To tell you to tell your teens to read the f*****ing question!

[BorrowedThyme]

I'm spending hour and hours and hours combing through GCSE papers back from the exam board cos mum says Jonnie has told her he had written loads of high quality answers and should have got higher than a 5...

YES! Jonnie has written loads and loads of very high quality content, showing excellent understanding, recall and application of the subject

NO! his answers don't in any way match the question that was asked, so no! he gets no marks for said answers.....

FGS - what a total waste of time and energy for everyone.

And I have spent my entire weekend on these wastes of time

So why would a parent telling their teen have any greater impact, given that’s the title of the post? I totally get it’s frustrating but putting the onus on the parent to hammer the message home seems a bit odd, when teachers have much more regular discussions with pupils about exam techniques.

My parting shot to my teens going into exams was ‘read the question … twice!’

So I think it is a parents responsibility!

Teachers you are doing an amazing job, don’t let the parents spoil your last few days - hide the papers and hug your children.

So why would a parent telling their teen have any greater impact, given that’s the title of the post? I totally get it’s frustrating but putting the onus on the parent to hammer the message home seems a bit odd, when teachers have much more regular discussions with pupils about exam techniques.

Teachers will have been having the conversation for sure. No harm in parents backing this message up - it's not about 'putting the onus' on the parent, more about parents and teachers being. in synch

Maybe the way the school is delivering the message to the students to answer the question asked, rather than what they want to answer is not direct/personal enough for the students to realise that this is what they are doing.
My DC is not GCSE but is studying and has had tutoring for a long time because I found it frustrating how easily they completely lost any newly gained knowledge, but more than that, they made stupid arithmetic errors or didn't read the question. I've been going through some work with them recently and they still do the same things even with a lot of tutoring, it seems it is me getting them to re-read the question and get them to work out why they didn't get it right. Not had any feedback from tutor about this being an issue, disappointed that this has not been raised and steps to address it by tutor.

Would love to know how the school communicates that to the individual parent, can't see that happening at my dcs schools as they seem to positively shy away from anything other than positive affirmation or generalised feedback.

Would love to know how the school communicates that to the individual parent, can't see that happening at my dcs schools as they seem to positively shy away from anything other than positive affirmation or generalised feedback.

Most parents have sat exams and therefore know that you need to read and answer the question asked? So why would the school need to communicate that? Or am I missing something ?

@OMGitsnotgood do you imagine that most parents read over their children's mock GCSE papers and advise them on them....not sure that's realistic

How is that related to what I said? Anyone who has passed an exam knows you need to read the question. Parents as well as teachers should be reinforcing that message

But my point is that unless you can show a teen where they haven't answered the question asked, it is a passive comment, which I can tell you with mine just gets auto filtered as not applying to them

its a universal problem.

I was doing an interview the other week... one candidate didnt answer the questions we actually asked once.. they answered what they thought we wanted to hear that'd make them look good, and then had to be redirected to the question we had actually asked every single time.
It was a waste of our time, and theirs in all honesty.

They'd didn't get the job.

Maybe they were nervous so made up what came to mind. Interviews are a poor way of predicting on the job performance so I hope it was more than that which made you conclude that they wasted your time. Jeez, the inflated sense of self importance being exhibited on this thread...

But some teenagers will have not answered the question if they didn't know the answer. For a subject like English Literature some may have fashioned an answer with the knowledge they had and still gained some points. I know that my DS did this for an English Literature question and his teacher contacted us last week to gain access to the paper for her to look over as he is a pint of a 7, I have pointed our the above and she has continued to encourage access. I studied English Literature at uni and know that I sometimes fashioned an answer in this way, I still received an ok grade - isn't this why a graded system exists, it is testing the extent of your knowledge.

I equally have fudged interviews for both my previous jobs as I was nervous, one of the jobs was very competitive but I still got it so there must have been some understanding from the panel on the difficulties of these pressurised situations.

Thanks!! Not like that in exams though. Perhaps we send the exam papers back to kids a week later and say 'are you sure?'

Don't worry, only joking.

Going through exam papers was never part of the job before. Sounds like teachers have been burdened with yet another "little 5 minute task"!

Did not know it was in teachers' contracts to work 7 day weeks in vacation time!

Obviously it's a big problem so more than creative ways of getting the message across are needed.

Surely if it’s part of your job (albeit a part you don’t like) you just do it
If it’s not part of your job ,dont do it

@Motheranddaughter the trouble with that is that there is forensic unpicking of results and if you aren’t on top of what went well and what didn’t, you can’t explain to the powers that be, including Ofsted.

Even if you don’t get paid for it, it can be regarded as part of the job. I can’t remember accurately the phrase, but it’s something like ‘any other duties as required’. That can cover an awful lot.

@BorrowedThyme I’m genuinely curious about this as I’ve a child who has just received results. I don’t doubt you’ve had many requests to review.
Out of interest, roughly how many reviews have you done? and roughly how many extra marks have been found? Or could be potentially lost at review ?

I appreciate you spend a massive amount of time doing this, I am just wondering about your findings.

I was forever saying - read the question TWICE, hi light the key parts etc. Answer the question asked, not the one you want to be asked. 😬

I'm not sure how many I have done, maybe about 40? 45?

How many marks have I found that I would have given that the examiner had not, a few on every paper - how many marks did I find that the examiner had given that I would not? A few on every paper. On one paper I might have given 2 extra marks overall, but no where near enough to change grade- You would not get your grade changed because of a disagreement of two marks.

On most papers I gave the same mark overall as the examiner, within 1 mark

I found several papers which I thought had been marked unduly leniently.

But none of these would get their marks changed if remarked, except the very lenient ones possibly marked down.

The marks have to be totally unreasonable to be changed, not just one person has a different opinion to another

@BorrowedThyme I had smart kids burst out of the exam this year who couldn't unlock the question. We have wider issues here. Today 6 of my 17 year olds asked what Rig-ed meant....and I said, well, it's rigid and the opposite of flexible. Also heard on the news today that 40% of 8 - 18 year olds don't like reading for pleasure. We have a literacy problem nationwide.

While repeating ad infinitum to read the question to students of all ages, the issue is exam nerves aka panic that they don’t understand the question, even though they would if they could calm down. Exam technique to draft main points to each question and then go back to answer it in full

I agree. But this may be the most important feedback this kid gets in life. He thought he answered the question. He didn't. Why? Reading problem? Comprehension? Undiagnosed ADD? Why was it not identified before? Or if it was, did the mother deny it?

To OP: I agree. This is frustrating and tiring. But as long as there is a way for the student and parent to learn the reason for his failure this may be one of the most helpful things someone has ever done for this kid. Imagine going through life failing, and not knowing why, so you can't fix it.

Even if the school has made the decision to look into the papers, the fact that this is a common issue means it’s worth parents knowing to be honest.

On a similar side note the same issue is with parents. We get newsletters from school. Parents what’s app group goes mad with questions about various things. All of which were in the newsletters of appear on the school website. I went through a phase of diligently answering lots of questions as they came through but then someone asked if I worked at the school as I seemed to always know what’s going on. No, I read the newsletters!!

😂😂😂😂

This isn’t “the job”… this was never part of
”the job” until this year.