To be confused at GCSE reactions?

[Emily3325]

I’ve seen a few videos online over the last couple of days of teenagers getting their GCSE results, and I’ve been genuinely surprised by some of them.

What has surprised me is seeing teenagers who appear to have failed every GCSE they took, opening their results while both they and their parents seem completely unconcerned about it, laughing, joking and, in some cases, blaming school for being boring.

Maybe I’m just from a different generation, but if I’d come home having failed all of my GCSEs, I can’t imagine my parents being completely unbothered, nor would I be if it were my own children. For reference, two of my three are through their GCSEs.

I’m not saying parents should shame their children or make them feel like their lives are over because of exam results, but surely there is a middle ground between making a child feel like a failure and treating the fact they’ve failed every qualification as if it doesn’t matter at all? Is this just where we're at as a country now?

AIBU?

Yes to be fair there are definitely some children who shouldn’t be entered for some exams. We really do need more options for those kids, one size does not fit all!

Saying that we had a couple of kids this year doing sod all in their exams, who were bright and able kids, they just didn’t give a shit. It’s so frustrating and sad.

Not every year, every exam. We have had at least 20 children sleep through every exam subject. Maths, Science, English etc.

My non academic son had a terrible time in year eleven he had a medical emergency and was in critical care for three weels and missed an an entire half term of school only going back after Easter his grades were not great but frankly after nearly losing him
I didnt really care i wss just glad he had recovered

I'm Indian and I agree with you OP. I don't agree and do this lazy parenting approach.

Your child’s circumstances aren’t what I’ve described in these videos. Of course in your sons case or similar ones health and healing is far and away the most important thing

I think that many who fail knew that they were going to fail. They probably scored very low in every test at secondary so their family and parents knew what to expect.

What surprises me is people posting online. Do they think that the video will go viral and make thek
money/famous? Are they so confident that they don’t mind people feeling shocked or laughing at their deadpan reaction? I know that 25% or whatever fail (get 3 or below) and that it’s more likely to be the kids who didn’t attend class.

I’m in the category of not valuing education so not bothered about my children’s grades. The elder ones are successful in what they do for work anyway and own their own businesses and they didn’t need GCSEs to get there.

I am not surprised. I am head of a core subject and prior to pupils doing their exam, we offered three different intervention sessions, free face to face tuition on a Saturday morning and a Thursday evening. Lots of students didn’t attend any of this, didn’t come to school, parents wouldn’t engage with me, answer the phone, encourage pupils.

These same students have now failed (or got less than a 4), and need to resit and suddenly they are sending lots of emails, asking me how we can support with remarks, can we recommend tutors, can they access our free tuition as former students, can I recall their gcse paper and create a list of topics they need to work on.

For 80% of those kids, if their parents and they had cared this much prior to their exam as they do now, they wouldn’t have failed.

Most people over, say, 35, were brought up to believe that if you work hard at school you'll eventually end up with a good job. Younger people often think they've more chance of having a good life from gaming, influencing etc, and even the current education secretary says the kinds of things they think (as in, not understanding why "ordinary" workers should know trigonometry).

I did my GCSEs in the mid 00s and only 35% of my cohort got 5 A-Cs. My dad went to the same school and there were families he knew from his time there. Unsurprisingly those that cared about their own education cared about their children's. Many that hadn't cared about their education cared about their children's but a handful who didn't care about their own education also didn't care about their children's education until it was post 16. It wasn't that they didn't care about their children they just failed to see the use of a lot of the education in schools and how that related to post 16 reality of life. School was just a necessary inconvenience and if they turned up most of the time they turned a blind eye to the missed lessons and low level truancy. Majority of these children went to college after school and really started to engage as they were being taught with context and meaning. It's only a problem when they realise that their lack of attendance and acknowledgement that there is use in secondary education and that is a gateway to the college courses that things go awry.

Can I ask why?

She doesn't value education because it doesn't matter apparently.

There's so much evidence that education, gcses, doing well at school actually improves long term earnings but everyone likes to focus on the anecdotes. Someone with crappy GCSEs and little brains isn't very likely to randomly and magically start up their own successful business. Most businesses fail anyway

At my dd school it was their normal school day. 8.25am till 3pm there would be after school masterclass. Which finished at 4p 1hr to get home . 5pm till 6pm more work. 6pm dinner 7pm till 9pm more work. Then home work at weekends school holidays. There were Saturday classes as well. School.

School said it was compulsory which isn't true. I took dd out of them extra things. We compromises and agreed that she would do core subject masterclass. After half a term. I got an email from school telling me that they had spoken to DD ans she's niw happy to do masters classes etc. Dd came home upset telling me she had bern pushed into agreeing. So i told them no. Then they gave dd extra work at home every evening as well as the homework.. Which had to be handed in daily and if it wasn't correct it would go in the bin ahd she would have to do it again. I wrote another email telling them dd won't be doing it.

It was way to much where is their down time.

Dd wasn't sleeping constantly stressed and pressured. Self harming suicidal thoughts.

I’m sure there will be some that that is the case for but in our case, he may not have gone to those lessons (sciences for example) because he has missed so much science in his earlier high school due to being in other catch up lessons / isolation due to not having his needs met that by the time he got to GCSE years, it just wasn’t possible for him to access / understand the lesson. He was entered for the exam with zero chance of passing.
Some teachers never did understand his needs (others were absolutely amazing, got him and moved mountains to keep him in education).

I think the fact that they are filming themselves opening it and then posting it online probably says something about their attitude to their results. I’ve been at 2 results days this month and I didn’t see anyone filming it. Most of them looked quite apprehensive and wanted to open it away from people.

Equally we’d have never posted it and shared it online but that stands for most of our daily life not just exam results day.

Well clearly op wasn’t referring to your unique situation

To everyone posting about SEN/ Medical/ Mental health concerns, these aren’t what I’m describing. These are teens who from what I can see and what they’re portraying online simply don’t seem to care about the grades they’ve secured

It's due to parents not instilling the value of education and having the "grades don't matter mentality". It could be due to lack of success in the parent's life themselves.

Yes but I think a lot of those teens and probably their parents have undiagnosed SEN.

I know a number of kids who got GCSEs this week.

Most are being celebrated - tho I suspect a range of grades are in existence.
One is gutted, but has still got the place on desired A level choices - and I suspect higher than all the above.

And the last had a fabulous day, seriously celebrating the fact they walked out with 3 grade 2s. Given they weren't supposed to survive toddler hood, it is a massive achievement. And probably harder won than any kid with straight 9s. You have no idea what circumstances lead to the grades. And for some kids those "fails" are exceeding hard won.

How would you react if your child came home with 1s, 2s, 3s?

What would be the point in telling them you're disappointed or it's a disaster, what would that achieve?

I'd say fuck it, it's only GCSEs, it doesn't define you, there are still loads of options out there, lets celebrate you've finished school and get on with the next stage.

At the risk of sounding a twat, is there not a certain point where we need to take stock and admit that not everything is SEN? Obviously SEN is a massive factor in education but are some kids not just lazy? I’m not saying everyone who achieves poorly is but surely some are?

I said to dd if she failed. It just meant she would start at level 2 instead of level 3. And she could retake maths and English. And doing it in a different setting she may do even better. Education doesn't end as 16.