To be livid that year 11 DS thinks 4-5 hours/week homework/revision is enough for GCSEs?

[Hotdaisies22]

DS in year 11. Bright boy but has always been poor at doing homework at home despite being well set up for it at home (quiet desk space etc). Does his homework at homework club after school -Mon - Thurs max 5 hrs week (thats only time homework club room is available at his school). We're having conversations that he now needs to up his game these next few months before GCSEs and start studying /revising at home extra time. Getting massive push back and causing a lot of friction. He thinks what he does is enough and no intention of doing more "at the end of a tiring school day" (he only has a 20 min journey to school). What are other year 11s doing? (I'm trying to have conversation with his school on this but so far they've been rubbish - no reply!)

I think that's probably 4-5 more hours than my year 11 ds is doing.

4 hours a week is nowhere near enough work for most DC to even pass GCSEs, never mind get good grades.

This is balls. He should be fine if he is concentrating in class and doing the homework set mon-fri. If he can fit in a hour on each of sunday and saturday as well thats good. I only did extra "revision" from the Easter holidays of year 11.

Wish mine would do that much, it's a struggle to get him to do any homework half the time!
If he's doing 4 -5 hours that's plenty, YABVU.

Cross post, same 😬

It’s really really not about the amount of time spent. If he’s focusing in class, asking questions and revising effectively for 4-5 hours using methods that work for him he should be fine. I got good gcses revising around that amount of time and I just did loads of past papers which worked really well for me. I know a lot of students just make endless notes which is really time consuming and I never found it to be effective

'It sounds to me that what you’re livid about is that you’ve paid a lot of money and it hasn’t turned your average child into a top performer.'

I too suspect that this is the core of it.

One thing you absolutely must not do is let your ds become aware that he is a disappointing investment. Recipe for a permanently ruined relationship.

@UpToMyElbowsInDiapers

Imo every year 11 should be doing 3 hours of school work a night, with more at weekends. Year 11 is meant to be hard. Part of its purpose is about developing work ethic and discipline.

That’s not going to happen if DC are allowed to spend all their time on Xboxes and get mediocre grades.

I have one very hardworking DC and one not so much. I am convinced that nothing I said or did had any effect. They are just built that way.

The not so much one had to take resits and it taught her something, but not enough as she skivved off in uni too. I don't know what the answer is really.

I just did loads of past papers which worked really well for me.

So did I. Every one I could get my hands on. But not in November! Or even January.

5 hours a day on Saturday and Sunday?!
When does he have time to be a kid?

It’s tricky and I don’t know what the answer is. I get that kids need to learn to manage their time but I also think in this day and age they need us to put structures in place to do so. A good study space is one thing, but if they aren’t putting in the work to get where they need to be then I personally have come down harder than I suspect the average MNetter.

I can’t make him study. I can remove all other distractions (devices etc), which I have done. His chosen career path means he has to get good grades. He chose it, not me. He’s bright, maybe bright enough to coast through, but I’m not sure. I think a good chunk of the day on weekends (like 2-3 hours) plus at least an hour each night is not unreasonable.

I’m not having him learn the hard way if it means he doesn’t get into university (which is where he wants to go). Once he is there then yes, he’ll have to do it on his own. But at least he’ll be studying his passion, and paying for it himself. The cost is his if he fails.

The best advice I had, was to get hold of previous years exam papers, work through them.

This will show them clearly what they do know but most important it will highlight what they don’t know. Then the knowledge gaps can be worked on.

But if he is correct and he knows it all already he can sit back

Mine just learned the stuff as they went along, making notes as they did, then they just need a bit of reminder reading up in exam season... they go over and over it all in lessons for the last month anyhow, so did very little at home.
I did not know that other kids did it differently until chatting with other parents at "revision support" meetings at school - because I learned that way too.

So would say be careful of "interfering" unless you know their method... some kids are actually learning deeply as they go, less need to revise. Has stood mine in good stead for their current studies at uni.

Hmmm. I’m not sure it’s helpful to just increase the amount of time he’s expected to be at a desk, that doesn’t sound healthy, especially this far from the exams. The lady upthread who said her child did 5 hrs each of Sat and Sun sounds very extreme.

Truth is it also depends how bright your child is 😬 and what type of revision suits them best. I’d ask his school for guidance and expectations specific to your child, and ignore us all here.

For me, I did about 1 hr homework a night (if that) for most of the year, then crammed intensely over Easter holidays. The week before exams started, I bunked off school (with parental permission which they gave as my school was crap) and used that time to memorise most of my textbooks. Got a string of As and A*. But that’s the pace that suited me, perhaps your child works differently. Am bloody glad they didn’t try to make me work ten hr weekeds though that would have ruined age 16!! For revision I’m a sprinter not a marathon type…

You can’t make him do it if he doesn’t want to.

It is a bit early to demand that on top of a school week. They are still covering the syllabus.

At this point in the year it’s probably ok. In the school holidays and the couple of months before GCSEs, my son did more.

@PalmTrees7 your children's school doesn't sound great tbh. Why are they not covering more of the content and exam technique in class? And I would bloody well hope he did get straight 9s after that amount of extra effort, unless the school really is dire or he's wrestling with something like dyslexia.

I find this interesting as I personally always struggled with time/organisation at school (and beyond). Though I worked hard, my focus was wrong and I never got the course completely covered. I still did okay, but it obviously affected my results and I found things unbelievably stressful, praying certain topics wouldn't come up...
I want to help my DC avoid that stress. Any tips on how revision can be done as effectively as suggested and how to optimise the time one has? I think some of the study hours mentioned upthread are far too much...but I still haven't much of a clue how best to maximise the effectiveness of shorter revision periods.

I don’t think I revised at all in the GCSE year. I’d put the hours in in the 2 weeks before the exam. I got 12 GCSEs.

Sounds fine to me!

This is why I think people shouldn’t send kids to private school unless they can easily afford it, because it adds too much weight and pressure to their education- “we sacrificed x, y and z to get you the best education and the least you could do is study 2 hours a day/make the cricket team/choose the a levels we want”

If his predicted grades are 4-7, he could make a massive difference by doing more revision.

My ds has just taken his GCSEs this year. He got 9x9. He worked late every night. It was his own choice though and he worries about not having enough money in life, so he made sure his results were excellent.

You get in what you put out. I often wonder when people are comparing pay for different professions, whether they actually realise what kind of work went in to gaining qualifications.

You need to think about a few things here

• it's November. He doesn't want to burn out too early. Working consistently (as he is) over a long period of time with more concerted effort just prior to exams/assessments might well work better
• You can't force someone to study. he needs to work it out for himself. If he has mocks coming up, then this is the time for assess whether he worked hard enough for mocks and if he needs to do something different for actual exams
• what is the end game? There isn't necessarily a huge value in (say) getting 6s as opposed to 4s unless you need them for something else you want to go on and do. If he wants to go on and do specific study/jobs/apprenticeship what does he need? If he's practically oriented, that might be more of a spur.
• the fact you paid for his education is irrelevant unless you are solely doing it on his request. My parents are constantly bringing up how they paid for private education for me. I didn't get a say in it, didn't particularly enjoy it and do not credit everything I did since as due to it. You're either happy to pay or you're not (and if you're not, I hope you are not going to keep in private school for sixth form).

Mine managed to get straight As in his Nat5 exams without doing as much as that. Maybe less intelligent children might need to do more but my concern is if they go in too hard too early they have nowhere to go to ramp up when exams actually start getting difficult.

plus how do you know your child is working and not just staring into space/playing on their phone?