What to do with a disappointed father on his daughter's GCSE results

[DeiseGirl66]

My husband left school in the 80s with just three O Levels, despite being very bright. He blames his poor attitude to school on his lack of academic success (the classic, chippy working class boy), but also believes that his teachers and parents could have done so much more to push him to meet his potential. He went on to achieve an honours degree in his early thirties, but feels that his early underachievement has held him back throughout his career. He therefore had very high hopes for our DD, who completed her GCSES this year. Bright, creative, with a naturally enquiring mind, she breezed through the Key Stage 2 SATS and by the end of Year 9 was predicted to achieve a cluster of As and As in Year 11. My husband's aspirations for her extended beyond even Oxbridge - he believed that scholarships to Yale or Harvard were within her grasp. These expectations were not entirely misplaced. At the age of three she wanted to be a palaeontologist and she achieved a score of 135 in a non-verbal IQ test at the age of 11. But having always found learning so easy, she took her foot off the peddle a little bit in the final months leading up to the exams, especially in the non-science subjects. Today's GCSE results were therefore a reality check for both father and daughter. One A in Additional Science, 4 As in maths, core science, Italian and Religion, and Bs in the two English papers, History, Drama and ICT, might be considered a very solid set of results and are enough to get her into the Sixth Form of her choice. She appears to be delighted with her results and is staying out with friends tonight to celebrate. But my husband has been brooding on the Bs in English and History and the lack of an A in maths all day, and his disappointment has tarnished any sense of celebration or achievement that we might have enjoyed in the family home. Writing this, I can only feel sad that so much expectation is being placed now on pupils to achieve As and As, not just with my husband and daughter but from society in general, that anything less seems inadequate. Can a 16 year old child's future aspirations really be dashed at this stage, just because of these results? How do I manage my husband's disappointment, which I believe is a projection of his own sense of failure?

Is it too late after the mocks? (genuine question) I'm not sure it is TBH. My DS2 sat his IGCSE mocks in January later than many schools he did very well with no little work, if his results has been less than he would have needed to stay on to the 6 th form he would have had enough time to hopefully do something about it.

Unreal, that hasn't been our experience. 3 times a year I get grades and progress towards target for DS, with up to 2 parents' evenings to discuss any issues and also a narrartive report once a year. The discussions and narrative reports are very much aliong the lines of 'his expected grade at end Y9 is this, he's currently this, this is what he needs to do to move up a grade, this is / is not on track [and they are brutal about what is not 'on track' - a single sublevel below linear progression to the [very high] targets and it's 'below target']'

So i know, even at the end of Y8, that his predicted level in e.g. English at the end of Y9 [8c] would get him an A* if he continued on from it to the end of Y9. However, I also know he is below his target, how much by and why, and what he has to do to improve. He has already had conversations with his teacher about what it would mean if his curtrent level doesn't improve, and what that would mean in terms of GCSE [with especially serious consequences as he'll be the first year of Govelevels in English] , and what that would mean in terms of future aspirations.

To me it almost feels like there is too much information, too early. But I certainly wouldn't say they leave the pep talks too late! State comp, by the way.

happy, IGCSE is perhaps a slightly different qualification, in that in English GCSE I believe some Controlled Assessments are still done before the exam - so January might be a little late to turn things round if CAs are very low. Don't quote me on that, but that is my understanding....

I don't think it is about whether they are great results or not. Your DD is happy, she has, for the general population, a good set of results, and she is happy with them.

My Mum has only once in my life told she was proud of me. It certainly wasn't when I got my GCSE or A Level results. I will always tell my DC I am proud of them. It is hugely important.

Your DH needs to get over himself. My Mum was similar with me, as she had to leave school at 15 and didn't get the opportunity to do exams so resented that I wasted my chance. However, I am not her.

Your dd is very lucky to have the personality she has. As madrigals (and others) pointed out, it is so much better to have a resilient, sunny, bordering on the laid back personality, than a stressy, anxious personality, where the person concerned never feels they have done quite well enough.

teacher I think those reports in years 7,8,9 are part of the problem. Parents see them as a grade prediction - you see it here all the time. Posters announcing their 13 year old is ' predicted all A*s. But those predictions are neither accurate nor scientific. They don't and can't take into account platauing, bad teaching, lazyitis

Or all the other hormonal shizzle that happens during year 11, or new exams, or interfering ministers ... Leave predictions to the clairvoyants.

Word, I agree. But I cannot recognise unreal's comment that she doesn't get the information needed to see if a child is falling behind until it is too late, and that was what i was responding to.

Certainly in DS's school there seems to be no 'false positivity' - fall behind expected progress and you REALLY know about it. I agree that there might be nothing I can DO about it if he does, but there is no chance that he and I wouldn't know!

Teacher we were never told the magic formula that explained levels in relation to gcse results.

A small but important piece of knowledge.