Year 10 and COVID

[sirbobblysock]

I have a daughter in year 10 who has missed now missed a significant proportion of her two-year course. there will be many others in the same boat. She has SEN which means she struggles to engage well with online lessons, and realistically she's not going to be able to catch up once schools finally go back. She was on track to get reasonable GCSEs and I'm just watching this possibility disappear as time goes on with the inevitable knock-on effect on her confidence and life-chances. There's rightly been a lot of emphasis on years 11 and 13 as this is their exam year, but what about years 10 and 12? Do you think there will be some sort of adaptation based on the fact they have missed so much? I don't even know what could be fairly offered to them given the diversity of experience.
Anyone else feeling the same?

Yes I feel the same. My daughter is dyslexic. Also year 10. She was already behind and only on track to get a few GCSE’s. I doubt she’ll get any now if some sort of schooling doesn’t resume soon. She’s not really learning anything with online lessons and is feeling overwhelmed. My son is year 9 and started his GCSE’s in September. He’s managing ok but I’m still really worried about them.

Are you saying she had started her GCSE course in Y9?

I think they will look at next year's GCSEs but need to sort out this year first! Hopefully, they will have learned their lesson that they need at least a Plan B if not a Plan C and D, in place

They will need to adapt the test but based on what happened with last and this year's exams, they will announce it at the last minute and keep everyone guessing.

I'm also worried OP my daughter Is in year 10 too. They should have just cancelled GCSEs for year 10 and 11 this year.

@ineedaholidaynow

Are you saying she had started her GCSE course in Y9?

I think they will look at next year's GCSEs but need to sort out this year first! Hopefully, they will have learned their lesson that they need at least a Plan B if not a Plan C and D, in place

Yes, she started her GCSE courses in May last year during lockdown, so end of Year 9. I do realise that they need to prioritise year 11/13, but no-one seems to have even mentioned year 10 /12 and anxiety is very high - and surely a long term plan would be better than cobbling something together.

@sirbobblysock it was the same last year. I had DS in Y10 now in Y11, so I know exactly how you feel. There is a consultation going on in respect of this year's exams, although whether that will need to be amended if schools don't go back until after Easter and not after Feb half term as originally planned.

Yes a long term plan would be better and hopefully they will think about that soon

ineedaholidaynow - it must have been incredibly stressful for your DS's cohort - I hope he feels fairly happy with what is decided with regards this year's exams

I hope they learn from their mistakes and put in plans for next year, it is really horrible to be in this limbo. Although I seem to be more fazed by it than DS at the moment! Luckily he is still motivated to keep on studying

I have a Y10 and think it would probably be best to hold the public exams in 2022 with significantly reduced grade boundaries. Then in 2023, they should have more slightly reduced grade boundaries and then hope to get back to 2019 grade boundaries in 2024.

My year 10 twins started their GCSE science in year 9, they are in same position.

Yep a y10 here doing GCSEs inc drama and music and although her teachers are excellent it’s not the same via zoom. Also she hasn’t done any lab work for her 3 sciences as labs were reserved for a level students last term. What a joke it all is. They only had 2 covid cases last year as well.

Agree

The public exams for 2022 needs attention now. Current years 10 and 12 have lost variable amounts of time in the autumn term, have had varying effectiveness of online learning for at least half a term, maybe longer, and might be subject to further SI outages.

They may well not get through all the syllabus

DofE needs to decide now if there will be prioritised topics in exams (a bit like they were talking about for 2021 before lockdown) and make sure schools know this in good time so teachers can plan the best use of what time they have.

Yes, 2021 is more urgent, but 2022 is equally important, and I'm sure they can staff a planning team

Yes same situation year 10 SEN. He was predicted to barely scrape a low pass but with this lockdown and the potential it could be even longer than the first I think he is going to end up with nothing. Two terms of school teaching in year ten means they’ll still be covering content next year instead of using year 11 for going over and over stuff.

He can’t learn from home and isn’t getting any of his EHCP provision so he is completely disadvantaged.

Sorry to hear of so many with similar concerns. It's really difficult, isn't it? My DD is incredibly anxious, which makes her engage even less rather than more - she's convinced she's going to fail everything. She's completely given up on some subjects.

I also have a Y10 child. I’m becoming increasingly concerned that they will be expected to just get in with their GCSE exams as normal.
This matter needs to be addressed and properly considered. I’m not hopeful!

DD is Year 10 and I do worry for her, although to be fair to her she engages pretty well with the live lessons. Maths though is a real challenge and the pace is just too much for her. I dont foresee her catching it up. I really hope something is put in place for them.

I think they're going to have to distribute grades so that the same proportion of students get each grade as they did on the year ending 2019. That's what we did when we switched over to the new GCSE.

Otherwise there are two possibilities:

a) Most of what we teach goes in one ear and out the other and it's only the final few months of revision that make much difference

or

b) Lots more children than usual will fail and it will be another education disaster.

Given that at this point, Gav will already have been sacked, they won't want another disaster for a fresh Minister of Education, so I think they will guarantee the same proportion of grades.

Nellodee - you may well be right, but this will in itself introduce yet more inequalities, with those most able to engage / provided with good- quality online learning benefitting, while those who haven't or can't being yet further disadvantaged.

I teach years 7 to 11 and year 10 (three year GCSE) are my biggest concern. The curriculum was technically suspended in lockdown one (by the government), so we went over all that work, in January they were y10 normally are by September. This time the curriculum isn't suspended but I imagine I will have to at least strongly recap at some point if not re-teach.

Also no practicals as 12 and 13 prioritised.

We have a fair bit of wiggle room as we normally finish the curriculum by Xmas of y11, but with the last minute decisions we seem to get at the moment I would like to get them some sevens mock results under their belt ASAP.

We have no mock data for current year 11 as they were to do them in Feb, and they didn't do end of year 10 tests, and we didn't catch those up (poor planning in my opinion). I don't want my year 10s in the same situation.

Hopefully parents and teachers can work together to flag up the issues!

I'm very concerned about my year 10 too. I am very thankful he is able to attend school even though he is doing the same as those at home. His motivation is better in the school environment than it is home alone while I work.

I don't know what the solution is, just adjusting grade boundaries will favour middle class students who are already doing well, the achievement gap has widened significantly.

I don't think there's any way that we can make exams fair, given the disparity between different schools, different children, different areas, different amounts of time in isolation.

I strongly think that we need to make sure that further education opportunities over the next ten years are a lot better than they have been. We need to enable people to have extended time in education if they need it and not penalise people for needing additional years by disallowing them to apply for student loans, etc.

I hope so although my dd missed most of year 9 due to illness and also asd . Now year 10 and only well enough for a few hours education a week and really not responding well to Teams lessons.
Will be lucky to get 5 passes at GCSE after being an A* student.
Other dd in year 12 is actually coping with online learning pretty well even if not many live lessons. l hope some concessions will be made.

I'm really worried about DD. Year 10, ADHD, struggles to do online learning (it needs a lot of discipline, focus and concentration which are things she struggles with.)
Her school are really pushing online. 8 hours a day live lessons plus homework. She's never off her laptop and it's breaking her.

I'm also concerned about my Y10 dd. She has been doing all her work but just keeps saying she doesn't feel like she's taking it in how she would if learning at school. I'm especially concerned about Maths.