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)

Advise him to go the exam board site. Download a couple of past papers, marking schemes, and examiners reports. Read questions. Read how marks allocated (or not). Read examiners reports for their comments on the paper for further insight.

In fairness to OPs son,it isn't always obvious how to answer the question from just reading it - or at least not to the student. DS is doing 3 subjects including sociology ( cue me thinking AS?AS?DS hasn't got an AS exam...Has he?) and how you formulate your answer and what you put in is different from subject to subject - DS has had trouble in one subject because what you have to do to answer is very different to his other 2 subjects.
Whole class did awfully in mocks,but this has lead to the teachers focussing on this - they say the problem is how different it is from GCSE,and it's compounded by inter subject differences.
You shouldn't have to be specifically told again and again and again at A level how to answer the question,but you might need some guidance and we don't know if OPs son has had this all year or not at all.
I thought marks in the 60s sounded ok!

Advise him to go the exam board site. Download a couple of past papers, marking schemes, and examiners reports. Read questions. Read how marks allocated (or not). Read examiners reports for their comments on the paper for further insight.

But they won't be able to do that as it is a new Linear course completely different from the old style structure. There are no past papers (the one that will be there under username and password will be used for the OP's Internally Assessed Exam in a few weeks - this isn't a Public Exam with a grade that 'counts' yet. More like an A Level mock exam) There are no Examiners Reports as exams have not been set yet.

With no offence meant to SpringTown46, many posters stated in this thread that advice to "Read the Question" was not helpful to the OP's DS but it is so easily done, as has been shown by posters not reading the full thread.

In fairness to OPs son,it isn't always obvious how to answer the question from just reading it

Apologies InfiniteCurve, I'm on Maternity Leave with time on my hands! I'm not a Sociology teacher but was teaching the new Linear A Level Computer Science before I left.

Here is an example of one of the questions:
The Internet has had a major effect on society
Discuss the social and ethical effects on young people of allowing unrestricted access to the Internet

In my class, most were able to discuss both social and ethical effects fine but over half failed to mention 'unrestricted access' or mention 'young people' at all and could only go in the bottom mark band. When pointed out, those students won't "Oh, I missed that!".

Therefore, in a lot of cases, it is good advice to fully read the question as advice on its own!!

AQA?

www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/sociology/as-and-a-level/sociology-7191-7192/assessment-resources

Assessment resources for the new specification. Includes examiners commentary on 'student answers', specimen papers, specimen marking schemes, guidance on 10 mark questions etc.,

Assessment resources for the new specification. Includes examiners commentary on 'student answers', specimen papers, specimen marking schemes, guidance on 10 mark questions etc.,

That's Specimen Papers (1 each for each module and which the candidate has probably already seen for mock tests) - not Past Papers you mentioned and a commentary is not an Examiners Report from a Public Exam stating what students did well and not did well. The commentaries for the new Linear exams are rather brief!

The material for the specificationshould have been covered by this stage and the focus now will be on exam strategy/technique.

An insight into the 'hoops' would be given by a decent teacher, but in the absence of that, these resources are helpful and at least worth a look, especially in this particular scenario and at this late stage.

Even if they have been used for mocks (probably not as they are public access and not locked) I doubt if the students were given much insight into the marking details.

Are you a Sixth Form teacher SpringTown? Not trying to be antagonistic but genuinely wondering as there are a few assumptions you are making in your post that don't necessarily apply in the current changes in qualifications at 16-19.

The material for the specifications should have been covered by this stage

Not necessarily true. The material doesn't have to be covered until the end of Year 13. They may well be only half way through the material.

Any insight into the 'hoops' would be given by a decent teacher

A little harsh considering teachers don't know what the hoops are currently-it is all guess work as the new exams and procedures for assigning grade boundaries are completely new and not in the teachers' or students' favour.

Even if they have been used for mocks (probably not as they are public access)

They will mostly likely have already been used for homework or class questions as that is all there is. And the OPs DS is not sitting a public exam-they are sitting essentially a Year 12 mock.

I'm responding in the context of the OP and making suggestions that may hopefully be constructive in the short time left.

The material from the specification for Yr1 should be complete, you are correct, not the whole spec at this stage. On the plus side, nothing is irretrievable if the student does badly at this point.

The teacher in this scenario does not appear to be helpful, based on the information in the OP. Others do better. For example, looking carefully at what has changed and not changed by accessing teachers resources, such as filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/sociology/AQA-7191-7192-POD4-TR-OV.PDF etc.,

I agree that there is a lack of precise guidance or help in the form of previous papers / database of examiners comments. This always happens with a change of spec. There is an element of professional guesswork but also the need to ensure that all possible resources are accessed.

Taking the OP at face value, teacher was not offering constructive feedback. That is my opinion. With more information and background I may make other inferences.

SpringTown - I absolutely agree with you and your advice insofar as that is what I would have advised before the Linear exams. I think what Kitty was trying to say is that it isn't just syllabus content that has changed with the new syllabus - how they will be assessed as changed. As in, the same teacher could teach the same material two years in a row, with the same advice and help but under the new system, one cohort may get As and Bs and the next get Cs and Ds because of how Ofqual want to assess the new linear exams. It isn't just "you know this much and have got this many answers correct so you get this grade awarded". It is "we only want to assign this number of As, Bs and Cs this year and this is where we are now going to draw the line on the grade boundaries this year".
There are no model answers or "this is what to do to get a grade A". That is why the teaching profession are currently pulling their hair out but no one else seems to know or be listening
It doesn't help the students or parents either and it is totally unfair that this current cohort are guinea pigs. However, it isn't the teacher's fault either, in this case.

Sounds like the teacher is sick of being expected to spoon feed a load of 17 year olds. If your son doesn't show any initiative he won't pass, which quite frankly is the way it should be. If he can't read a question and answer it properly he isn't suitable for A grades and university.

I'm surprised so many people would be offended by the word crap. Maybe it's a regional thing. I don't swear but say crap to mean rubbish and would never consider it an offensive word. I don't usually swear.
I think some kids are poor at asking for specific help especially boys. My daughter is much better than my son at pinning teachers down as to the specifics of what she should have done to get a better mark. My kids both looked at higher and advanced higher prospectuses online and past papers. Agree it's difficult when they decide to change the whole system

No good to be done antagonising teacher at this stage. Do the practical stuff to help. If you still feel like this later (at the end of the school year) - take it up with the school in a calm way. Ranting/aggression etc won't get anything changed and makes it look as though you are the idiot.

I think it's all too late really. If you've genuinely been making up for her deficiencies all year because she's a bad teacher rather than because your son isn't doing that well, you need to have raised it much much earlier with the school. Also remember that ranting at home about how rubbish the teacher is is not going to give your son confidence going into the exam. And by the sounds of it, he needs some confidence.

The teacher has been very unhelpful and I think a discussion is necessary! Stardanced' advice on past papers etc should help with prepping and revision. Good luck.

I'd email the head of year! Totally unacceptable! Whether he'd written a rubbish answer or not doesn't matter she could have annotated his work with some guidance going forward!

Sounds like one of my old teachers. Is he carrying on subject to a level? I basically ignored. Teacher and taught myself (tellingly only one in the class to get an A) unfortunately quite a few teachers are just shit and need to be worked around to get the right results, but like some bosses who are more a hindrance than a help

I'd email the head of year!

... and that's exactly why I just gave up being a head of year after 14 years..

Ds1 had to teach himself half the A Level History syllabus (Grammar school, some years ago) because the teacher for that half of the course was awful. I'm afraid as some pps have said, you do just have to take matters into your own hands. Identify any gaps and make sure they're plugged.

Any eejit can tell someone to 'read the question'
Yet students everywhere often lose marks in exams for not answering the question on the paper and instead writing about something else similar.

As a teacher of a common '4th subject' (not Sociology) I can tell you that it is not uncommon in grammar and other selective schools to get students who do very little in their 4th subject, because they know they don't need it for UCAS. Grammars also get less funding than other types of school, so teaching time can be inadequate and classes large. There is also a tendency in grown up sounding subjects (Economics is mine) for students to not learn the theory and think they can get away with vague blether.

These factors may or may not apply in your DS's case, but I'd be polite to the teacher and not bad mouth her to your son. Keep the moral high ground.

None of my students RTFQ!

That's crap feedback.

My son is doing GCSEs and I've tried to drill into him the importance of listening to the individual feedback he gets. He used to think
that some of his teachers were rubbish but when I looked at some of the marking of previous tests, there was helpful comments but being a know-it-all he hadn't read them. 🙄

I'm not saying that the teacher is right and your son is wrong. He needs to ask her (or another teacher in the department) for specific help. Does a top-grade answer need more description? A diagram? Etc

Did anyone of his friends get a higher grade? Would they be happy to send him their answer so he can learn? (Ds1's friend sent him a copy of an A* answer and he sat down to analyse it)

The teacher has been very unhelpful and I think a discussion is necessary! Stardanced' advice on past papers etc should help with prepping and revision. Good luck.

I have no words.

So many posters really have no idea of the new Linear exams. Not that they should but it is really not helpful in the OPs current situation.

Is the OP ever coming back, just out of interest?