Can average children be pushed to get 'A' at GCSE or is it setting them up to fail?!

[Bluebell99]

My friend has just removed her child from our secondary school because she wants her to get A's in her GCSE and doesn't think she is on track to do so. Parents are supportive pushy and ambitious but child is average ability but works hard. My other child is at primary with this child's sibling and apparently the sibling is in tears everytime they have a test. So her children are under alot of pressure to do well. Do you think average ability children can achieve 'A' grades if pushed or is it just setting them up to fail???
It's making me worry that I am not pushing my older child enough :( He is above average but not a high flyer.

Sorry, academic prizes not prized.

Yellowtip makes the good point that there is pushing and pushing.
We all have different boundaries. So do our DC.

As long as those boundaries are sensible for our DC's personalities then all will be well.

This morning in the car I was testing DD on her etre and avoir verbs. Some would see that as pushing too hard. She is afterall on holiday. But it was twenty mins and she's now roaming around town with her buddies, and later I'm taking both mine and a gang of their mates for a swim. So I'm hardly working her into the ground. I think she can take the pressure .

Cortina, your experience is well out of date.

CSEs had different syllabuses than O Level, so movement was not easy as a child got older back then - that was one of the aguments for GCSEs (I say my O levels just as they were talking about changing to GCSE).

My daughter - half way through year 11 has been moved up a set in Literature because her set wasn't moving at the right speed for her. The choice of whether she sits foundation or higher was decided last term, term 2 of year 11!

I think the current system (for all its failings) is pretty good at ensuring the student who shows potential or improvement late has the right opportunities. It's not perfect but it is much better than it was in our day. When I double entered English CSE and O level I had to have extra lessons to cover the different sytles of questionning. Now you cannot, unfortuantely, double enter but at least the syllabuses and exam technique are pretty much the same.

Yes, Kez. It's better now are agree although I would say there are still problems of a different nature. I was making the point to respond to a question about my intellect or lack thereof :).

I agree, even.

Yes. I agree there are different problems now.

CSEs had different syllabuses than O Level, so movement was not easy as a child got older back then - that was one of the aguments for GCSEs (I say my O levels just as they were talking about changing to GCSE).

Er no - very similar, CSE had more practicals but many people did GCE and CSE in the same subjects, if you were borderline C/D it happened a lot.

One thing everyone seems to forget that in the good/bad old days it didn't matter what % you got, the exams were put into catagories, so the top scoring 10% got an A grade, the next 20% a B etc. So if you were in a particularly bright/hard working cohort you had to beat your peers to get good grades.

On the other hand if you were in a poor cohort you had fewer people to beat.

Some teachers used this to the advantage of some students by entering them for O Levels in November, knowing that the majority of November entries were resits.

GCSEs are easier to get high grades in becuase:

a) you are not graded acording to everyone else, if you get 96% in an exam you will get an A, not a B because 10% of the cohort got 97% or above.

b) Everyone does exams now, you never hear of a child who is taking no GCSEs unless they have severe SEN. So yes GCSEs have been dumbed down compared to O Levels because they were never meant to be the same, they were meant to replace GCE O Levels and CSEs.