To let her fail her GCSEs

[Newpuppymummy]

My 15 year old (y11) is doing basically no revision. She’s laying about doing whatever she wants despite all my best efforts to motivate and help her.

I have offered to sit with her, help make a written plan is, help test her r on things and she’s just not interested and resists everything.

Part of me feels like I want this more than her. I don’t know whether my best option is just to leave her to it and learn the lesson that you have to put work into things to get good results. This goes against my normal parenting strategies but I am at a loss with her.

It’s so hard for this years GCSE and A level students. All the extended time off school has certainly left my child with no enthusiasm and momentum- she’s tired of it all and I can’t say I blame her. Get up do work online all day, don’t see your friends. There’s no enjoyment outside of just working, to create some balance, I don’t know what the answer is though.

I would have disliked the situation that current students are in where ongoing assessments and mocks are likely to form part of the final grade, so pulling it together last minute won’t do. That is the reality though, unless mocks are cancelled or delayed too which seems possible.

I think a lot depends on your DD generally....is she academic? Does she want to go on to do certain A levels or to higher education? If so, it matters more I guess. You can’t force her but I would try and get her to face the possible consequences of poor grades in limiting her options.

@Barmyfarmy

She's spent the last year like us- going through a massive trauma. Her lack of interest in studying for exams that are unnecessarily stressful is understandable. If she doesn't pass them, she can go to college next year and do them in a much better setting in a better situation. Don't pressure her, don't push her and don't add more stress to her life for something that has an easy plan B. It is not the end of the world if she doesn't pass.

thank you for posting that @Barmyfarmy My ds is going through a bad time and says he is not able to revise at all. I am frustrated but ultimately in his situation I understand why. It helps to keep positive about what might happen next if he fails them all.

@BellsaRinging

Oh god-I feel like this with ds too. He has mocks online next week and is just so idle it hurts. I was such a self-motivated student and revised on my own. I dont get it. However, I have decided to let him get on with it, or not. When he fails his mocks I am hoping that will put a rocket under him.

Mocks can be important if we have to go to CAGs.

Every piece of work that is submitted is important and that is what I have told my Year 11s. If I have to justify a grade I need evidence to support it.

Battling with this too.
It’s so frustrating. Even when she does get started she disappears off upstairs “to find a pen” and returns 45 minutes later.

Taking the phone just leads to arguments and sulking, so no work!! I have had long, calm chats. I have banned stuff. I have given rewards for effort! Nothing seems to have a sustained impact.

Feel like I am watching a very slow car crash. It’s very hard to “let them fail” and I sympathise so much both with the teens at the moment and their parents.

This thread has made me realise I am not alone though - thanks.

I’m afraid there’s no such thing as ‘just mocks’ this year. There are no guarantees that exams in England will take place as normal this year. There are always students who only start working in February, and often they manage to pull it out of the bag, but the 2020 cohort regretted it.

I think it's hard for many current Y11s to motivate themselves at the moment because everything is so up in the air, they've not yet been told which topics will be cut out of the summer exams, possibly don't feel as though there's any point putting effort into something that looks increasingly unlikely to go ahead etc. etc. My Y11 DD had mocks before Christmas so has been spared the extra angst that the latest to-ing and fro-ing has brought. She also knows that she wants to do A-levels and that she'll need evidence of working at a particular level in order to be accepted on the courses she wants to do. Using Get Revising was a useful way for her to organise her revision as it programmes in revision slots for each subject once other commitments have been plugged in. There are also ideas on there for how to revise particular topics which is handy if they just don't know where to start. Seneca Learning has its uses too, especially because it's possible to set assignments for your teenager to work through, with deadlines for completion.

What is your DD spending her time doing? Would she be open to working through an online revision thing for you, even if not for herself? Perhaps she'd be up for plodding through maths on something like Seneca plus English and another subject of her choosing? 20 minutes per day for each of those for the next couple of days and the two of you sit down together and think about whether or not it was useful? Does she prefer company when she's working? I quite often end up sitting on DD's bed whilst she's revising simply because she likes company. I'm usually doing my own work or reading a book rather than actively helping so it's no major hardship.

I will say that I know of several gcse and a level students, even in non exam years, who are really putting in the work and have been all through this...being very disciplined and working out what they need to do to catch up on things they have missed, using the extra time at home to read around the subject. These are pupils whose school has not been great at providing online learning. I would make sure your DD understands that not everyone has lost motivation or momentum in recent times, and it is a competition. I completely sympathise with those who have lost motivation and feel apathetic though, it’s very hard.

they've not yet been told which topics will be cut out of the summer exams

That’s poor - they should have been. We told ours in October.

My DS was just the same.

We nagged, cajoled, calmly explained the potential consequences of messing up his GCSEs, ranted.

The school mentored him; basically we did all we could, but to the point when, sometime in late Feb I recall, I calmly sat him down and told him that I would no longer nag as it was destroying our relationship and was achieving nothing. I did say, though, that I wasn't going to go on funding failure.

I also pointed out that the villa holidays and the 4 bedroom house weren't god given rights, that our pay bought them, and that we weren't always going to be around to house him.

So from then on, every time I saw him gaming and not revising, I'd just say 'you and I both know what you should be doing right now'. I also reminded him that at no stage was he ever to attempt to blame us for his failure.

He achieved one grade lower than his predicteds in 8 out of his 10 GCSEs. Which I know he was privately disappointed by.

He went on to start 4 AS levels at a 'forgiving' 6th form; but by February, 'Maths' had been downgraded to 'Use of Maths' and Physics disappeared altogether. We had a very uncomfortable parents evening where it was made clear they were sort of washing their hands of him because he wasn't interested. This came as a bit of a shock to him as he was used to us all begging him, and dancing attendance to him. He wasn't expecting 'If you can't be bothered, nor can we, mate!'

So I acted (he had ever fewer options to fall back on himself, by this stage). We pulled him out of the 6th form (at the end of the year) and sent him to the local Tech to do an extended diploma BTEC. I told him that if he started failing that, he was going to leave and to start working fulltime at Tesco (he was very PT there). I was very calm, I presented it factually, not as a 'threat' as such, saying 'shop work in Tesco is a perfectly good job that thousands of people do happily every day of their lives. It's a pity if you end up doing that because you have to, not because you want to, but that's a choice you're making. I won't go on financing your failure'. But I know he was initially a bit embarrassed to be going to the Tech as he's a bit of a snob, but reality was dawning.

Well, finally at 17.5 he'd grown up enough to realise that he was only as good as his last set of exam results (academically, I mean!) which were D and U at AS. He knuckled down at Tech and achieved D star D star D (and the BTEC format suited him far better).

He's now in Y3 at uni doing Computing. But even now, he wryly recognises he's smarter than many of the DC on his ex-Poly course. He needed 130 UCAS points to get in but he had 160, BUT the red-bricks wanted Maths at A level. He sees this as a consequence of the eyerolling he did aged 15-17; but he was just too immature to do anything about it back then.

So my advice would be to remain supportive, offer help, but be cool and impersonal in citing the consequences of her laziness. I think it's even more difficult right now with the looming unemployment crisis due to Covid and the contracting of well-paid careers, post Brexit. There'll be a lot more competition in the market and, as others have said, sixth forms will be giving the dead certs resit opportunities, not DC who failed due to laziness.

She needs to decide which side of the have/have not fence she wants to find herself on.

At the end of the day, they will either put the work in or they won't.

Our eldest wasn't putting the work in, we sat down with him on countless occasions, talked about it, offered help and it was ignored. My last conversation before he took his GCSEs was simple and went "we've tried to help you and you've knocked us back, you haven't put the work in, so it's over to you, you're on your own, you sink or swim."

He sank and failed English and Maths spectacularly. When he got his results it shook him, he finally saw in black and white that he had failed. He did get a place at college and had to resit Maths and English. He put his head down, did the work and passed.

It was awful telling him he could sink or swim and that he was now on his own and I had sleepless nights over it, but in this instance the fact he failed did him good.

have ds at exactly the same stage. He's just now thinking maybe he should do some work - but I suspect if I went into his room he would be playing computer games.

IMO it is up to them. If we micromanage every stage of this then they will never learn to motivate themselves. My job is to be available to talk, to buy any stationery he needs and to provide treats.

I failed a couple of mock exams along the way while I was working out how to revise. I cracked it in the end and did well and that success was all my own.

Considering exams will likely be cancelled and mocks and coursework will be used to give grades your child is doing themselves a disservice. Doing poorly at GCSE will limit their opportunities for further studies and the average job is hard to come by at the moment. Good on you for raising this with her, I would ask if there is anything else you can do to support them and reiterate that she will limit her options with poor GCSE results. If it falls on deaf ears then at least you tried.

Studying in a pandemic will have been difficult due to the constant uncertainty but all kids are in the same boat in that respect. Some will still motivate themselves and get good results, others that don't will be left behind.

I’ve got one that should be revising too.
He would do so much better if he got into the local sixth form compared to the college, but I can’t force him.

Turn the Wifi off.

I go against the majority here. My DC are grown up and I faced this 10 years ago.
15 year olds are still children, big difficult ones.

My feeling is that you only have one go at this part of parenting. If she fails badly and her life choices are affected, how will you feel if you could have done more?

I honestly wish I had parents who cared half as much as you when it came to my GCSE’s or anything about my education and future.

I’m not sure how you will be able to approach it other than sitting down with no distractions at all and spell it out to her calmly that this is her future. Has she ideas of what she wants to do with her life? Talk about the benefits of getting good qualifications behind her even if she dosnt want to use them straight away. It’s better than taking time out when she’s older to get them, when her friends are all enjoying good jobs earring good money...

When i was at school several of my friends had incentives, every A they got they got £x or a certain gift. I remember telling my parents and there response was to laugh and say well aren’t we lucky we won’t have to pay anything out...Literally all of them did well.

Oh and to all those saying how will they ever learn to study independantly if you intervene, they will, but probably too late after they have wasted 2 or 3 years of education.

She might need the shock factor of a poor set of mock results to make her pull her finger out. Peer shame at a below-par grade can make them eventually do some work.
Nagging won’t work though.

I think @Miljea tells a good tale. Don’t nag, but do point out ‘natural consequences’ of not working and trying to achieve his potential.

Two years ago I had the same issue with my youngest son. He is bright, but simply did no work, and spent most of his time playing FIFA. My DH was all for frog marching him to study, which we tried with very limited success. I sat down with him and said that at 17, he is almost an adult, and he is accountable for his own decisions. However, he is also accountable for the consequences of those decisions and those can be serious. This initially had a limited impact and he got much poorer results than he was anticipating. We sat down with him again and we were clear we would do everything we can to support him. He decided to resit, alongside working in the local Co-Op. This time under his own steam and with tutor support he worked hard and he got excellent results. I think he learned from the error first time around. My learning would be that kids need to take accountability for what they do and it will take individuals time to take on this accountability.

@AliceMcK same here. That's why I did things differently for my DC. They could easily have wasted their abilities if I hadn't been the unpopular mother. They acknowledge it now they both have 1st class degrees and good jobs. Most of this is nothing to do with me but when they were 14/15 I really had to crack the whip.
In a way it's similar to teaching a toddler good behaviour. You get that right and it pays off long term but it's not always easy.

@BluebellsGreenbells

GCSEs aren't everything and sometimes mucking them up motivates some people to do better at A level

There’s loads of a levels you can’t do without maths and English
Some a levels need a set grade to even be considered to do that.

Things have changed

THIS!!!

DD knows what subjects she wants to do in year 12 and she knows what she needs to get on to the courses. Luckily the standard Maths/English isn't a problem for her but she needs a minimum of a 5 (preferably a 6) in her worst subject for one of the courses and she's not confident she will even pass(4) let alone get a 5 or 6.

I think you need to have a serious talk with your DD, if she knows what she wants to do have a look at the requirements for the courses then at least she can narrow her revision. Also have a plan B (and maybe a plan C), I did all of this over the summer with my DD, it meant she could focus her revision a bit more so although she still revises for Geography it's not at all relevant to any of the courses she's interested in so she doesn't spend as much time on it (versus the subject she needs and is struggling with). It's helped ease the pressure a tiny amount but she has the motivation of "I really want to do XYZ courses" with the comfort of if it doesn't quite go to plan she still has something she is happy with.

DD has ASD and is a very visual thinker/learner so I told her to think of her top 3 Ben & Jerry ice cream flavours and think of her plans like that. So she is going to the shop(college/sixth form) to get ice cream(A-levels) but she has a set budget(GCSE grades) and the 3 flavours vary in price. She really wants fudge brownie but she can't have that as it's too expensive, she can have cookie dough instead, still nice just not her absolute favourite. However she dropped £1 on her way so can't afford the cookie dough so she has to have half-baked, not as nice as the first 2 but she still likes it and will enjoy it. So if she really wants the fudge brownie she needs to increase the £££(GCSE grades) she has and be careful not to drop coins (grades) on her way but if she can't she will still get to have ice cream it just won't be her first choice.

MoreLikeThis

I love your post

All those saying turn of the internet thats ok but a lot of studying is done online or with help online
Also yes its not great to fail your gcse's but I have also told mine to just do there best and try and some kids will fail regardless , doesn't mean they will never do well in life or hold a good job some blossom later and I think it isn't great for mh to say to kids if you fail or don't do as well thats it , yes it will be harder and take longer
My ds got 4's in all his gcse was predicted 6,s and got all 5 & 6's in mocks , so yes we were a little disapponted but he done level 3 course he wanted and is set for merit/ distinction and can still get in to uni if he wants , he isn't an exam type kid and coursework college had been better and also more relative to what some of uni is
So yes its important to give it your best but also its not the end of the world and there are still lots options