To think asking a teacher how many passed GCSEs isn’t rude?

[Indoorvoicesbluey]

Dd15 is currently sitting mock GCSEs and is anxious about her future as everyone is atm.

she asked her English teacher how many of her students passed their GCSEs and she was told to stay behind class and was told off for asking it as the teacher found it rude and disrespectful. She said she didn’t mean it to be rude she was genuinely wondering.

How am I?

Any child would be worried, she’s expected to get good grades but doesn’t mean she isn’t anxious and worried incase she doesn’t. It’s a lot of pressure on children.

As someone who sat there GCSE’s not too long (under ten years ago JUST) I remember it being commonly discussed the ‘pass rate’ exams are made into such a big deal and come with such amount of pressure to get into this college/that college, university and beyond, I don’t think it’s rude but can see how it may have upset the teacher if they took it to mean how many of their own students fail.

I would take that as genuinely wanting to know what her chances of passing are. And I'd probably wonder the same thing if I was nervous!

Unless I was already doubting my skills as a teacher, then I wouldn't be so offended by that question, so as to react in that way!

She won't find anything out about her chances of passing though by knowing what percentage passed last year.

It shouldn't be a state secret. Pupils are working towards GCSE grades and they should have a right to know what the results of the past years are.
Transparency is key.
These figures should be readily available on every school website.

Those figures are available. Just not broken down by specific teacher.

she asked her English teacher how many of her students passed their GCSEs

It's the use of the word "her" that makes this personal and therefore rude OP.
If DD had merely asked what was the percentage pass rate overall that would be fine.

The way the question was phrased makes it seem that DD is not particularly confident that this teacher has the ability to coach many students to a pass standard.

It's the difference between asking a cook "do many people eat chicken?" and "do many people eat your chicken?"
The latter could easily be taken as disrespectful.

You’re thinking as an adult. Imagine you’re starting to study a gcse course for the first time and you don’t really know what one is yet. It’s perfectly natural to wonder is this a thing that 99% of children pass, or a thing that, say, only 10% pass?

OP your dd wasn’t rude but will unfortunately have to learn a bit more empathy discretion and diplomacy as she grows up.

Are you sure the teacher didn’t keep her behind at the end to maybe discuss appropriate times to ask those kind of questions, rather than a telling off?

Maybe “Olivia, it’s absolutely fine to request that information, but the way you asked in the middle of my lesson was quite rude. I’m more than happy to tell you, but it’s something we should discuss out of lesson time.”

Cue child going home and telling mum she was kept behind and told off.

Totally the tone matters here. The tone is everything.

That's perfectly normal not contradictory.

Dc were up a height about failing certain subjects they are now doing at A level because those subjects were essential to entry into the sixth form. The OPs explanation makes perfect sense.

No, dd said she told her she found it rude and upsetting. Dd is “I’m sorry but I didn’t mean it in a rude way, I was just wondering “.

I don’t understand PP saying it’s a strange question. At our uni induction many of us asked how many passed the degree overall and in what bands, then for each course in the degree, the last 3 years results were published with the info pack e.g “2020: 60% pass 30% merit 10% distinction”. It’s a good way to establish how challenging one might find each course, how much time is going to need to be dedicated to that course vs the others in terms of study/revision etc. I don’t think it’s a rude question to ask at all!

The issue is that even knowing the percentage of pass rate will not help her at all, she wouldn’t know the context of the previous class.

For example she wouldn’t know how many EAL students were in the class, and then how many of them have little understanding of English, she also wouldn’t know how many SEN, how many are dual educated students, the number of school refusers etc. all of this has an impact on grades.

Of course it's not rude this information is generally available on school websites / government websites for core subjects and I don't think my child's school would be offended at the question since they are always using these statistics.

If a parent asked then yes it's be reasonable but what 15 would ask this if they weren't trying to be snarky or implying lack of faith. Also tone of how this was said plays into it.

The thing is - this question is only relevant if the teacher has the same set each year (if the school has sets for English).
Fine if you have the top set each year, and can respond with 'last year X all got 8s/9s', but if a teacher is teaching top set this year, but had the bottom set last year, the numbers are going to be very different, and not relevant to your daughter.

Schools publish pass rate information, as does Ofsted, what they don't do is break that pass rate down by teacher. Asking what this specific teacher's previous pass rate is, is not the same as asking for the published school previous pass rates.

I think a lot of people can't relate to what anxiety is like. It isn't always rational and asking a question like that isn't necessarily about getting a 100% accurate answer - often it's a calming mechanism that makes the person feel better in that moment about something that's worrying them.

Sounds like the teacher thought she was questioning how skilled she was at teaching 🙄.

Teacher should focus on improving her teaching and not on chastising children for asking innocent questions.

She's 15 for heaven's sake. Most adults don't understand statistics to that level, let alone someone who's likely never studied them beyond learning how to make a nice bar chart.

None of her business. If she’s bothered, she can ask her classmates (who’ll probably tell her the same).

I think the word that could swing this is 'her'.

Wanting to know how many kids pass is normal (tho I was very rarely asked this as a teacher). Wanting to know how many of that teachers kids pass COULD be said in a very disrespectful tone. I've known far too many parental issues where one comment is taken entirely out of context and a totally false spin on it taken.