and entry to his chosen course. All the nagging in the world from me wouldn't have had the same effect.

To those saying why put your DC in for exams early many of us have DC at schools where that is the system in place and not because we think they are so clever they should do them early

As an aside.....

FatherReboolaConundrum most university medicine departments would automatically bin any application where the applicant didn't have a straight run of As (probably A*s) at GCSE

Sorry but this isn't true at all. Some Uni Medical Schools require this but plenty don't. I wanted to point this out so as not to put off any potential medics

Sorry Inky . True of the ones I know, but I'm not a medic, and had assumed it was true elsewhere, too. Glad to know I'm wrong!

No problem, I am not always right myself. . Understanding Medicine entry requirements should be a degree in its own right.