Support for year 10 student with GCSEs.

[sheep73]

Dc1 is in year 10 and studying for 9 GCSEs. They are hardworking, diligent and academic. However our confidence in the independent school is low. Child has been there since start of year 9 only but there has been a series of errors / cr@pness by the school.. wrong set for maths and french (error in test result) which took a term to correct, unable to accommodate choice of GCSEs, now dodgy English teacher and moved down science sets based on one round of test results so now scoring higher than set 1 average etc.
It just all feels a bit inept.
I have been in to see them about all but the English teacher.. I feel we need to stick it out for GCSEs atleast as we're in year 10.
I'm wondering what we need / can do at home to ensure school's ineptness doesn't undermine child in their GCSEs. For example regular science tutoring? How common is tutoring in year 10? Friends in London at state schools have been frantically tutoring since year 5..

It's hard to say how common tutoring is in year 10 outside the circle you yourself know tbh. For me, my DC went to state schools, not in London. I know a few people who engaged subject tutors (usually in year 11) if their DC were struggling with specific subjects.

I guess if you need to tutor when DC are in a private school, that shows how variable teaching in private schools can be (as it can in the state sector of course).

Personally if my DC were happy and in general the school was good (good pastoral, good behaviour) and we could afford it, I would be unkeen on a mid-year 10 move tbh. Your DC is even less likely to get their choice of GCSEs if you move schools now. Can you identify the key areas where the school is failing? maybe speak to them and ask what is going to be done (they want your money after all)? and then look at subject tutoring – perhaps some in year 10 and then ramping up in year 11. Don't worry too much about what set the DC are in tho, overall it won't make that much difference, unless the lower set is targeting F GCSEs and they should be doing H.

Then I would maybe look at alternatives for sixth form.

@clary thankyou. That echoes my thoughts. DC1 has settled at the school and pastoral support is good so changing now would be detrimental. I'm just anxious about what other screw ups there may be..

If you are wanting to mitigate against potential screw ups then I would:
. make sure you know the board for each subject
. buy the relevant CGP guide for each subject and tick off the topics as DC studies them (mitigating against them missing something out)
. for any subjects with course work / practicals make sure you read the spec to check the requirements carefully and make sure your DC understands (mitigating against miscommunication)
. consider tutors for targetted A level subjects if worried about standard of teaching and Maths/English Lang ditto if worried about getting to any required grade (mitigating against poor teaching leading to missed entry requirements for 6th form). Realistically though I wouldn't have thought more than 2 or max 3 subjects can be tutored for so target sensibly..

Also make sure DC preps well for any end of topic tests and makes revision notes (cards, mind maps, whatever) for these tests so they end y10 with a full set of notes for stuff already covered. (just good practice really).

Yeh great advice from @TeenToTwenties and in fact the time to start this is now. They have possibly completed one Eng lit text for example - so how well have they grasped it, can you consolidate notes and create resources on key themes, key quotes? This will be so useful in April of year 11.

GCSE is a lot of learning, but manageable for you to grasp as a parent IME, at least at a level to support (obvs your knowledge of MFL or maths or whatever may not be there, but it’s fairly easy to see what needs to be learned.)

We did very targeted tutoring (state school, excellent teachers, very SEN child) after discussion with teachers.

Maths, started after Y11 Nov mocks.
English, started after Easter.
Geography (final 2 months - in hindsight probably not worth it as DD had no interest).

If I could go back to this time last year, I would have done the same with Maths, but started English from January.

Friends at private schools didn't tutor. Most friends at state did, most did targeted like us, some did all subjects for the whole of Y11 and a couple all subjects for Y10 and Y11.

A lot also depends on your child - DD definitely did better with a tutor than revising alone. Some kids are fine with videos, or parents helping or online revision stuff.

Other thing that surprised me is that the half-term during exams is actually a nightmare. If you can fill half of that with intensive tutoring/revision camp then I would. So many parents felt their children when completely off the boil and it was very hard to get them back into the right mindset and energy.