To want 9s not 7s for my child in their GCSEs?

[ZeldaFighter]

Child is a model student and no problems with behaviour or attendance. Definitely seems intelligent and diligently completes homework, often without prompting.

Report is 6s and 7s. Husband is pleased and says they're As and Bs. He thinks only kids in private schools doing extended papers get 9s.

I got As, Bs and Cs many years ago but I always strived for As. AIBU to think they should be getting 9s or at least striving for them?

I think your DH is right. Certainly in English the marking is so appalling that a 9 is luck of the draw

You DC probably wants 9s too. I’d not pressure them because that doesn’t really work (in our case). I found mocks results lower than the actual results. My DC got 8s and 9s in the actual exams. The mocks and predicted grades ranged from 6-8 in most of them. There will be more revision and past papers to come and I think mocks are marked hard to stop them resting on their laurels.
plenty of kids in state schools get 8/9 at GCSE so I don’t know why your DH thinks state schools don’t expect their brightest pupils to get the top grades.
i would seriously hide your extreme disappointment and say you are proud. Your DC will do what needs to be done.

Wow. What if your ds is disappointed in you not earning 200 k per year despite working hard?

Your child does their best. You can’t do the exams for them and it’d be unfair to put undue pressure on just because you dream of the highest grades.
Encourage them to do their best then you’ve done your best as a parent.

Maybe your child would like you to strive to be a billionaire or fly to the moon. You need to sit down and discuss how reasonable your expectations are.

Whatever some parents here might say it is not the norm to get a straight run of 9's

Why do parents make comparisons like this?? A subject that comes easy for one child might present challenges for another. How will undue pressure and expectations achieve anything?

Be grateful he is able to get 7’s, my daughter is going to get 3’s and 4’s because of her learning needs, hell I was happy when they told me she was in line for 4’s. I get you want the best for your son but always remember that GCSE’s aren’t as important as people make out. Many have become successful without GCSE’s and you stressing out will make it harder for him. Let the kid be a kid for a little bit longer.

You can put that sort of high pressure on yourself if you get pleasure from it but you can’t put that on other people. Parents who do that tends to create anxious children who distance themselves from you. Just because you birthed them doesn’t mean you own them.

9's are not rare at state, although it does depend on which school. DD3 got all 9's bar one 8 (she was deeply pissed off about that!). But......she is G&T and has a really good work ethic. She was "that" kid.

The DD who has the best career was bang on average and got C's in her GCSE's, she worked just as hard.

The point is that you can want all you like but ultimately its down to the child, their abilities and their work ethic. The one thing you absolutely shouldnt do is confuse supoorting their education with putting pressure on. Thats what my parents did and it had exactly the opposite effect, I underachieved because I couldnt take the pressure from them and backed away from it all.

Don’t teach your DC to measure his or her worth in exam results. It’s absurd and cruel.

It's wrong to expect 9s as they are rare, but good to encourage to aim high. Lots of secondary schools near me want children getting 7 or above in the subjects they wish to study at A-Level and expect at least 6 sixes from them. You don't want to overwork your DC or make them over anxious about the GCSEs, so I would just encourage turning the 6s into 7s and the 7s into 8s. Any 9s are an extra well done.

What I wanted for my DC was for them to achieve the best results they could whilst maintaining a healthy balance in life. That will look different for everyone. We are all multi faceted beings with different abilities and different personalities.
A pupil who has the potential to achieve the very highest grades whilst maintaining a reasonable social life and interests outside school should obviously be encouraged to do so, but the pursuit of top grades at the expense of all else is potentially very damaging.

They are quite rare though. 1 in 20 if school reflects wider population. That is rare?

We all parent differently but I always tell mine that it doesnt matter what the outcome is as long as they have tried their best, thats all we can ever ask of them, and thats not accepting less its just celebrating that they have done as much as they can.
Youve just outlined why your child has done that and then expressed your disappointment. I feel sorry for your child.

1. Pupil's targets grades are set for teachers not by individual teachers. They generally take into account KS2 SAT scores in maths and English then are fed into something like Fisher Family Trust. These are generally a minimum target grade. However, a pupil's ability in year 6 is only an indication and, just because they achieve high SATs results, is not always a reflection on their future ability. There are different ways of calculating target grades. Pupils should know what their target grades are.
2. Schools would tell parents/pupils if they thought they were underachieving and what they need to be concentrating on in the last few weeks before exams.
3. For some pupils, a lower grade is good for them. It does not mean they have been sitting around on their X Box. It is good for them and is not a reflection on future earnings or career.
4. Exam boards do not write different exams for state and private schools.
5. I have no idea what the extended papers are.
6. I do see, on a daily basis, children with mental health problems who feel they are not good enough, stressed, putting too much pressure on themselves and that is happening more and more. If a child needs a kick up the backside because they're not working, fair enough but for a child who is working hard and trying their best, don't put more pressure on them. They will fall apart.
7. A grade 9 is an A**
8. In my school, we do not mark mocks harder than they should be. We use the relevant mark scheme and grade boundaries.
9. Yes, I do work in a school.

If they get through to Y11 with their mental health intact, an active social circle and 6s and 7s, you've won.

My experience is recruiting grads for professional roles. There is a huge correlation between grades and participation in other activities. The vast majority of applicants I see with 9s at GCSE and A* at A level have also been involved in things like sports, music, debating etc.

In contrast, I often see those (even from top private schools) who scraped 6s and 7s at GCSE and say ABB at A level who’ve done nothing else (probably because they’d rather be on TikTok or Xbox).

I have huge respect for people who work really hard to get 7s, but I wouldn’t be employing those who’ve had huge advantages in life but do the bare minimum and get mediocre grades.

My mum had the same attitude.

I was a hard working, high achieving model student and generally good all round. For perspective, I was the highest scoring GCSE student in the school in my year. I also took several a year early (I have 16 in total 😳) and even those I scored higher than the kids a year older who had had an additional years worth of teaching.

Was my mum proud? She never said she was. I vividly remember proudly telling her I got 99% on one exam, her immediate response was "why wasn't it 100%?"

At Sixth Form I went on to do 7 A-levels across three years. Again, despite studying hard (and also working mornings before sixth form and evenings after, in order to pay the rent she insisted I contributed), my best was never good enough.

I went on to go to a top 10 university studying a very specific degree - there were 12 places for my degree program, and I was given one of them.

And I crashed and burned. The pressure of all the years of striving to be perfect, trying to meet my mothers impossibly high expectations finally took its toll. I was burnt out. My mental health nose dived, I could barely function. I was suicidal, ended up under a psychiatrist for several years and all in all it took me a good 12 years to fully recover. And a big part of that recovery, was going no contact with my mum (as well as years of therapy)

Ironically, I am now successful and happy in my career, for which I have no relevant qualifications and my GCSEs and A Levels are irrelevant.

So my suggestion would be...
Celebrate your child's successes
Reward their effort rather than attainment
Don't pressurise

Mine should be getting 8's and 9's - aside from a 9 in Maths, he's going to be getting a range between 3 and 6. I pray to God 2 of those are 5's in English. I've done his revision for him and he still doesn't care enough to actually do anything useful himself. I'm a control freak and find it supremely hard not to care too, but the old 'you can lead a horse to water' proverb certainly kicks in with teenagers and their GCSE's. As long as your child is getting the grades they need for their next step, I wouldn't worry too much about what they actually are for GCSE .

I totally agree that 6s and 7s are great results for many students. I have far more respect for DC who work their arses off to pass than those who do the bare minimum and get 7s while spending hours on Xbox.

1 In 600 children get all 9s for their GCSEs.

65% are female

Gets it in perspective.

Mine went to a regular comp. Was a hard worker and model student and received 8s and 9s.
Just to show that it’s not only for privately educated teens to get high marks. Very much possible for state school kids - as long as they are motivated and want to put the work in.

I'm not talking 6 and 7s. 3s are good for some.

Please don't be like this.

I was an A+ pupil, but I felt exceptionally pressured. My dad literally used to pay me for every A I got, but nothing at all for any grade less, and I was a kid who never set a foot wrong and always tried my best.

It was incredibly damaging, and I've grown up hating my dad tbh, and with very deep rooted issues that I'm still unpicking in therapy due to my entire childhood feeling like a competition and love that felt conditional dependent on grades.

Edit: sorry, accidentally highlighted some text and idk how to undo it 🤣

OP seems to have gone but me too… Mine is likely capable of all 9s and got 7-9s in his mocks, although school generally like to predict down to avoid complacency. We are trying to balance between ensuring that he pushes himself and gets what he is capable of, but at the same time remembering that it’s not the end of the world if he doesn’t get all 9s, as long as he’s tried his best, because sometimes an exam throws a curve ball or you have a bad day.