Will unfinished GCSE syllabuses be a problem for A’levels?

[Billythegreat]

I’ve also posted this in education but posting here for traffic.
DS did brilliantly in the subjects he’s talking for A’levels - 8s and 9. He hasn’t finished the syllabus for any of the subjects though especially the sciences and I believe they’re quite difficult subjects, Chemistry, Biology and geography. He’s going to a college for A’levels as his school doesn’t go beyond GCSEs so I’m worried they won’t know where his gaps are. AIBU to think this could be a problem?

I think a lot of kids (all kids!) will be in the same boat, albeit at different points in the syllabus.

I'd expect the college are fully aware of this and will be planning those initial lessons with this in mind.

Remember they don't want all their kids to fail/get lower grades, so they're going to do everything they can to get the kids at the same place so they can plough on with the new content.

It WILL be a problem. As will incomplete A level learning for universities.

But it will be an issue for avery student,e very school and college.

They will be aware and will have to modify their teaching to cover everything, as no 2 schools are likely to have completed the same topics.

As an ex FE and HE lecturer I can assure you that this will be managed by all education establishments and your DS will be no better or worse of than many others. He will just have to apply himself honestly tot he A level work - which will start by believing that when he sees a topic he reconggnises he really doesn't know what is required. He will know the 'what's but not the 'whys' and 'what does that means' - a perennial issue with the brightest of GCSE achievements.

Yes it will be an issue in many subjects. The A Level course I teach is already crammed to overflowing and it cannot all be taught without all off the elements of the GCSE course having been covered first.

I would recommend that all potential A Level students look through the specs for the GCSE and try to 'catch up' on the bis they missed before the A level courses start if possible - bit late now I realise, especially in Scotland. Ideally they should have been doing this over the summer - that is what I advised my students to do. BBC Bitesize is a good place to start.

It's going to be difficult - and rally should have been thought about by those in charge. It would not have been difficult for decisions to have been made months ago to remove some of the A Level content for this year in order to facilitate this.

I know some poster is going to point out that the problem then rolls forward to gaps in A Level impacting on uni courses!

This will be an issue, and he shouldn't just leave it up to the college to deal with in September. Has the college set any bridging work?

If not, you can purchase bridging work books from Amazon, he should spend the next couple of weeks at least making sure he can remember what he was taught.

E.g. something like this www.amazon.co.uk/Head-Start-level-Biology-Level/dp/1782942793/?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Go to the library and get done gcse revision guides and go over the whole course.

It will be an issue but he will not be the only student who has gaps and as teachers, we are working hard to identify those gaps and address them. I teach A-level Physics and the main issue I have is that there is so much content that I am always pushed for time as it is.

If he achieved 8s and 9s, he is obviously bright and hopefully well motivated which will help.

I would suggest he identifies topics that were not covered by his school (he can find the spec online if he is unsure) and then read around them on BBC bitesize/Seneca/in a revision guide. Although it's not a perfect solution, it will at least be a start.

Can I also point out that teachers will be working hard (as ever) to help their students as much as possible, but actually planning to fill those gaps is difficult. I potentially have students coming to me from four different feeder schools. As no one made a decision about which parts of the GCSE course to cut I really will not know which schools covered which parts of the course until I have the new students in front of me.

I have done my best to liaise with colleagues from the other schools but not everyone is available - one has retired - one has moved to a new job. I am very grateful to those who have given up a lot of their holiday time to help me to work out which gaps will need filling. I have booklets ready to cover those, but I know there will be more to do when I get feedback from all of the students.

He also has never sat a formal exam as he was self isolating during mocks and the recent tests were smaller assessments in the classroom and they had a pretty good idea what they were going to be tested on. I’m hoping that won’t be a problem. Getting a bit worried after speaking to a friend who’s dd did full papers for her assessments this year.

Again, he can help hiself a lot regarding exam papers. there are huge numbers of past papers, mark schemes and examiners reports available online. I'm sure he has done many of these throughout his GCSE years.

If he wants to practice exam technique he can sit them himself in a quiet place at home, no books open and under the same timed conditions. I am always happy to mark independent work like this. If he is really concerned you could perhaps look for a tutor who would also mark the work and give feedback>

Thanks for the reassuring replies. Ds isn’t at all concerned and floating on cloud 9 after his results. I shall try to get him to look at some past papers but I think he’s finished with GCSEs now and think it will be unlikely he’ll want to do this. He’s feeling quite confident after getting such good grades.

Seems like dc staying on at the school where they did their GCSEs will be at a big advantage.

I tutor privately and I think this is going to be an issue for at least the next 2 cycles of summer exams - possibly even 3 or 4.

You've got schools who start their GCSE content in Year 9 (because there's just so much of it, especially in maths and the sciences) whose students haven't completed a full Year 9. Then you've got the Year 10s who've just finished, going into Year 11 (to presumably sit 'the real exams' again in June 2022) who haven't completed a full Year 10.

That's without the Year 11s and 12s who have just finished their years with incomplete learning and gaps here, there and everywhere depending on how often they were able to access learning this past year, and the Year 13s now going on to uni with no idea what their baseline is for starting their undergrad courses.

My guess is that grade boundaries next year will have to drop through the floor to try and make up the difference between this year's 'best ever' results from TAGs and the way the algorithm pegs results for each grade with the exam results in normal years. And my bet is it will be similar in 2023.

The whole thing is going to take a while to untangle, and it's the poor students who will never really know where they stand, along with A Level teachers and unis who won't really know where the gaps are with their new students. And that's without employers, who are still trying to get to grips with the 9-1 system instead of A, B, C etc for GCSEs, not really knowing what to trust on a job application with regard to exam success.

This mess isn't over yet.

Oh, your DS needs to adjust his mindset. Anyone going into Y12 thinking they’ve got good GSCE results so everything will be fine will be in for a shock when they realise that they need to put in a significant amount of work from the start, and should have done preparation work over the holidays.

DS has been set preparation work ahead of going into sixth form- standard state comprehensive. In the case of subjects where prior learning is essential I believe that this is content that they know wasn’t covered in yr11. Obviously this is particularly helpful for students who were in yr11 at that school, but will do no harm for the dozen of do students transferring into the school.

Subjects that were not offered at GCSE of where prior learning isn’t vital for A Level, it appears to be vocabulary work, timeline understanding etc.

The expectation seems to be about 10-12 hours per subject ahead of starting the courses in September.

DS hasn’t been given any work. He changed what he was going to do originally at college in light of his results which were better than he was expecting back at Christmas when he made his original application.

As I mentioned upthread, he really should be buying and working through those bridging books.

He needs to get out of the mindset that work is only stuff set by the school if he wants to do well.

I hadn’t realised schools had such different approaches to GCSEs this year. We thought they were all doing mini assessments and was surprised to find out my friends dc did full on GCSEs just like normal GCSEs and had had to revise for the whole syllabus. Did many schools do this? My friends dc didn’t get as good marks as my ds, but surely his teachers wouldn’t have given my ds a grade if they felt that wasn’t where he was at?

Full exams here. Marks were not as good but it was a full exams in exam conditions situation.

Ds has had to do loads of prep over the summer even though they completed the gcse syllabus. Particularly for history (although lots of this has been watching particular tv series, films and documentaries and reading books. Quite a bit for English lit too (reading all set texts). He’s had to do two pre term essays for history which have to be submitted in the first week back.

A level maths teacher here .... We are already putting a lot of thought into how we will address gaps. However, this year's GCSE cohort has completed a lot more of the syllabus than the previous year did, and in theory run we have just about caught them up. My advice would be not to worry about it!

I agree that by just assuming that he will be fine at A Level because he did well at GCSE is not a good approach. Even in pre covid, pre chaos years my very best A and A* students were those with the drive, enthusiasm and common sense to do more than just the work I set for them. They watched relevant documentaries, did extra essays for me to mark, read around the subject - and it showed - in the maturity of their writing style, in the depth they could give in their answers.

GCSE is really much easier than A Level. If your son wants to succeed he will need to push himself. This is my advice for any year, not just this year. He needs to get hold of the specs, buy good relevant study guides, look at and practice past papers. Most of this can be found or linked on the exam board website.

My son received no teaching after the March of Y11 due to the first lockdown. For the subjects he was continuing to A-level, he went through the GCSE specification (from the exam board website) to find out what hadn't yet been covered, and taught himself those topics independently over the summer.

For Maths he was concerned about the jump from GCSE to A-level and the 6 month hiatus in teaching, so he worked through a Level 2 Further Maths course over the summer to bridge the gap.

A-levels involve a lot of independent study and the 16 year olds embarking on them should be able to manage to find out the gaps in their knowledge and then address these.