BLOODY A * TARGETS!!!!!

[Northernlurker]

Apologies for shouting but I am so pissed off. My poor dd1 was given all A targets for all 12 of her GCSEs. She's done pretty well so far in keeping on track for that but has always felt very pressured by this. She is extremely bright and works ferociously hard. Having the A as a target has not boosted this. What it's done is made her feel like anything less than A* represents failure. Today she did her second French speaking assessment. She worked hard, I worked hard checking it with her. She got 27 out of 30 which she is told is an A. This means she has 2 As for the speaking element. She is upset by this, she feels she has failed. In what sort of screwed up world is an A grade a failure?

Overall she got As in her mocks (which I think is damn good). I am dreading results day because every A grade will be seen as a failure by her and every A* as only what she expected. How the heck to I help with this? I told the Head at target setting parents evening I thought this was a crappy thing to do and I am even more sure now.

Do you think she would be better off not going to a highly competitive university, but going somewhere well within her abilities where she can relax a bit and take the time to get involved in non academic stuff and enjoy herself?

Northernlurker how long ago did she do her mocks?

November

Sorry not to help, northernlurker! It probably doesn't help, now, so close to exams, but it takes one to know one and I took that attitude through school and university and into the world of work and it was a real millstone around my neck. You can't have a successful career and family life and healthy levels of stress if you continue with that approach, so you have to take stock at some point. In the real world, only your dd will think she's a failure if she "only" gets all As (although she might also be relieved to have all As if she spends the wait up until results day dissecting every exam paper in her imagination, forgetting what she did right and remembering every mistake).

Ds went to an Oxbridge talk at school and they said that unless you have at least 7A*s you're out. Ds isn't necessarily aiming for Oxbridge, but he doesn't want that door to close already. As it is he took four GCSEs early in Year 10 and got a B for one (compulsory Business Studies) and was so upset he went to bed for a day.

So it's all very well to shrug and be laid back, but if your hopes lie in an academically competitive direction, then some anxiety is understandable.

I would add that ds did no work whatsoever for Business Studies as he fell for the old line, "Me? Any work? Naaah - just going to wing it," from various friends and learnt to his cost that people don't always tell the truth.

So what? You work hard and you accept the results you get, like everyone else. Why fear and be disappointed by the results? Once it's done it's done and it's FAR better to shrug and be laid back about it, and find out what alternatives are open to you, afterwards, than to hark back to the past.

Obviously, if you didn't work hard, then that's another matter, but northernlurker's dd clearly doesn't have that problem.

I don't know if her school is doing work on growth mindsets? There is a project going on with local primary schools and the university about this, and I know from a friend who is applying for teaching jobs in the area that this is a big thing in some secondary schools as well.

The book (by Carol Dweck) might be useful for both you and your daughter to read. It is about teaching yourself to embrace failure as part of the process of learning and is, I think, especially helpful to people who see themselves as failures and to those who haven't had many opportunities to fail and who feel under a lot of pressure to succeed.

Actually I think some kind of support/therapy can help at this stage. I have one who was like this. There was no overt target setting from school and we ask our children to try hard, but that that is enough.

This attitude affected her performance to some degree as apart from energy wasted in worrying, she would panic if she felt unsure of the best way to do a question and underperform.

I told her I would be very upset if she continued to insist on perfect grades as exams always involve a bit of luck and that I would be cross if she obtained 6 or so A* and considered that not good enough. It didn't help that much So she had some gentle therapy/ coaching carried out by school staff (boarding school as I am overseas). It wasn't a lot. It centred on helping her understand with her feelings and the negative effects of her anxiety. It helped quite a lot as it gave her anti-anxiety techniques to focus on. Also, she listened in a way she wouldn't listen to me as she knows I am concerned with her well being more than results, but she wanted the good results.

The positive news is that she has been a different child in sixth form. Very calm and more confident. The smaller number of subjects felt more manageable to her (she did 10 IGCSEs) and she felt that having done well at IGCSE, she had somehow proved something to herself and increased in confidence. She is holding an Oxbridge offer and although she found the process very stressful by the end because she wanted it very badly, she was able to recognise what she was feeling and take steps to cope with it.

Receiving CBT or similar didn't mean people felt she couldn't cope but it stopped her wasting all that nervous energy and helped her channel it productively. If they are perfectionist, this problem is likely to follow them, so the earlier it can be supported, the better, I think. I have quite a bit of experience of students of this age and several years older and it is a real handicap if not controlled. If they don't have psychological equilibrium, nothing works properly, in my experience.

Rabbit is so right about the focus on the mistakes which is so debilitating for them. External support really can help put that in perspective.

Ultimately we all want to shield our DC from disappointment and we know that however good they are and hard they work they may not get the result they are capable of. However at the end of the day I would be very pleased to be thought capable of As as all your clever children are and would take that as a positive and not a necessity. The effort and learning will ultimately pay off even if not from GCSE exam results but equally important is acquiring perspective and trying to enjoy the actual learning process. It is very hard at that age to realise that there is so much more to life and intelligence than As especially when being wound up by friends and adults and the anxiety of failing.

It appears to me that part of the problem is that there seems to be rather less scope to recover from failure than there used to be.

Gosh motown, 25 in her year group with statements! That sounds really high and must be quite a challenge for the school. But great to hear that A'levels might suit her learning style more.

The Senco has given her help regarding organisation and tips for concentration. The school have said two things though , under the present circumstances its is very unlikely she would get a Statement ( Partly because her projected grades are well above average). The other problem they have is that in her year they are 25 Pupils with Statements and most of them will struggle to get C grades , funding is of "Cause" short. They have said in an idea world they would give her more support to achieve her potential but with the current financial restrictions, a pupil who is liable to get 1 or 2 As and the rest Bs is not a priority.

That is of course illegal, but all too common. You would have to fight long and hard to get the support to which she is entitled.

Note I have reposted the info on exam reform here to keep this one on topic.

GCSEs do matter for many universities. Also, with the demise of AS, they're likely to become more important.

This is true, but fortunately for the OP this only becomes a problem for current Y10s and younger.

Oh dear, that's both DD and DS then.

Can you switch from her obsessing about the grades to thinking about what she would like to do in the future?

Alan Sugar, Kate Moss, Richard Branson, Lady Gaga, Simon Cowell (sorry). None of them have many qualifications but they are all successful (and they are only the famous ones I thought of quickly). Your DD is much, much more than a string of GCSEs. Does she not have any interests outside school work? I know she will want to work very hard in the next weeks but she needs other outlets for balance. Dance? Music? Singing? Running? Swimming? Indoor skiing? Volunteering?

Tilly/Reddidi. The school is very mixed and has some odd statistics for instance : 63% achieved 5 A* To C last year and that within the high ability students that was 95% . The other odd thing is that the SEN rate across the school is 8.6% but 20% in DDs year , the reason for that was a school closed down and they took 9 pupils with Statements from that school and they also took 5 students from a Pupil Referral Unit.

the school also has 32 Students (26%) graded as high Ability and ( at Least 1 pupil from that group has a statement) He was expelled From A Grammar School and can be difficult but, is exceptionally bright. Of the 32 Pupils 19 (Including) DD
have been identified have having potential for multiple A grades, but the year head told me " It is More Important to get C grades for the Average pupils " (They want to get 5 A to C up to 70%) than turning a B grade in to an A ,and so on for instance last year the school got only 21 A grades , 3 A grades but achieved 150 B grades and 307 C grades.

round here it's a Glaswegian accent until the weekend when I have reason to believe we are going mid-West

Urrggh, Cory! DS only seems to do Sarf-east or a sort of generic American ('but do you think I should blend it with a bit of Italian Gangster, Mum?').

It's when he tries to do Yorkshire that I start to threaten instant infanticide.

we need to pack them off to stage school to get some peace, don't we?

let the people who are paid to suffer suffer

Maybe we could swap them for a week or two? I'll listen to a bit of Glaswegian and you can have my would-be Arturo Ui?

Hoboken "Can you switch from her obsessing about the grades to thinking about what she would like to do in the future?" - this is yet another area of anxiety for DD as she doesn't know what she wants to do yet! And she does have other interests

Wow motown, it's a big year group too - I thought DD's was big, but is only just over half that! And the school does seem to be doing pretty well given that the grammar takes most of the potential A's and A*'s.

To add to the target grade pressure (though to be fair, they are now doing target grades for the end of the year (for DD, Y10) rather than GCSE IYSWIM which is better), the DC's school do class ranking positions. This is quite helpful to give you a better insight to how they are actually doing in class, but is yet another stick for an anxious but self-dooming high achiever to beat themselves with!