To think GCSEs are ridiculously hard?

[donpanicme]

DD did pretty mediocre in her mocks and has asked me to help her revise. We’ve been working through the sciences and geography and OMG it’s so hard. There’s so much to learn in each subject for a start and it’s actually pretty complicated stuff like ions, relative atomic mass, mitosis. Honestly, I don’t know how she’s going to get though it all and remember it in order to do well. How on earth do kids do it?

Gove wanted it to return to how it used to be. I had to memorise poems and loads of quotations from plays and books for my English exam.

Yes, I think they are quite hard. I helped my dd revise so became quite familiar with the content! For a lot of the subjects the percentage that you need to get to get a 5 is quite low (less than 50%) because there is so much content and so many students do badly. But you do have to work pretty hard to get 9s.

My daughter did very well in her mocks. She used 'free science lessons' on YouTube for science. Her school provided videos for geography. She used loads of practice papers for maths. In English she did ok and I will help her with that and 'Mr Bruff' on YouTube will help too. There are loads of videos on YouTube. I was worried and was thinking about tutors but her result show she is on the right track. Good luck

They need to be on top of it through the course. As they study each concept and understand it, it should be easy enough to use revision as a kind of detailed reminder. if they are effectively learning it for the first time when they're revising, then that's trickier. The content really is no harder or more detaield than O Levels.

Micheal Gove is to blame. When they changed the grading system, they also made GSCE's more difficult to better benefit high attainers.

There's a lot to GCSE's but wait for A-levels. There may be only 3 subjects but they are so much more difficult - maths and sciences anyway.

I'm afraid I was in the 'it was harder in my day' until my kids started their GCSEs.

I distinctly remember my French listening being about train times and cheese sandwiches. My son's included talking about homelessness and climate change, social injustice and career options. Honestly my A would have been equivalent to a C at best.

GCSE geography was hard too (and as I say this as a geography graduate). Very heavy on content but with a lot of analysis and application.

It's stopped me talking about dumbing down.

People saying the equivalent of 'my bright kids sailed through GCSEs therefore they are easy' are somewhat missing the point.
Ditto those who say 'they are no harder than O levels'.

GCSEs are meant to be accessible for all pupils in mainstream school. But the sheer volume of information to be learned, and the number of exams, means that for a significant minority they can become overwhelming.

GCSEs should be accesible to those who work hard and put in the effort to the best of their ability- I.e. those who study and revise hard.

Those who don't put in the required work should fail.

What about those weaker students that put in the work but will just never be capable of above a 4. We have students with horrendous homelives that just can’t revise at home as they live with addicts/are young carers/witness domestic violence, the GCSEs should also be accessible for them.

My Dd is sitting hers this year too and I agree with you.
Think we forgot that they also missed nearly 2 years of proper schooling due to covid and are the first year since the pandemic to be sitting ‘normal’ GCSEs.

Wow. I have no words for your idiotic and totally ignorant comment.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we all lived in blissful ignorance of the pressure some kids have, like you clearly do.

I’d say it seems like a lot to you cos you’re seeing it all in one go. Your daughter has been taught the information gradually over the last few years so should be more familiar with it.

I teach Chemistry and I think GCSE Science is hard - or at least the specification I teach is, anyway. There are plenty of concepts now like ionic equations and equilibria that I didn’t come across until A level, and the calculations are much harder than anything I had to do. The flip side is the grade boundaries are much lower - in 2019 it was about 65% for a 9.

While it’s true that A levels are much more demanding, in a sense they’re not because - at least in theory - you’re far more motivated to learn a subject that you’ve chosen to do. The problem I have with GCSE science is that, to me, the level of difficulty and the amount of content feel excessive for a core subject - a lot of it is genuinely inaccessible to some pupils but they still have to do it. And the problem with that is that there is just no room for fun any more. You can’t do the fun experiments, you can’t go off on interesting tangents, you can’t do any of the stuff that might actually grab their interest, because you just have to slog through the content.

I mean, it’s totally possible I’m just a terrible teacher, but I would far rather take out a bunch of the content (because no one is ever going to us electrolysis in their everyday life) and make it all a bit easier if that gave us more room to foster a real interest in and love of the subject...

There are plenty of concepts now like ionic equations and equilibria that I didn’t come across until A level

I definitely did those at O level.

I guess it was harder in your day and easier in my day then!

What about those weaker students that put in the work but will just never be capable of above a 4.

Asked in a genuine way, is that not why they introduced foundation papers for maths and other subjects?

Unfortunately only maths, science and MFL now have foundation tiers.

So a grade 3/4 borderline student is faced with the same texts in English Language and Literature as a grade 8/9 one.

They are also faced with the same content in History & Geography. To my view it wasn't at all obvious for Geography what if any content could be missed out if you were aiming for lower grades. So although you obviously get marked on quality of analysis etc it wasn't clear how to reduce revision load.

There is a LOT of facts and content if you are doing triple sciences.

www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/science/gcse

teach Chemistry and I think GCSE Science is hard - or at least the specification I teach is, anyway. There are plenty of concepts now like ionic equations and equilibria that I didn’t come across until A level, and the calculations are much harder than anything I had to do. The flip side is the grade boundaries are much lower - in 2019 it was about 65% for a 9.

That's true - almost too much content but then 65% to get a 9.

Maybe there should be less content but higher percentage to get a 9

I swear dds gcse Eng Lit was pretty much on a par with what I was doing at A level in 1993

One of the GCSE maths papers last summer was ver hard. Dd1 came out white with shock several of her pals in tears. Dh had a meeting in London the next day and the clients with dc at the top public schools were saying the same which was a relief!

To get a 9 on a Higher, you need about 85%, so there are some really tough questions on there to show you are really good.

This one went viral

I think GCSE’s are hard because there are so many different unconnected subjects to learn. It’s ok saying that you need to know facts for your job but they are generally in one area of expertise and you use those facts on a regular basis. Quite different to being able to recite 20 poems by rote!
personally I think maths and English lit are harder than when I did them but the other subjects not much different. I definitely didn’t get pre-prepared questions in the foreign language exam though, it was random topics to speak about (obviously only things on the syllabus though!).

I think there was one question which was very hard and hadn’t been covered in the syllabus but it got excluded from the mark scheme in the end?