This years GCSEs cancelled, what about next year's?

[NorahsBatty]

DS is year 10. He's missing out on, potentially, 6 months of his year 10 education. I'm trying my best but it's nothing like school really is it? I'm clueless.

Do you think provisions will be put in place with this in mind?

No idea! I have a year 10 and year 12 and both have lost out learning from early March. I'm trying to get them to keep up with online learning but it's almost impossible. I think they'll fare far worse than current year 11 and 13 students. I asked this question when schools closed and was vilified for not seeing the bigger picture and told to get a grip.

I agree.
Teachers I've spoken to have told me to keep my daughter working as deadlines won't change as she needs get the work done.
I'm useless as a teacher so no help to her.
I think year 10 and 12 could suffer massively

I really don't understand most of what he's doing and his school really aren't setting things consistently.

He just gets a piece here and there.

And being a 15 year old boy he is hardly forthcoming with ideas and plans himself.

I have a year 10 and a year 12 but not worrying about this too much at the moment. Obviously I am trying to keep them motivated to keep up with their work but there are more things to worry about at the moment like trying to keep everyone safe and alive ( dh high risk ).

Im also very worried about this but dd is working hard to keep up with everything the school sends and is doing some extra revision over easter along with her art coursework. Cant do much more than that so im trying not to think about it too much!

I believe they said pass boundaries will be lowered to compensate for time they’ve missed.

I think they’ll definitely take this into account, no way they can’t, otherwise it’ll completely disadvantage less well off, well educated and vulnerable families’ children.

I’m a teacher and my son is in year 10. If we get back to school after half term (June), I suspect year 10 will suffer very little ill effects. If we get back to school in September, they’ll still be fine and the exam boards will consider lost time in grade boundaries.

Problems will happen if we don’t go back to school until after this, but honestly I can’t see it.

There are rumours here that schools will reopen in July. I really hope that's the case, even a month back before they break up for summer will really help their progress and mental health.

If schools reopen in September, I doubt anything different will be done next year. Pupils at schools that didn't do things well this year will be disadvantaged and I doubt there'll be much in place to mitigate that. But then pupils at bad schools have always been disadvantaged because of it.

At most, I can imagine school holidays being shortened next year, and exams scheduled later if possible, to provide more teaching time. But that would need teachers to agree to it.

They need to be able to study the syllabus, but grade boundaries and exam structure could be adapted. I expect there is thought going into this at the moment.

I'm.sure boundaries will be lower to make up for the fact they have been home schooled for 6 months. I do feel for the year tens and it's a very important year for them, my dd2 is year 11 and although she won't sit exams she will get the grades she deserves from the work she's already done.

To be fair though (I think) the gradings are worked out once all papers are marked so kids will still get 9s and 8s but they may not necessarily be to as high a standard as other years. The top x% will still get their 9s or 8s

For the basic core subjects try BBC bitesize, if he selects his exam board then he can access online topics for each subject and use that as a baseline for the curriculum.

Mr Barton maths is really good as well as you can print of worksheets for all the areas covered in maths and numeracy (the answers are on there too). It also has links to YouTube videos explaining how to solve the problems.

Also if you can afford it buy the revision guides from the exam boards they are really good.

For maths you could do several things from corbettmaths. I'm setting things from that website fairly regularly for my year 10 class. There are 5-a-day revision worksheets at several levels depending on which paper he is likely to sit (he should really know this, but if he doesn't you can ask his maths teacher). There are also videos and worksheets on every topic in the GCSE.

I am a teacher and there has been a lot of discussion in our department about mitigating the effects on year 10/12 in exams next year. Once the GCSE/A levels for this year are sorted out we hope exam boards will focus on next year’s exams, perhaps with a reduction in papers for some subjects. Reducing content is an issue as schools teach topics in different orders so hard to remove topics. It is on the radar though so I would expect some action- try not worry (although I have had sleepless nights about my year 10s!)

Surely they will have to do something.

I only teach up to age 13 but senior school teachers I know have generally switched their focus from worrying about Y11 and 13 to Y10 and 12. So the online curriculum delivery prioritises Y10 and 12 if the school is in a position where it isn't able to deliver live lessons to all year groups and has to pick and choose.

But that won't help children who don't have the technology at home to access it and isn't as good as classroom learning anyway. Plus if there are still schools who aren't offering any online curriculum for next term (I doubt it for this age but there may be?) then those pupils will be massively disadvantaged so govt will have to put something in place.

They won't do anything yet because it isn't a priority right now. But I'm sure it will come in time.