DD devastated with GCSE results

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DD3 is devesated.

Her target grades were 8-9 for all subjects except for Maths which were 6-7. She's revised a lot, every time I've seen her in her room she's cracked on with her revision and she's given up lunch times and even stopped her dance club for a year which she's been doing for 4 years just to revise.

Last night she seemed like she was confident that she'd reach her targets but in the car on the way to school she just broke down and started to cry. She said that she had a bad feeling.

She told me about a month ago she felt so nervous in her exams and all she could feel was knots in her stomach and she could barely even focus.

She's opened her results for a 6 in every subject except from Maths which was a 3 and a 4 in Geography.

Any advice I should give her? Most of today she's been up in her room crying and on her phone not talking to anyone.

I don't think it is true about the unis rejecting you for your GCSE grades either. Unless it is Medicine.
Ds1 had offers from Cardiff, and Surrey with very very mediocre grades, much worse than those the OP has given, all Cs, and 3 Bs. But his predictions for the A level and his suitability for the course in question were the reason he was given offers. In some courses, it will be that your suitability is the stamina in exams, and that you are a high flier. For another course your suitability might just be that you are very good at what you do, NOW, and you have the A level grades or some other qualification to prove it. And you can always apply after getting your Tier 3 qualifications to university, if gcses "hold you back". There is a lot of scaremongering about a a single dropped A*.

i was told last year that only about the top 5% of students are expected 9's and a 6 is an amazing grade! nothing to be sneezed at!

. Bless her she had done amazingly. Please tell her from me well done. She put lots of effort in and although she was expecting a bit higher these results are amazing.

Very good answers here by MN already about putting thid in perspective and focussing on the future. In addition, inquiere with this school why they expected so much. 9 is supposed to go to only 3 percent. Even 8 is still exceptional. Were there sufficient mock exams to come up with realistic expectations in the first place? Was there guidance about stress? I would look at all this and potentially move her to a more supportive, wholistic and academically realistic school. She needs to get a chance to find her passions and strength instead.
I think very few actually are happy as those kids on the front pages of the newspapers; most are ery unvappy and your daughter was mislead on top of that.

Your poor DD. Not because of her grades - they're fab, but because she's been so anxious. When are we going to create a humane system where kids can have fun learning not be tested to death!?

The Dept of Education faffs around with the exams system every couple of weeks, so it seems, thus rendering results from last year pretty bluddy meaningless.

And any potential employer who sets any store by exams grades is a fool without wit, imagination or perception.

(Makes you wonder how THEY get to be an employer in the first place. Nepotism anybody?)

I think this is a very valuable opportunity for your dd. She misread her work and the exams and probably created anxiety by over reaching. Poor little chicken is upset now but with some tlc and wider perspective she could learn not to go down that same rabbit hole for a levels. It's a gods time to learn this, much better than learning it at a level

How is she today OP?

Tell her this.

All of secondary school she will have been told is about getting GCSEs. Really it isn't, it's about young people progressing from childhood to adulthood.

Unfortunately those of us who teach have to try to get everyone to achieve in exams. There are lots of other things we try to teach in between that at at least as important.

Things like manners, working in groups and individually, developing resilience and the ability to listen to, understand and follow instructions.

You are only 16, the rest of your life is ahead of you. If you think of your life as a set of stairs you have just slipped a bit on one of the lower steps, you haven't fallen down them, just a little slip, the rest are there and you have the skills and ability to climb to the top.

In a year you will have GCSE maths at a good grade. You already have a level 1 pass, you just need to improve it.

In two years you will have a level 3 qualification, that might A levels, it might be a BTEC, it might be something else.

All that will matter as far as GCSEs are concerned is that you have 5 good passes including English and Maths (which you will have by then).

Then you will be ready for your next step in life.

Pressed post too soon.

All the other things that are not examined, these are the things you can rely on for the rest of your life, skills employers .

Have a wonderful rest of your life

Yep GCSE grades count for nothing unless you want to get onto a very competitive degree course.
As soon as you get a degree no one asks for the grade (just x number GCSs grade 4-9). I work for a major engineering company and regularly recruit people- I would find it really odd if someone put their GCSE grades on their CV when they have a degree.

A levels enable you to focus on the subjects you love and so as long as you can get on the course you want (or are good at) then nothing else matters!!

Help her find the course she wants to do and then don't mention the grades ever again since in the real world it really doesn't matter even if it feels like the end of the world right now.

Onwards and upwards.

I'd be telling her that these marks will never matter once she's got A-levels. They're just a stepping stone. I mean, I worked my ass off to get a first class degree, then hobbled through a post grad. Post grad has no attached 'ranking' and since I have the MSc, nobody cares whether my undergrad degree was first class or not...never mind my marks back in high school. She can still do very well for herself with her marks. I supremely cocked up maths in school and was just plain terrible at history, average at French...only good in English and Physics/Engineering Science. None of that matters now and I have a great job as a structural engineer. I remember being scared because I wasn't acing everything back in school.

Aww, hope she feels better soon. I was disappointed with mine, I got Bs and Cs, when predicted straight A*, so my mum and siblings made biscuits of bees at sea, and told me it was a good thing I didn’t get As because they wouldn’t have fit the theme! Family support will make it all seem better

I worked my socks off or so I thought.
I got in my gce’s I got a three in English Lang...that was when you had to know anout gerunds and adverbial clause of reason and be able to parse a sentence.
I got a 4 in eng lit , maths and Latin
Then ficesin French, geography and biology
Then a six was a pass.

I was a bit deflated.

Then I took English lit and biology at A level. I thought I had a good grasp of both subjects, particularly biology
Again was deflated to get grade Es in both
An E was a pass in 1970

So sorry to hear about the pressure your daughter was under. It sounds like she worked really hard as well.
It was bad enough at our high school.

I hope in time she can look back and laugh once sh gets where she wants s to be.

Make sure she carries on extracurricular
In life you need to be a rounded individual
6 is a good grade

I'm pretty sure she's feeling better now seeing as the thread is a year old

Okay haven't read full thread - but OP If you and your daughter still reading.

I am very successful professionally - if you met me and I told you what I do you would think I was doing extremely well - in my chosen field which is highly competitive.

I only got 5 passes at GCSE - I got 2 A's - in my only subject I liked - and C's in three other subjects. I failed maths, science and art!

NOBODY cares once you get through A level what happened at GCSE - what does she think will happen later in life because of this?

Nobody has even given two hoots what my A level results were to be honest.

It is ludicrous to put pressure on kids in this way.

haha okay old thread. well maybe it can cheer up somebody else.

Those are reasonable results - not bad at all!! IME the only thing that would prevent a student from doing A levels was anything below a B in the relevant subjects. She will need to retake Maths but most colleges allow for this. Contact the college/school and ask for advice.

Just give her lots of support and love and remind her that she has plenty of options.

Ahhhh bugger! All done and dusted by now I guess.

By the way my dd had impressive gcse results in 1963 at a private school, all A’s and Bs
And then continued to fail almost all of her A levels apart from computers which was a D and a B in general studies
Fs in maths and physics.
Once she’d got unconditional offers at all her university choices...it was party time

We were laughing about it the other day.
It’s not the-end of the world tell your daughter

Mine got a brilliant 2/2 degree in computer science, a 3 would have been amazing ( by this stage I was grateful for anything lol)

She landed a cracking job that she loved and after only 5 years there she was in a salary of £30,000 and that was 15 years ago.

Her mental well being is worth more than a clutch of qualifications.
My dd gave up work when her son was born and has home edded all three of them now.
I rang to tell her about her nephew, my grandsons results , as she was packing to go away on holiday today
And her last words to the kids were
...and you three can all stop whingeing!

Hopefully your dds sense of equilibrium will have kicked in by tomorrow

Better to have mostly 6s (High B) than 8,7,2,2,2,2,2 etc.
Shows balance. Shows ability multi-task.
Most 6th forms only require 4 or 5 average...she exceeds that.

Argh... I didn’t know it was an old thread either

Just wanted to jump on and say that your DD is in my thoughts OP. I know that sounds odd coming from a stranger, but over the last month I've become increasingly aware of the pressure that is being placed on students to excel. It sounds like the pressure she was being placed under, and placing on herself, built up her nerves in the actual exams until they were a hindrance.

Someone I know recently lost their child as a result of them being unable to cope with the pressures that were being placed on them. Are exams really worth getting so stressed over? I'd much rather have a happier child who was satisfied they'd done the best they could, than having a stressed, anxious and (in my friend's child's case) suicidal child that thought they'd never live up to expectations.

I hate the new GCSE score, being 1-9 makes it sound like a 6 is positively mediocre but if it's the equivalent of an old B, then it's a fantastic result.

Give your DD a big hug OP and tell her that everything will be OK.
I hope the pizza and a promised shopping trip help her feel better.

Based on her predicted grades, it sounds like it's the anxiety about the exams that she needs to work on more than her knowledge.

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