Year 8th - exams. How important are they?

[Slubulino]

👋 Hello, my son joined year 8th mid September. We moved to London for another country.

He says he did well and very well in all the exams except for the Religious Studies. He is quite bummed about this one because he likes the teacher and he thinks he can do a lot better.

The reality is he didn’t revise much for this exam and I think he didn’t revise the right topics either 😅. It was the last one and he didn’t plan his revision time good enough.

How important are the marks from the year 8th exams and does he get the chance to improve his mark in Religious Studies in the next tests during the year?

Thank you!

In year 8, exams are mostly just practice for GCSEs in year 11. He may well get a much better mark next year, but it still won’t matter until GCSE.

The mark he got for the first test is now fixed. He can of course get a much better mark in his next test. The purpose of these exams is to get him into the habit of studying and taking exams.

Depending on the school they can range from vaguely important in terms of internal streaming to not important at all. Not getting a great score in 1 year 8 exam is not going to cause any problems for him and if he feels down about it then he will know to study harder next time.

It’s the time to do badly and learn from it. Much better to be disappointed in year 8 than year 11.

I am very proud of him. He studied reality hard to recover year 7 and 3w from year 8th. This answer I will make sure he hears it. ❤️ Thanks 🙏!

I am sure next half term he will be better prepared for Religious Studies also. I was sad to see him so bummed after this last exam but as everyone is saying this is practice for the important one 👌💪.

Still waiting for the result for Religious studies 🤦‍♀️ to come. My son received the scores for all his other exams. He got the scores in percentages. Is there a mapping system to grades?

For example he got 90% in Maths and 87% in Science. Is 90% equivalent with an 8th? And a 80% in History and Geography would be a 7? 🤔

Thank you!

Unfortunately no-one will be able to to tell you as each school will test differently and cover different topics. They certainly won't relate to gcse grades yet as the Ks3 curriculum covered will be much more limited.