To contact sons teacher and make her feel as shit as she has made him feel!!

[cherryberrymum]

I'm bloody furious and I'm counting on the Mumsnet massive to make me see perspective here.

Son is doing AS levels. One of his teachers who has been laid back to say the least all year has suddenly realised her entire class are not going to pass!!!!

I have done the subject previously and have been helping him the best I can but after a recent disaster in a class test I sent him to ask her for advice.

He said she sat back in her chair arms behind her head and just said he had written a crap answer and it only deserved 3 out of 20 but she felt generous and gave him 6 out of twenty. 😟

Who the hell is that benefiting???? He is home now feeling crap about the first exam which is next Tuesday! She didn't give him any guidance on how to improve his answer. Just told him to read the question in future. He finished tomo for study leave but I'm so bloody cross!!!

WIBU to contact her tomo morning and tell her she's a Knob! Or should I wait till parents meetings in October (assuming he passes AS levels and gets back to do A Levels)

It's a shit situation, but it's too late really now to go in all guns blazing, you're going to have to deal with what you have.

Have you got a good few revision books? There are some really good ones out there and Amazon delivers fast.

I know you have looked at past papers with him, but maybe if you sit down with him and dissect questions so that he has a good idea of what he is being asked to do would be useful to help him "read the question".

It must be very stressful for him, but try to remind him that this is one exam in a lifetime of tests and hurdles and he will overcome if he wants to.

Good luck.

Firstly, percentages are mis-leading. Quite often at AS Level, a 64% mark would be an A grade.

Secondly, have you any idea how much I have have to tell my students to read the question? They never seem to and miss out key bits of information.

Exam questions take about a year to write and get checked-they are written very specifically to guide students in how to answer exactly.

Advise your DS to underline key words in the question and to check marks on offer. Plan his answer to cover relevant points/examples etc. The key words that he underlined should appear in his answer to force him to stay on track.

Where have you got the 'whole class is not going to pass'!? Those percentages sound very much like good passes to me.

Is Sociology one of the new Linear subjects?

WIBU to contact her tomo morning and tell her she's a Knob!

what's the priority here, having a ruck or getting him through his exams? decide, and act accordingly OP

I sympathise with your son OP. The day before one of my AS levels, I went to collect some practice papers that my teacher had marked. She told me she'd thrown them in the bin because it was better I didn't see them before the exam.

Are there any of your son's friends that are getting good marks that may lend him their practice papers? I found this helped to see what markers were looking for.

Sorry, just seen that his classmates are not doing well either.

Why do you think the whole class is failing based on those percentages?

Read the question is not basic at all, and if his answer indicated a silly mistake based on a misreading of the question it is very good advice. If his previous marks are 60%ish then this was an unusually low score for him and does suggest not rtq.

It's a new spec isn't it? If so, that will be why she is having to make up her own questions. Are you sure the ones you are downloading are not for an old spec?

I have had numerous conversations with her about him

Is there perhaps more of a back story here?

Yes, I would and I would ask her whether his mark was perhaps a reflection on her poor teaching!

OK , I have just checked myself and the new Syllabus is Linear. That means two things OP:

There are no past papers for your son to practise from, as the Syllabus was first teaching from 2015 and the first cohort hasn't gone through yet (you have probably been downloading ones from the old style syllabus) and therefore his teacher has had to make up her own questions.

Secondly, your son is sitting an internal AS Exam-it is not actually going to count towards his A Level. However, if he is only sitting Sociology as an AS Level and not carrying on next year, he still won't have any extra past papers to practise from.

Getting all worked up and using past knowledge from the old style exams isn't going to help and it it not as clear cut as your opening post inferred.

Years and years and years ago when I did A level sociology it was an odd old subject which the teachers didn't really teach in the way they do other subjects.

There was a very fat text book, which I read from cover to cover and made notes on on Post its, which I stuck all over my bedroom and the bathroom, and on index cards which I read on the beach whilst skiving the actual useless lessons with the teachers' blessing. There were past papers in the school library which I practised only when I realised they were there in the few days before the exam. I was doing other essay based A levels and knew how to construct an essay. I got an A (A stars hadn't been invented as it was a bygone era...)

My parents had long since given up on me for not taking sciences and aiming for medical school, so it didn't occur to me to tell them how I was going about my sociology studies, and actually I was fairly content.

Is that not how it works now?

Ah - from Kitty's post I see it really isn't how it works, but also see why the teacher might not be overly worked up about an internal exam!

Can he ask for some model answers so he can see what he needs to do there may be some online. I know we used them in sociology and my dh does them for his students who are studying same to see how to set things out and answer. Look at mark schemes of what is expected to be done in each question. If you have studied the subject yourself get him to write you an essay and see if he is answering it. One problem kids have is they focus on the wrong bit of the question. They see for example its on white coller crime and write all they know when they need to look at if it says analyse, compare ect ..... make sure he knows case studies he can regurgitate to support argument. Get him to write out plans of how to structure. One big thing we did was made sure to use words like however to show they can show the supporting arguments and how to critisize. The teacher wasnt great in answer but there is alot he can look at himself to help. The mark schemes will help alot. I know when I studied it as part of homework we had to answer two exam questions (20 marks) a week as homework and also write plans for others. Get him to look up past papers as all papers have a simular structure. As long as he has the knowledge there is alot of ways he can help himself. Is teacher not doing revision classes. All secondary teachers I know doing Gcse, AS and A2 have been doing them for a while. She wont want your ds to fail. If he doesnt get target grade she will have to explain why. They will be grilled by head teacher if the kids dont get the grades. The past papers will be online along with mark scheme so he can easily look up

Another tip is get him to underline the words in question of what is asking to make sure he focuses and doesnt go on tangent

Can he ask for some model answers

There won't be yet as nobody knows (including the exam boards) what model answers will look like! It's so hard trying to do this blind so I have every sympathy but it isn't the teacher's fault (bar the 'crap' comment to be fair-that was not on)

The title of your post makes you sound like you're BVU, quite frankly.

Before you go in determined to make your son's teacher feel shit, are you absolutely 100 per cent certain your son's version of events is exactly what has happened? Because I am very close to a few teachers and their lives are made hell by parents who have only one side of the story, just their child's version of events and rather than have a reasonable discussion with the school, go in and demand the teacher's head on a plate because they said something the child didn't like. Please don't be that sort of parent. Discuss with his teacher in a calm and reasonable way that allows you to get the full story, speak to the head, just don't go in to simply to make his teacher "feel shit. "

One of the biggest issues with subjects at a level is that the mindless regurgitation of knowledge and model answers no longer cuts it. Students who are used to being given scaffolded essays with all the info to put into them really struggle with the fact that they must read the books and then formulate an answer that uses these references. Discussion takes place in class about the studies and theories, but the student must be able to write a decent essay themselves. Sounds like your ds has been told that his answer did not answer the question and he has probably not included the evidence required. The fact that there are others who are similarly poor does not in any way indicate that she is a bad teacher. Probably your ds has been helped too much in his GCSE's. This is common.

She refuses to see that he doesn't understand or grasp how to answer the questions.

So her advice to read the question was spot on, then?

I'm not one of the people who think teachers should be given a free pass on everything because they're so overworked (unlike many on MN) but you're "bloody furious" about a secondhand account from your son of a teacher he doesn't like in a subject he struggles in.

You do not know the grades everyone in the class got.

You do not know that the teacher is "panicking" and believes the whole class will fail.

Your posts have made it abundantly clear that you know nothing about the situation and have gone into overbearing mother mode.

Relax. Your son is taking A levels. He needs to grow up and take responsibility for some of his own learning, not rely on Mummy and Daddy to download past answers and storm into the school to make teachers "feel like shit."

I thought they didn't do AS exams any more?

Tinkly For the subjects that have gone Linear, you can do either AS or A Level but you can't sit AS Level and then just 'do the exams for A Level'. You have to forfeit your grade to sit the whole A Level course in one go, at the end of Year 13.

With a student who is basically able (no SEN, achieved a reasonable GCSE result, has been given appropriate guidance before) read the question is probably the single most useful thing he can do. My suspicion is that she has told him what to do, probably many times, and he isn't reading the question!

At this point in time, given what you have described and that you've spoken several times to the teacher, i would skip her and contact somebody very senior in school - head of curriculum maybe or head of sixth form or similar.

I would then say you are concerned about your ds and his sociology exam, that you have been talking to the teacher with no discernible effect and when your ds asked for help nost recently, all she would do was say to read the question, which he had done, was struggling but she wouldn't or couldn't help further.

Say that you have boiled it down to two key issues that you are most concerned by (although you have others too) that you think your ds (and by extension the class) need help with for maximum help in improving their marks in the fastest possible time..

Firstly, the teacher hasn't finished teaching the curriculum. If a question comes up on the untaught part the dc will automatically be at a disadvantage. Even if there are a choice of questions it means they have their choice narrowed and might end up having to do a hard question on topic a instead of an easy question on topic b (and other candidates will be getting good marks on topic b, so it can be a double whammy. I don't know how much of the curriculum remains untaught but at this poibt in time school should be aware and should be providing extra lessons and some excellent notes (that they might usually expect the students to make themselves) to help redress the situation asap.

Secondly it sounds like your ds has problems decoding the questions in order to know how to answer the question to best effect. This is going to be exacerbated if the teacher has been writing her own questions and they haven't seen many proper questions to spot the nuances and hidden clues and traps in them. This is a skill they should be taught for each subject to maximise their chances and 'just read the question' isn't enough guidance, especially when a student says they are struggling.

Has your ds been taught to do mini mindmap or bullet poibt or whatever essay plans? Should only take a couple of minutes max but will help to ensure he gets a good framework for the essay and covers enough points for good marks. Having several different frameworks in advance (eg for historical overview, compare two or three approaches to xyz, compare and contrast lots of approaches to xyz, obviously tailored to whatever fits for sociology!) can be useful as a revision tool - making essay plans for each question to see what they remember then checking back against notes/marking plan/textbooks and adding extra details leaves them with good last minute refresher notes to read too. And it means you can cover more ground - useful if time is limited and your ds can otherwise write the essay well.

Try to get an action plan from the school to put things right going forward and then you can worry about complaining afterwards!!

RTQ, I say it all the time. They just don't do it. Eg question says 'aerobic respiration', they talk about 'anaerobic respiration'. Or question says describe xxx AND state xyz. Pupil only describes and doesn't state xyz. What else can you possibly say?!

My son's school uses RTFQ [read the full question]. Or possibly [read the fxxking question].

at 60% grades being A Level fails!!!

My concern wouldn't be the language but more importantly that she claims the whole class will fail. Which is shocking considering they should be all grade A or B standard and therefore piss easy to teach. In your shoes I'd speak to the head of year about the classes high underachievement

I love RTFQ

I say to my students: "First, read the question. After that, read the question. Then, just in case, read the [bleep] question!!" I don't actually swear at them but they get the jist.