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.

Sitting on the fence with this one.

People do need a good education, yes, BUT one lad who works for us is very bright, at uni, top grades and yet whilst in the work place he can be erm very well 'thick'. God I hate saying that but he can't see obvious working practices and we have to always remind him of things.
We have another two who have just taken over part of the business they are brilliant at it, your lucky however if they have two decent GCSES between them, they didn't do to well at school.

Good grades are great but people can still excel without them and some who do have them may struggle in other areas so it can be swings and roundabouts.

Of course exam grades don’t define define you, just because a child doesn’t hit the mark on their exams doesn’t mean they have no future.

My dd’s English teacher failed maths twice, before eventually scraping through, her physics head of department teacher left school with barely any grades and worked in a basic job before working his ass off to get into teaching in his twenties. My cousin left school with minimum results to become a plumbers apprentice and now Is a director for another’s plumbing firm.

Now tell me that school grades define who you are? They obviously don’t ! They are snapshot of school.

The problem is the "I got where I was without grades" are generally a couple of generations old, and those who are huge successes are the exception rather than the rule.

A lot of people who didn't get grades are stuck in low paid, low value jobs they hate.

Grades aren't everything but they are the best way to get on in a career unless you chose a more vocational route like plumber or hairdresser.

go onto twitter and search for #nowrongpath and you’ll see that these people aren’t decades old, it’s still happening now!

This hashtag was used a lot by my children’s school this year and it’s shown children that there are alternatives if your grades don’t go the way you want them too.

OP you seem to be angry about this.

Sooneryhanithought If you are going to get 1/2 s in all your subjects, it would not be a rational decision to withdraw. And that is the reality for lots of children.

Do grade 1s/2s enable the dc to go on to a next step at college, or get a job - I am just wondering if the dc are in fact better off with them than without them? If not, then I can see why the dc would think about not turning up to take them.

I am a bit sensitive to this today
My DD was not cut out for school and struggled a lot
She only just managed to get 4 passes. She really cried because all her friends got 7, 8’s and 9’s
The maths one she was only 4 points off a 5 too

Having seen my child cry today I have had to tell her that exams aren’t everything
Off to college now where she is going to do a BTEC

If you get below a 4 most colleges will help you resit them (only maths and English) and also enrol you onto some kind of level 1 or 2 course. FYI

I also have only 5 GCSE passes and I have a really good job. It can be done!

I'm not sure why you would be better off with nothing at all? My students with grades 1 and 2 are going to college to do level 2 or level 1 courses. Sadly, there are very few level 1 courses offered in our local FE colleges. Lots of options for middling grades, but fewer at the lower end, where they are desperately needed.

Yabu some of life’s most successful people have no qualifications. There is always another path.

But @Abstractedobstructed that’s the same for every child surely. My daughter knows nothing about the Kardashians or coding, so where do you draw a line? We had a question involving Kylie Minogue in our French GCSE in 1989, so bringing in popular culture is nothing new.

Ah that makes sense FM, in that case yes I agree it is worth taking them. Agree we need more options for those getting the lower grades - FE is just as important as HE but the news focus always seems very much on who got most 9s! I suppose that's interesting, and of course it's excellent news for the students and they have done really well - but in the scheme of things perhaps not really that important! (Awaits Disagreement)

Yes, if you have money and connections, there is always another path - of entrepreneurship. If parents are able to subsidise and house their adult children, it is easier. If you don't have these, then you are left with very few choices going forward and probably minimum wages jobs. With the massive competition in jobs, those without basic qualifications lose out.

Surely schools should be offering something for their less able pupils leaving good enough in this day and age , my nephews school ( my old school) has recently been put in special measures and one of the reasons was that they focused to much on the high achieving pupils and didn't offer much for the less able pupils ,it was downgraded from outstanding.

School performance measures require a large handful of GCSEs to be taken by pretty much every child. Not to enter them would significantly affect school outcomes. I work in Alternative Provision, and we have a bit more flexibility, but we still enter every child for Maths, English Language and Combined Science GCSEs, as well as other qualifications.

gingersausage
I am not sure what point you are making?

The point I am making is that my DS has taken this exam 3 times but despite being highly literate - his spelling and grammar are impeccable, he is knowledgeable about things that interest him and can write very well albeit slowly on these subjects - he cannot pass it. This means that apparently he isn't "clever" enough for uni or for many jobs where they will see he has no English GCSE and assume illiteracy because "apparently" anyone literate "should" pass. He is in no way illiterate; he just can't write about stuff he thinks he doesn't know about and his bullshit and waffle buttons are broken. That's because he's autistic, not because he's stupid or illiterate. He still deserves to be able to do an apprenticeship or uni course at his level rather than a lower tier course because he must be 'less able' if he can't pass English.

I suspect for some of us, results day is not a good day to be on a website so heavily populated with posters whose ideas of what constitutes a decent life are, shall we say, quite elevated. I don't suppose either ds (leaving college with a good grades in his BTEC but unimpressive GSCEs) or dd (ill through most of secondary, which affected GCSEs) will ever amount to the kind of lifestyle that MNers aspire to, but I find it perfectly possible, given that they are hardworking and with excellent social skills, that they may end up with the more modest lifestyle that is the norm round where we live.

Not sure what a "low value job" is, but suspect it's one of those jobs that keep society ticking over. Not sure my carpenter nephew or my receptionist niece or ds' hairdresser friend find their contributions to society "low value".

Qualifications are always worth having. Or at least core and useful ones are. It isn't a good thing to tell people that 'they don't matter' because they do. I've done a lot of recruitment in my time, so I know what employers look for.

However, I do wish that there wasn't such a focus on academic qualifications. We've all got obsessed with getting a degree these days when a lot of degrees really aren't worth having. Especially when a crap degree costs the same as a good degree. I'd like to see much more focus on vocational training. But you still need to get the qualification!

I do agree up to a point and have spent 13 years as a teacher. However, I'm about to start a new university course and the requirements were considerably higher than the A level results that I actually got. Life experiences got me the rest of the way there. Never give up!!

I do agree that they matter, more than they probably should. I heard a government spokesman praising the rise in pass grades on the radio earlier, talking about how the reformed GCSEs are a better preparation for young people as they move on to the next stage of their education. I teach in a very selective school and, for 99.9% of our students, I think this is true: they're academically intelligent enough to cope and the courses do set them up well for the demands of A levels and university study (although I query the stress levels generated by the intensity of the exams).

But my students are not representative of the general population, and there are many young people who are not well-suited to A levels, nor should they feel that A levels are the only acceptable or worthy next step. For many young people, the increased rigour of the exams merely shows them what they can't do, and makes them feel a failure at 16, where another qualification might be better preparation for more practical or vocational further study.

Everyone in this country should be able to attain a certain level of competency in English and Maths (perhaps literacy and numeracy would be more apt), but old-fashioned 'academic' study doesn't suit everyone, and there should be alternative routes which hold parity of esteem with GCSEs and A levels. Don't see it happening, unfortunately.

I tell my son that if he gets good grades at gcse he will have more choice about what he does next.

They are not the be all and end all. I left school at 15 with a couple of C grades and bunch of D grades. I got my first job as an admin trainee based interview/test (in local gov). I did business and finance courses through work and later did an A level in law for fun and got a B. I was moved to the legal dept in an admin role and my employer paid for me to do professional legal qualifications. It may not be the quickest route but it all worked out. No one gave a stuff about my gcses.

I didn't pass any exams - had left school before GCSEs.

First job at 16 was a supervisor at a large clothing store. Worked in managerial roles, sales, recruitment, etc. Now run a business that turns over a rather nice sum each year. Didn't need a bit of paper to be able to prove myself.

YABU, qualifications DON'T mean shit for those who don't do well in an academic environment but can thrive in the working environment. It's never a 'one size fits all' approach.

YANBU and typical of the anti-education rhetoric pervading our culture