To wish people would stop with the “grades don’t mean anything” shit

[Rapidmama]

Try getting any job without at least English and maths

Of course they don’t define you and there is always the exceptions to the rule but honestly all these people rolling out the “it doesn’t matter it’s just a piece of paper” excuses are talking shit.

Usual exemptions for SN, extenuating circumstances etc.

But if I had someone in front of me who was devastated by a set of bad grades I’d probably trot it out as a line because what else do you say? “Well, you’re fucked now mate”?

Hahahaha

I think having English and maths is pretty essential BUT anything above a pass is generally what employers want AND its not like your last chance to get this is at GCSE.

To be honest I am a bit of the opinion that GCSEs aren't the be all and end all because I have quite a few pretty good GCSEs and DP has literally none, and he earns loads more than me. So whilst I would always encourage a child to try hard, some people just aren't cut out for it but it doesn't mean that they wont get where they wanna go in life!

I think a good set of GCSE results says a lot about a child, but there are also things they don’t say. If someone gets a string of 8s and 9s, it’s a fair inference that they are likely to be clever and hardworking. It doesn’t tell you if they are a brave person, or an honest person, or a kind person. If someone gets a string of 2s, it’s a fair inference that they aren’t as clever or as hardworking as someone who got a string of 8s and 9s, but that inference might be wrong; they might have lost a parent in Y11 and ballsed everything up in the exam, or they might be incredibly bright but unable to put it down on paper, or they might be not very bright at all but worked their socks off.

Grades are part of a picture. They are not the whole.

I disagree, I only have two GCSES, neither in maths/English/science.
I followed a different route (slightly longer!) than my colleagues to get my current qualifications and I’m a registered veterinary nurse. (Which is a profession)
Some of my colleagues were Grade A students and followed a direct route into nursing.
Point being - I’m as good a nurse as them, without GCSEs. They made no difference to me.

Good grades give you more choices.

They are not everything, but they can help.

There does seem a good argument for a change to GCSE Maths and English where one paper each is functional arithmetic and literacy (respectively) and that grade published separately as well as the combined GCSE grade so employers can decide more clearly if the applicant is suitable.

Good grades help, but are not everything. Richard Branson famously left school at 16 without a single A level - I expect he now has a quiet chuckle at the swots in his class, from the comfort of his sun lounger on Neckar Island!

I got shit GCSE results and started working at 16. Now am a high earner in a very professional job. GRADES MEAN NOTHING.

Oops, that should read “O level”!

My eldest son has recently left school, 17 Scottish system. Did get maths and English but is not academic at all. I really worry for him but he’s making his own path, he’s extremely good at woodwork etc so working with a joiner at the moment. He has other plans and is learning to drive and thinking about college etc. It did stress me out that he didn’t like school and work hard but he still got qualifications and is earning a good wage.

I am dyslexic, school predicated i’d Leave with very little, they were v negative. Although my mum was very positive and pushed me to try hard and I got decent qualifications (except maths) and surprised school and went on to do nursing via access course. It took me a bit longer but I got there.

So yes exams/results do matter but there are other routes to many courses/careers now and if you’ve got a kid who wants it I’m sure they’ll succeed you just have to be behind them encouraging and researching courses/careers etc so you can advise them. I also think some people learn better and more effectively out of the school environment - I certainly did and I know many others who do too.

TogetherInDreams Academic achievement is not a measure of intellect. Who decided that an A level defines your ability to think?

It's a flawed system, which has no real benefits. The idea that an exam a child takes at 17 should define their career path is ludicrous.

Academic grades provide the entry route for further study. Up until an undergraduate degree, a student is still learning the basics, with increasing requirements to critically analyse, debate and measure validity of differing perspectives, and to research, collate and present information in a way that others can understand. They are also learning the discipline of studying and research. At postgraduate level, these skills are tested further.

The UK is actually quite unusual in Europe in that most students don't complete a masters (postgraduate) qualification before entering the world of work. Having done a Masters myself, it was noticeable how much better I knew my subject. My undergraduate degree had only scratched the surface.

While I have met plenty of unqualified people who are thick, unable to reason, debate or compare differing choices, I've always defined intelligence as the ability to thrive in your environment.

Don't forget too that academic qualifications are a way for women in particular to compete on a reasonably level playing field in the jobs market - there are so many unqualified men in extremely well paid jobs, who aren't particularly good, but who have never had to compete properly for those jobs because the entry route is some mystical requirement of who you know and how you fit in, rather than what qualifications you've got.

If you think this is of no value, then you would probably benefit from more study.

Well my oldest friend who left school without any qualifications whatsoever has now got a doctorate. OK, so she didn't do her degree until her 30's and she sucked at maths (she got a U) , but having raised 2 children as a single parent from quite a young age I'd say she did pretty OK. Not necessarily the route we wish to encourage our children to take, but let's not write all of our futures off.

My sister left school with one gcse. She now earns six figures working at a household name company.

My brother got A and A* and then ranked his a levels, he got an apprenticeship and now in his mid twenties earns 40k.

I got straight A’s and dropped out midway through my first year of A levels, totally burned out and work in a shop now (which I actually love).

DS1 has just now got a 4 in English and a 6 in maths and sciences. He’s got his college place. He also got a 1 in RE which I’m secretly quite impressed with, that’s some going . Overall I couldn’t be prouder of him.

My point there being that imo gcse result have fuck all to do with future expectations.

*It's not that they don't mean anything

They just don't mean everything*

Agree with this. I think it's a bit misleading for children (and mature students) when successful people do this. Not everyone has the talent, drive or (in most cases) luck that makes people successful.

Being able to attain a pile of qualifications (academic or vocational) is quite an achievement and is more likely to lead you to meaningful work than sitting in your bedroom whatsapping and instagramming.

*tanked

*results

Stupid fone.

People are so absolutist in their statements and positions. Of course a set of exams done at school don't define you. Of course there are many ways to succeed in life.

But showing intellectual potential is one of the surest ways to progress in life. It matters in so much as, if you do well in them, other people will apply value to that, it will open a somewhat predictable, achievable path to a good lifestyle.

I refute that it means nothing, intellectually. The correlation between a exams /degrees etc and intellectual capacity isn't exact, but it's certainly not zero. It's a proxy measure.

It's a useful heuristic for employers - can you focus on on a long term goal? Can you pass sets of exams at regular periods, prioritize workloads and overcome (a set of admittedly arbitrary) cognitive challenges?

To my mind there are two lines that are equally damaging:

a) grades don't matter at all

and

b) this is the last chance you get

Of the two, b) is probably the one that does most harm.

Ds failed his maths GSCE. Still got into college and the first thing that happened was that they offered him a chance to retake it. He has just left college with Distinction and Distinction* in his BTEC and has spent his summer volunteering in a shop (perfectly capable of calculating the correct change). Whether he has passed his maths or not, I doubt he is unemployable. He was recommended a manager training scheme by a recruiter he saw this week. Mates of his who left last year with similarly maths or English grades are in employment or apprenticeship schemes.

Obviously, passing his maths would have been better. But the thought that has really held him back and paralysed him through several attempts is the that success/failure is absolute, that there is no life if you fail. A thought sedulously planted by his teachers, and which doesn't even appear to be all that accurate.

Something similar happened to his sister: struggling with chronic illness and frequent hospital appointments, she had to pass into school under a large poster basically stating how and attendance of under x% is going to wreck your chances in life. It ruined her confidence for years. What the poster didn't do was suggest any ways of compensating for the shit that life throws at you.

And that imho is the problem with a lot of discourse surrounding education. It tells children what ought to happen, or what must happen, but it doesn't teach them enough about what to do when what ought to happen doesn't happen.

When I failed my GCSEs I was bullied and held up as The Thick One. Family, friends, no one understood and I was devastated.

I failed because at the time the school did study leave and my parents refused to let me study. Had I been allowed to study in school I would have at least passed. Well maybe. I'd not been able to do any coursework either!

Anyway the point remains that every where I went looking for work I was turned away and told to resit. My parents wouldn't pay for me to do that - I was thick shit and had proved it so time to get a job and pay towards my keep.

However, I found a course which would accept people with no qualifications. I had to start below GCSE level and move my way up in my chosen career path. Which I did. I got a lot of fun made of me and my parents were extremely pissed off that I wasn't paying salary to them for my keep (they demanded 80% and yes it was for them). I was the only woman in courses until I got to uni (then I was one of two in a class of 150!). I got my degree, postgrad, and professional qualifications and got fully registered. I didn't have many years in work due to my disability but I got there!!. At uni my parents sent me a letter saying they were going to sue me for the money they'd wasted on having me and refused me any contribution towards my education and they were disgusted.

So no qualifications aren't worthless and yes people do come out with horrendous things. At the time every paper was full of a load of shit about GCSEs being soooo much easier than the GCEs they'd recently replaced and anyone could get an A (no A* s then).

Fast forward 20 years I was asked back to the school to give a talk about what I achieved (as it turned out my parents had showed off about my career to the school, to keep up appearances ). I was the only one in my year who went to uni and had a career and for many years. So I was asked to do an inspirational talk to the year 11s (think it's year 11, was year 5 GCSE year). I agreed thinking it an excellent idea given the grades I didn't get and how I managed it. Turned out the staff hadn't bothered to check my grades (my teachers having long since died or retired) and just saw my job title and letters after my name added two and two and got twenty two (as a friend of mine used to say) and assumed I'd be talking about all my hard work to pass my GCSEs. I knew they'd made a mistake when I began and the glares I got from staff and the atmosphere! The talk they got was how to achieve if you don't get the grades, they wanted a talk about working yourself into the ground to get those really high grades. I got asked a lot of questions and it felt positive from my point of view. The kids engaged and asked questions.

However, after I was taken to one side and told in stiff tones they'd not need my help again and I should have been more up front. I heard from my parents neighbour staff were livid that someone who was clearly just thick had been allowed to pretend to have achieved when they were so obviously lying! So I popped photocopies of my certificates (all of them!) in the post just to make my point and that was that.

Sadly 99% of people at that school have a goal of working in tesco stacking shelves (nothing wrong with that but that's held as The Goal) and the other 1% get bullied for being snobs. That's what we were all told we would achieve and sadly it's still the same now. Having people in who achieved, even if they'd failed all their GCSEs would have been a lot of help for me. The school has a horrendous reputation for exclusion and people not achieving (unsurprisingly).

I know this is long and yes I've said it before but I think it's important.

Sorry that was really long! And took ages to type so massive x post.

I think it depends. I know people have succeeded despite not having them but I also know of people who are limiting their options by not having them.

... they grade the school more than the child. 🤷‍♀️ Either the child is very far behind, average or above average. But the individual scores benefit the school more than the child.

Userzzzzz what's your evidence that people who get better GCSE's on top of the good grades at A level and degree perform better in your company? Otherwise it's just an arbitrary filter and you might as well pick out people with T in their name. Doing better after GCSEs could just mean you're a slightly later developer or that you went to a better college than school. It seems really unfair to filter out people just because of exams at such a young age that don't reflect later performance and don't indicate better performance in the job. It's

Yes and no. I left school at 15 with no qualifications.
I went straight into work and did well in my job easily moving up to management level.

But, I took time out to raise my children and getting back into work now is daunting with nothing to put in the qualifications box.

My youngest is at school now getting his results. I know that they will be less than brilliant. He is on the autistic spectrum and although intelligent, well-informed with a fantastic vocabulary and an encyclopaedic knowledge of anything involving reptiles, he will be lucky to get a 4 in maths and probably in Eng Lang too. So, yes, i have been telling me that as long as he gets good enough grades to do his Animal Management course next year that the 'grades don't matter'. I will continue to tell him this. Because for him saying anything else would be pointless and damaging.

My DD got 6 A, 3 A and a B (I told her I was very disappointed with the b ) She has just finished an Extended diploma in Applied Science with 2 Distinction and 1 distinction. She wants to go to university so for her the grades do matter.

But as an indication of intelligence and intellect I really do not beleive grades are the be all and end all.