GCSE '18s (19) - New Beginnings?

[whistl]

Following on from the GCSE 2018 threads as our DC enter year 12.
This the first thread in our new home in further education

DD too has put in a review at last minute yesterday. Fingers crossed - won't
Mind if it stays the same but really don't want it to go down.

@pannetone - the competency matrices are all pretty much of a muchness across all industries. He just needs the generic ones and to work how he could demonstrate the competence. For example the classic 'So are you a team player and if so, give me an example'. ....the answer would be "so, I guess a family is a team. When DS has to go to xyz I do her chores. The chores still need to be done so I take one for team.....but she still owes me one 😁". This gets quite a few ticks - family loyalty (to me that means company loyalty), getting on with siblings (getting on with team members) not being a pushover (believes in give and take), doing what's right for the family (the team), not being resentful of doing chores (they know there are always rubbish jobs that need to be done and they are used to graft), and humour (yay!). That answer is way better than 'I am in a rugby team every Saturday and unless we work together as a team we won't win the local league'. Basically you can get all the competencies on line and work out an optimal answer. The sports/music/dancing/school events answers we have heard a million times- I have been recruiting people into my teams for 20 years and quite frankly the stock answers make me glaze over.

DS has decided he hates maths but struggles to explain why. He is doing well in it so it's not the difficulty. I don't want him to make a hasty decision and drop it but I was a bit concerned that he says doing maths actually makes him miserable!

bpisok brilliant! Cutting and pasting this for future reference. I also hate hearing the clichéd stuff about winning trophies and sales!

@LooseAtTheSeams - yep, exactly the same thing as DD was saying. All she could properly express was that it isn't hard but she loathes it and the idea of spending 20% of her next 2 years doing it was stressing her out.
We were talking about it yesterday because some more have dropped out and two more are trying to persuade their parents to let them stop this week. From being one of the largest classes it is looking like it will only have 4 continuing and only one doing FM.
I wonder why everyone hates it given that all our DC are saying it's not hard (yet).

Thinking about it, I guess the 'next stage' is going to be packed with interviews.
I

bpisok it's not just DS then? Sorry to hear your dd said the same thing. I honestly can't work out what the problem is. It's not the time spent on homework - he spends at least the same amount of time on other subjects and loves them. The teachers are nice, so it's not them.

Did they use to like doing maths at GCSE and now aren't enjoying the A level or was it a case at GCSE they knew they had to do maths so just got on with it but now they have a choice they aren't so keen. What were their reasons for doing it in the first place? was it enjoyment or its a good A level and goes with any subject?

I think for DS he was good at it and it rounded off his other subjects. I don't think he ever loved it, though - that did worry me when he picked his options.

In DDs case she is good at maths but has never enjoyed it.
She is REALLY good at computer science - we saw her GCSE marks and she got 50/50 for the coding paper and 49/50 for the theory paper. To do CS at university she would need maths. Hence the choice.

She dropped it last week with the full knowledge that a CS degree at a good University is now off the cards

She started doing Politics instead of Maths and loves it. I think I am going to have a lawyer in the family rather than an IT geek.

Thanks bpisok - that gives me much more of an idea of how to guide DS2 to answer competency questions. And that standing out from other candidates (no extra curricular or trophies here!) might be a good thing.

DS3 is ok with all of his subjects - just a heavy workload with 5. (School policy as Maths and FM are one option and they take 4) Though I have DD in Y9 wobbling about her choice of Statistics for GCSE - they have started GCSE courses this year.

bpisok how odd! DS is the same! Very able programmer indeed, but decided the computer science A level was boring so maths would keep that option open. Now he doesn't care about computers if it means doing maths and is talking about law or philosophy for degree subjects.
He's threatening to switch to music or sociology.

@LooseAtTheSeams - it's also interesting that maths was soooooo stressful that they would both rather give up on their planned careers than have to go to the maths classes for 2 years despite them not finding the subject difficult.
We had quite a long chat with the school careers advisor and the headmistress, and they pointed out that if she doesn't like studying maths she's going to loathe a CS degree as well because it's mainly maths. That was a light bulb moment for the pair of us.....she would be committing to 5 years of maths not 2.

He was also toying with doing a psychology degree and maths would give an advantage there but over the summer he changed his mind about that, too!
We'll see. He's doing 4 subjects so he could drop it or switch at this stage (it's only week 2) and no damage done.

@pannetone - extra curricular can be a dangerous thing in an interview. Candidate says they are a skier and I think 'time off for broken bones', candidate says their greatest achievement was a grade 8 on the cello and I think 'Do I care? How does this make you more employable? Why are you telling me this?' - and yes in the back of my head I know that achieving a grade 8 takes practice and dedication which are transferable skills but I am still thinking 'couldn't you have been smart enough to come up with something more relevant?' I would be impressed with taking part in a debating club despite having a stammer, helping someone (eg tutoring a peer so that they pass an exam), and loads of other stuff. I don't want to hear that they won the international tiddlywinks competition or have so many commitments that they couldn't work late to meet a deadline.

Not sure what happens in Uni interviews though (note to self....must find out).

Pure maths becomes increasingly philosophical (it genuinely belongs in the art faculty). What they did at GCSE was only a tiny bit of pure maths.

I have an idea that applied maths is easier - and there are lots of applied maths courses - but I guess its horses for courses. If you are able to bend to the philosophical nature of it then pure is easier, if you are a scientist at heart, then applied is easier.

From what I've seen DS do so far for A level, most of it is pure maths, thought there has been some applied (mechanics and statistics).

I think there is often a difference between dc that are good at Maths and those that love it.
I was a child that was fairly bright, good at Maths, attempetd A level and realised I was out of my depth and hated it.
My ds loves maths - I mean really loves it! Talks about it all the time, has a pencil and a problem on his desk/dining table at all times, and talks about maths as 'beautiful'
I have neices and nephews that did Maths A level as a means to an end - they did well but didn't like it - they were taking a long view (the ones that ended up doing Science degrees/medicine).
Better to know early on though than to be stressed at the end of Y12 - another of my relatives was like this and ended up repeating Y12 with completely different A levels! Worked well for her, but she had a miserable first year.

Anybody else's dc v tired. Dd was really buoyant but has hit a wall . To be fair her social life has upped slightly but I think it's more the effect of a full brain.

Dd is going to bed at 9.30pm each night. But she does have incredibly long days, yesterday she did 8am - 7pm (normal day is 9am -6pm but she does some extra classes).

Her days are long with travel and they were quite long before as she had the travel before. Just need to keep her going and keep her sensible about getting enough sleep.

DS1 is enjoying Maths so far and doesn't think it's got much harder (yet). He says he hasn't learnt anything new yet but that might be the Ad Maths content being covered? I'm pretty sure all his class did Ad Maths.

I vividly remember the first term if A Level Maths being a shock but the fog clearing by Christmas. I also remember Pure being by harder than Applied (I did Stats). I loved the Stats and seriously thought about doing it at Uni.

He does say Physics is the 'hard' one at the moment. He's most enjoying Chemistry as the experiments are really 'cool'.

He's definitely tired though. Rugby training is quite intense but I'm pleased he's keeping it up as it's good to be physically tired!

Kilash I think you're right. Also blame myself for going on about how great it is you choose your subjects. DS now expects to enjoy them whereas he didn't have much choice at GCSE!
Meanwhile parentpay is asking me for an enrolment fee for DoE gold. That doesn't sound like DS - will be interested to see what he says.
Hope the dcs with long commutes are able to recharge at weekends - it does sound very tiring.

Sorry, that should be long days as well as long commutes.
I had a 9 hour teaching day yesterday and my brain is scrambled!!

DS is out 7:45 - 5:15 each day, and then has 10 hours or so of homework per week on top. He doesn't seem too tired, coping with it well, albeit he has been moaning that he doesn't like being obliged to work hard. There's another 5/6 weeks until half-term. i expect he'll need a rest then.

whistl sounds like it's going well for him! DS doesn't seem too tired. He leaves around 7.45 in the morning but he's usually back around 4.15 or 4.30. He does a lot more homework than he used to!