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How much support is realistic?

56 replies

purpleheartsandroses · 06/03/2026 20:54

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).

OP posts:
Terew · 08/03/2026 09:48

Agree on spending more time revising per night and also more active revision strategies.In terms of timings in papers, is he doing the questuons he is strongest on first; developing confidence and leaving time for the more challenging questions?

JazzyAmbs · 08/03/2026 09:52

This was my nephew this time last year. At same school set up but he was boarding. I don’t think the school did do enough but equally he didn’t help himself, is extremely lazy and just not interested. There were extra sessions he could have gone to and didn’t. He did improve a couple of grades but got mainly 3/4/5s. I don’t know what the answer is sorry but they do need to want to help themselves.

Boxoffrogs21 · 08/03/2026 10:43

I think you’re being unrealistic about what the school can or should be doing, but also if you used to work there perhaps that is because you know they aren’t very good. That would then raise the question of why you would send him to a school you don’t think is very good.

You’re working with the benefit of hindsight - in year 10 he was on track and in the November mocks he will have been in the normal situation of being a grade off his realistic target grade and two away from the optimistic target (a 7 is an A in old money, which is optimistic for a child with a scaled SAT score of 103 i.e. ‘average’ and therefore grades 4-6 would be typical). Plus, you knew at that point where he was and you weren’t overly worried, so why should they be? The most recent tests have then been absolutely shocking - to you and to them - and they have reported them to you now in a timely fashion. In my school, he would be flagged as underachieving and we would be discussing that and I think parents are contacted. However, there is a limit to what we can do - he is one of, at a very conservative estimate, 200 children that each teacher sees each week. In his class, he’s one of 30 children who all deserve and need the teacher’s time and attention. Teachers can’t learn the content for him and they can’t practice exam technique for him. It is also important at some point for kids to take responsibility for their own learning - this is that point. If you (and teachers) do all the work for him now, it’ll only come unstuck at A Level instead. Remember, your experience is working with primary school children while he’s got a just a couple of years left before he’s an adult. Secondary school is about gradually removing the scaffolding and support so they stand on their own two feet while there are still people around to catch them when they fall. What does he say about his current grades and why they happened and what he’s going to do about it?

In reality, you have been given an enormous amount of feedback on the free education that your child receives (you pay for the co-curriculum, so it’s a total red-herring to say this is a fee-paying school). Even in a private school, it’s still at a point where the school can do very little to figure out what went wrong. It’s up to you to figure out what has happened between November and February that has affected your son’s results so dramatically, and then help your son fix it. He has got decent exam technique - he used it to get 5s in November - so the problem is that he doesn’t know enough now and is then getting into a panic/spending far too long on some questions in the exam.

The only possible valid criticism you have is if timing really has been a genuine issue for years and they have not considered exam access arrangements before now. That wouldn’t mean he would get them - there has been a significant tightening up of regulations on this once almost a quarter of students were getting extra time. And, even if he should have been awarded it, that still won’t account for a 4 grade drop, so not the pertinent issue here.

In my subject, to get a score as low as a 1, 2 or 3, you have to not understand the content. It’s not about running out of time. To be frank, most kids who run out of time, it’s also because they don’t know the content - unless you have a diagnosed issue that affects processing e.g. dyslexia. He’d not have got GDS on the reading paper at SATs if he was the level of processing challenge that results in a grade 2, nor would he have got a 5 in previous mocks. If you got 70% of the marks on 70% of the paper - i.e. you knew your stuff but you couldn’t process it quickly enough so left the last few questions - you’d still get a 5. That doesn’t seem to fit what’s happening here.

I have enormous sympathy for kids facing the current GCSEs as the content to learn is vast. Is it possible that previous exam results were not so bad because they were covering only recent work completed but once the mocks were covering the entire course, including work done well over a year ago, then his revision strategies just didn’t cut it (he had been relying on relatively short-term storage of recent content?) Get copies/scans/photos of the mock papers and go from there.

noblegiraffe · 08/03/2026 13:08

purpleheartsandroses · 06/03/2026 21:43

He got a 4 in maths in Nov. A 2 this time. Predicted a 6.

He got a scaled score of 103 in Y6 SATs (COVID years but they sat a past paper). So he should have been >2 even then?

I haven't seen the papers, they're not allowed to bring them home. He's been moved down to foundation so he's been doing foundation papers at home and getting around 60%. The mock was a higher paper in Nov and Feb.

It is extremely unusual for a pupil to go down from a 4 to a 2 in maths between November and February. That's why the school didn't flag anything up previously - because they reasonably expected him to get better at maths, not worse.

If the school don't let him take his mock papers home then please ask for a scanned copy to be emailed to you to look at.

If you say that he has been revising and achieved far higher in November than February then the problem isn't that he can't do the work to the standard that he achieved in November, it's something else. Mental health? Exam anxiety?

It seems unlikely to be poor exam technique if he performed reasonably in November and then failed across the board in February.

jamimmi · 10/03/2026 11:03

@purpleheartsandroses I know you said no spld, but u should get him screened. Able dyslexics can cope till gcse/ a levels then crash. I have a dd who coped till gcse then crashed spectacularly at a level. She used to use the read highlight technigues, now uses and app with flash cards and spider diagrams for uni and changes her workspace every 40 mins( very possibly some neurondiversity) Id ask school to reduce exams and get maths english and science maybe history at this stage. Better 5 to 6 ok results than none. Perhaps consider btec instead of a levles too most unis now accept these if thats what he wants.

Barnsleybonuz · 10/03/2026 12:21

I had this in a couple of subjects with my youngest. He was getting 2’s and 3’s subjects he should have been getting at least 6 in. Paid privately to get him assessed for ADHD and is now on meds getting 8 & 9. School never contacted me and I was furious

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