How much support is realistic?

[purpleheartsandroses]

Hi,

I just want to gauge opinions. I've got a meeting with school next week but not sure if I'm being unrealistic with my expectations. (I'm an ex-teachers so know what I would have done).

Y11 boy. Underachieving in all subjects. Drastically underachieving e.g. predicted a 7 and got a 1 in the latest mocks. November mocks was underachieving by roughly 2 grades in most subjects, achieving target in 1 subject, exceeding target in 1 subject. End of Y10, underachieving on paper because they sat actual papers and hadn't covered a lot, but teachers were all happy he would be on track.

Well behaved generally, the odd demerit for organisation (when they changed the timetable so PE days changed) and little things but behaviour has never been an issue. Happy at home. Social. Sporty. I won't rule out MH, but certainly doesn't seem it on the surface.

What would you expect from school in these circumstances?

For transparency: It is a fee-paying state school (yes, they exist. The education is free but fees are mandatory for the co-curricular program and/or boarding. Cheaper than private school but the same level of facilities).

He cannot bring the papers home, true (schools are advised to keep them in case Covid #2) but maybe they would let him take pictures so you can look at them with him? It does seem staggering.

Is any of those subjects MFL? (my subject) To get a grade 1 in French you would have to gain about 10 marks per paper (or even less) which I agree, would be the level of a not very able year 7 student. You could get 10 marks on the reading paper just by knowing the words for the days of the week and school subjects, pretty much. I would imagine this would be replicated across other subjects too. He is clearly able.

ETA: actually Higher papers go down to a grade 3,, but I agree, if he sat a H paper then a grade 2 or 1 would be impossible.

Has he always been at the same school?
Have you ever been concerned about progress before?

It sounds maybe a processing issue.

What were his Ks1 and Ks2 SATs results?

The HOY is the one I'm emailing to meet. (I know his tutor from working there and that would be a waste of time).

I think I am just really annoyed it's all been down-played at parents evenings and no one has contacted me to express their concerns. It should not wait until reports are out for me to find out about this.

In my eyes, summer Y10 should have been, "not where he should be - focus on revision over summer". Nov reports - "grades are worrying - come in for a meeting".
Dec parents evening - "we're concerned he won't make the grades. Interventions start now". And contact before half term (after mocks) to say - "meeting - urgent". Not wait for the report and for me to contact them.

No MFL. They didn't have a teacher for most of Y9 so that was the 1 subject I put my foot down and said not to do.

From what he tells me, he answers at least half the paper in maths/science. Often doesn't get on to the last question in long question papers like history/English lit. And won't get to the final few pages of business/geography. From what I see when he does practice papers at home, this seems believable.

I can't remember ks1 scores but I know reading and 1 other was GDS, others EXS. KS2 reading was GDS, others were EXS. All comfortably EXS, not just scraping by.

Maths I know he got 14 marks in paper 1 and 14 marks in paper 2. Not sure about paper 3.

I can find mark schemes online, are the grade boundaries easily available?

GDS at KS2 for reading is not easy to achieve. He would need to complete the whole paper, which makes the current inability to do so even more strange.

Yes grade boundaries are available.

try here

https://mathsbot.com/gcse/boundaries

If they won’t send papers home, could you get some practice papers at home to work through with him. See if you can identify what is holding him back.

Thank you. That would make sense how they've come to the conclusion of a 2 for maths with those boundaries.

I’d do some papers at home with him, setting a timer for each question and telling him when to move to the next. See what he’s doing with maths because the easier questions don’t need revision it’s just a case of doing maths they’ve been doing for years. It doesn’t make sense as to how he can have dropped that low. I would want to see if he’s even answered half the paper .

if that is the case I would say that 2 is not a realistic grade.

the higher paper contains only questions of grade 4 “difficulty” if that makes sense.

so if he does the foundation paper about half of it is questions of grade 1/2/3 difficulty and anout half of it is questions of grade 4/5 difficulty.

if he can get ANY marks on the higher paper that means he is capable of grade 4 work and unless he is incredibly careless he’ll get basically full marks on the grade 1/2/3 stuff.

so his actual working grade is probably more like a high 3/ low 4.

Do you think he is possibly panicking & zoning out completely? Those are SUCH low scores for what sounds like quite an able young man.

I think you'd be best off finding a good counsellor tbh.

Yes I agree with @Octavia64 there. If he sat the H paper in any subject, but was in the end going to sit the F paper, the mark is fairly meaningless and certainly not as low as a grade 2. That said, 60% which I think you said he gained in a F maths paper he sat, is only going to get him a grade 3. Still that's something to work on.

@purpleheartsandroses I feel that you are asking how much support the school should be giving and your anger is understandable. But for me, the key aspect here should be how can you and the school now best support your DS to get at least some passing grades in his GCSEs.

I meant to say before, if he does get a DX of some ND or dyslexic issues, he can get extra time or other accommodations for A level, even if he didn't have them for GCSE. A friend’s DC had similar. I do realise that's not much help right now tho.

103 sats scaled score would give gcse targets of 5s at my school and we tend to use challenging targets. (FFT top quarter for anyone who cares).

I’m slightly surprised they predicted him 7s.

i suspect this is largely a foundation/higher choosing what paper to sit issue rather than he is actually working at grade 1 or grade 2.

have school given you any information on which he is likely to sit? It can be a tricky decision especially for students like your son who are right on the edge of being able to access the higher paper,

Some potential factors:

has there been any upheaval at home? Arguments and/or tension? Children can often pick up on these things.

could it be he’s just not academic?

previous poster mentioned weed, do you live in an area where there is easy access to this type of stuff? It can be easily hidden and you may not be aware of it.

eye exam??
surely at his age he can explain the drop, is he feeling unwell? there are some odd illnesses that can crop up in the teen years both physically and mental health wise. certainly a solid gp check should be easy enough to organize.
although a state school do they work with a particular ed psych or know of a private ed psych that can quickly slot him in? it would certainly be worth paying to have a quick assessment for inattentive adhd.
vodka? cough syrup? i wouldn't rule out substance abuse.

The 7s are for the literacy/humanities based subjects, presumably as he got GDS in reading at KS2. But they also use CAT4. I know they use FFT to set targets but cannot remember which percentage. Top 25% sounds familiar but that could well be a previous school I've worked in. The 6s and 7s certainly seemed realistic target grades at the beginning of y10. And he was on track with them at the beginning.

The school haven't told me anything directly. He's told me he's been moved to bottom set maths and will now sit Foundation. And he's told me his physics teacher wants him to do foundation but chemistry and biology want him to do higher.

Last eye exam was August. I can book another one to rule it out. GP is already on the cards. He was quite ill at one point so I have considered post-viral fatigue. GPs response so far has just been 'wait and see'.

No ed-phsyc visit is realistic. I know from working there previously.

I'm not naive enough to rule out substance abuse (I wasn't a "good" teen), but he's pretty open with us. He's quite happy for us to hunt in his room for a charger, or look through his bag to borrow a pen so there's no secrecy or hiding.

Yes. I just know that I would never have let it get this far with a student without meeting with parents. And certainly wouldn't have waited for parents to contact me. I'd expect him to be highlighted in faculty meetings, and raised as someone of concern with head of academics. I'm angry there's been no contact, and concerns have been down-played at parents evenings. I've always been given the message "he'll be fine!" But it's clearly not fine. And I'm quite p'd off that they think that. I think it's because he's well behaved they don't consider it a concern.

I've always left him to do his own revision, and just been there to make sure he does it, mark anything he wants me to, and help explain things if he comes to me. I'm obviously now going to be more hands on, but independent revision for y11 is pretty standard.

He claims not to be panicked. But I think this is a sensible route to investigate. There is a school counselor I can contact.

Does he know the timings for the papers he's sitting? I'm very strict with mine about when they have to move on in order to get all the way through English papers.

1. What does he think the problem is?

1. Ask the school to send you photocopies of his mock papers so you can talk through with him what was happening and see what happened

1. maths and English get him a tutor

1. He's doing 10 GCSEs? I would drop 2 and focus on the core ones. Perhaps he's feeling overwhelmed?

1. 1hr revision after school isn't much if that's everything he is doing. yr 7 grammar school homework is 1.5hrs a day so yr 11 I would expect 2-3hrs a day

1. look at his revision technique. Highlighting text is probably not effective. It needs to be more active revision to stick - writing notes / doing quizzes

1. Get him to do some past papers and mark them yourself and see where the wheels are coming off

I think you have had some good advice upthread. Untangling things, I think the issues for maths/physics and english/humanties are slightly different.
Predicting a 6 from 103 in maths SATs is very aspirational. At my DD's school you would be more likely to be predicted a 4/5 depending on other factors. He got a 4 in Nov and a 2/3 in the latest mocks. When grading based on a single assessment point, students do move up and down. The school will want him to sit foundation, because they think he has a better chance of a 4/5 on that paper. With 2 months to go that might be the best option - a 6 looks unlikely. I would suggest he needs to be more targetted with his revison. It needs quality and quantity. He needs to look at the past papers he has done at home/school, identify the topics he is losing marks on and then do multiple example questions on those topics. Maths genie is free and lists every gcse topic. It has multiple example questions, worked solutions and videos. He needs to do the examples (watch the video first if he doesn't know how to start them), mark them and most importantly go back and redo the ones he gets wrong. They are presented in grade bands so it easy to identify topics relevant to his level of attainment. Maths improvements come from repeated pracice.
His english/humanties grades seem much more off from his previous trajectory. I would talk to him about what happened. Did he panic? Is he low in confidence and feeling overwhelmed? Is he avoiding revising topics he finds hard? I think other issues might be influencing his performance here. At this stage it might be best to focus revison on English/Maths and a smaller number of subjects that he favours and/or are important for his likely next steps. If he is feeling overwhelmed by the volume of work this might help.
He needs to stop just reading and highlighting, as has been pointed out above, it isn't effective. He needs more 'active' techniques. For humanties he needs to be writing summary notes in a style if his choice (mind maps, bullet points, flash cards), doing practice questions (past papers on web or revision guides) and then revisiting the things he couldn't answer. He should then redo the questions he struggled with.
Things were looking more promising in November and have gone down in the latest mocks. He can do better. Tell him that, but to do so he needs to up the quality and quantity if his revision. His confidence must have taken a big knock. He needs to know he can change things if he puts in some targetted work. Maybe the school could have done more - I cant judge that. However, he and you can only really control what happens at home.

I agree on the revision techniques (although it does raise questions about why he was at least broadly on track in November and so wildly off now). Reading and highlighting is a very poor revision strategy - try at least reading and summarising onto a flashcard/A3 page of notes/spider chart, etc. - and there’s no point doing past papers if you get someone else to mark them because most of the value comes from seeing where you went wrong and getting familiar with the markschemes.