To expect the school to complete the syllabus

[user1456882310]

Dds School haven't managed to cover half the Physics GCSE topics and have whole chapters left to do in Chemistry and Biology. School recognise its"not ideal" but have no contingency other than to cram lessons together and pick areas the kids just do themselves.
Dd very worried as these are her chosen A levels.
Advice pls

Why? Why have they planned this so badly? I would be furious!

That’s really poor especially for A level. Have they cancelled study leave so they can continue teaching?

It's poor - but what's the reasoning behind it? If it's something like lack of teachers I suspect there are quite a few schools in the same position unfortunately.

My DD also has this but with her A levels. Exams start in a couple of months and they still haven't finished the content for two out of three of her subjects. She will have to teach herself a lot of it as there isnt enough classroom time to fit it all in. So learning new content plus revising. She's given up her job and is working her arse off right now. Not sure what to suggest for your daughter, but I feel your pain.

According to DD, its because government expectations of course content have changed and too much content is crammed into not enough time. Her school is a top performing grammar with no teacher shortages that I'm aware of.

It's not A levels is it? It's GCSEs but they're the subjects the OP{s daughter wants to study at A level.

That's really poor OP.

That’s shocking OP. Is the school providing a plan? Could you get tutors to help with the missing topics? Have you spoken to school directly?

Is your daughter wanting to stay on at the same school for A Level? If so, I'd assume the school will be lenient about entry grades (base entry on their knowledge of the students) and will also include some catchup time at the start of sixth form.

Otherwise (and maybe as well as) ... I assume your daughter is taking the higher papers if she wants to study science at A Level. She should make sure she knows that material they have covered really really well - even if she can't answer a proportion of the paper, she can still get a reasonably high grade due to the way the higher paper is set up. Will school write a mitigating circumstances letter to any future sixth form? And probably she needs to do some revision (or not actually revision) over the summer to prepare for A Level. There are some good books that cover bridging the gap.

OP - you may be better getting this moved to Secondary Education.

You're certainly right to expect that they should have covered it all.
But perhaps - like many of us - the dept is understaffed with non specialists and unqualified teachers.

Can you afford to get her a private tutor? It sounds like some dreadful planning to be honest. Can they recommend any online materials? I teach a different subject so I don't know what would be good for sciences but we use Seneca, gcse pod, quizlet and some subject specific websites.

Did she do a 2 or 3 year gcse course? The school I work at decided to do it over 3 years. I disagreed at first, but over time I've come to see it really does work better.

I'd get the cgp books and start working through them. Get copies of past papers, if she's bright she'll be fine learning it herself.

It isn't shocking, or unusual

School can plan to complete the spec, but all sorts of things can prevent it

largely, no staffing, teacher absence, no funding for supply staff, school carrying vacancies it can't fill, merging classes, etc

No resources, changed to the spec, that schools can't fund

Poor behaviour, disruptive children - the number of parents that say "they are only a bit chatty, so what" well guess what, it impacts on everybody's education hugely - who'd've thought it!

Students just not working fast enough - not completing homework, lazy, or SEND, term time holidays, absences etc

In may schools, including mine, it is approached differently - we don't plan to finish the spec, knowing we will be unlikely to do so. Instead, we inform students early on which parts of the spec they will be covering independently, so they can make a start on it, and have lesson times to bring up any questions they are struggling with

It is completely normal for some of the spec to be done independently - GCSE students should know what spec they are on for all subjects, and keep track of what has been covered, what they are strong or weak on, and what the school is not covering. The only difference is whether these are planned gaps, or just the gaps left at the end of the course.

I think a lot of it is a covid hang over. The kids have missed to much - or not taken on board - many fundamentals that were remotely taught when schools were shut that each topic is taking longer to get through, as the recap bit is requiring much longer.
If she is following the AQA syllabus, I'd get a set of the Oxford Revise books. Other boards I don't know although CGP would likely do the job.

I was a secondary school teacher. This is simply not acceptable and shows that the teachers, or more likely the heads of department, have not planned their schemes of work properly. I would insist on speaking to someone higher in the school to ask if they were aware of this situation as it is highly unprofessional. (No doubt they will try to blame Covid.)
Moving forward, is it possible for her to have a couple of sessions of private tuition in these subjects over Easter?

Thankyou All,
Nimbostratus interesting points ,its a top set in a 'nice ' girls school and the same class finished maths at Christmas so I don't think its behaviour.
I think it's more the 'we've run out of class time 'so you need to do these whole topics( SB9 ) yourself,rather than the independent learning that bothers me.
Along with no opportunity for exam prep.
I am lucky in that I can support her and will get workbooks ect.
Catonthehat its edexcel board .
I have written to the head head rather than the head of science this morning.
We will see what can be done

Redbone I think that is what really bothers me. They must have seen this coming as even at Christmas mocks couldn't cover a full paper one as hadn't done the topics

At Ds's school they fast tracked a class of 30 students to single sciences from combined near the end of year 10. They did some Saturday mornings and at least 1 lesson a week after school to cover this new content. In year 11 all the children were shuffled into a new form with a form teacher who could bring up their grade as form was 30 minutes every morning. What I am trying to say is that school was very proactive in covering the whole of single sciences. It is a state school too. They can't just throw their arms up and say sorry.

Both my sons used Free Science Lessons on YouTube as he covers all the content whether combined or single sciences, also Primrose Kitten does a run through of all topics too. Very helpful.

Used to happen 30/40 years ago. Or pupils got taught entirely the wrong syllabus for the exam board.

Wow that sounds like amazingly proactive approach.

Free science is an excellent tip and will look at primrose too

My class probably won’t finish theirs either. My SOW is designed to cover it all but if I have a class that just doesn’t understand a concept it delays us because we can’t move on until they understand it, therefore something drops off the end. I used to come in over Easter and do 2 revision days but I have read so much bile about teachers recently I’ve decided not to bother. Plenty of the bile has been repeated at us by students. We have also lost days because of external reasons. A large amount of “low level” behaviour problems are another contributing factor, children doing the odd whisper builds up to hours of lost learning.

Our ofsted recently dropped too with the only criticism being that we did a 3 year GCSE instead of 2, so I’m not sure what I will be cutting out of next years SOW.

How many times a day do you hear people question “why isn’t this taught in school” we have loads of things that we have to now squeeze in that we never used to that takes up time, we have a limited amount of time a day we can’t just put extra in.

To be honest, the school are not at fault if they had not completed all of the specifications before the mocks at Christmas. I have never taught at a school yet where this has been done. Furthermore, it it very difficult to cover every little detail.
I had exactly the same issue with one of my son’s school several years ago. Several parents complained and extra lessons were given, albeit only to the boys of the parents who had complained!

If they've completed the maths syllabus, it might not be a bad idea for the maths teacher to do some of the science with them. They won't like it - it will be outside their comfort zone, and they'd rather be maximising the maths grades than helping out their science colleagues, but it is in the pupils' best interests. Even if it's only "helping them with their independent learning" it's likely to be better than leaving them to do it completely on their own. (And perhaps the school might allocate more time to science and less to maths next year...)

It is unlikely that the maths teacher will have the right skill set

The maths teacher will be teaching maths. It's not their job or their responsibility to deal with physics