Exam results question

[shootingstarz]

We got our childs exam results back yesterday it appears that all the subjects we revised for are in the 90s, the two subjects we didn?t have time to do are in the 30s. I would have thought that within a year a bright child should be able to retain more than 30% of what has been taught during the year without having to revise. So, my question is, is the school just showing us what to teach and without parental input my child will fail?

How old is your dc?

Some children retain information better than others,

The school cannot change your child. Some children will ace A* with no revsion and even, in some cases, with apparantly little work. Others work like absolutely billy-oh and get C, or D or lower.

Just use it to show your DC that hard work helps results. They clearly are not a child who is going to walk everything without putting in some work.

Erm , not sure I understand when you say 'we' revised for it. Shouldn't your child have revised everything, whether you had the time or not? That's not really expecting parental input but effort on the child's part.

Well surely what you have learnt is that your DS is not one of those kids who can get by without revision as he doesn't retain information that was perhaps taught in September/October. My DD is very able and without revision would pass all her exams, but needs to revise and sit and learn stuff in detail to score the maximum 80s-90s style marks. My DS retains practical subjects well ( eg chemistry where he can remember doing the experiments) but things like history, without revision he would barely remember anything other than the vague ideas studied- after revision it comes back to him.

Agree with other comments that is is your son who should be doing the revision- I fell into this trap with DS in previous years,but got myself out of it this year, by showing him how to write a list of what he needed to revise, then estimate the time needed and looked to see if his timetable was realistic. Other than that I "reminded him" at his revision times, he got on with it, and if he wanted me to , I offered to test him from his notes to see how much he learned. When it wasn't good, he went and had another go. Then for the last 2 weeks he was back at school so he was on his own.

He has done very well in some subjects and passed everything else- but he is very proud that he did it mostly by himself.

Are you saying that your parental effort involved actually teaching him stuff he hadn't been taught or were you just going over with him what was in his books?

"We revised for ????
Why would anyone totally ignore 2 subjects ?
I am confused.

So in the exams he did well in, it was because you helped him revise, and in the exams he did badly in, it's because the school did a poor job? Exactly when are you going to ask him to take responsibility for his OWN education?

He is only 10, at this age learning how to revise is more important than anything else IMO. We ignored two of the subjects because I have 4 children and there was so much work to get through. I did the same with my other children and although the subjects we revised were much better there wasn?t such a discrepancy in the results.
I find it really odd that people find it so unacceptable if a parent helps their child revise yet it?s perfectly ok to say that your child it tutored.

I think the problem is you have posted on the secondary boards so people expecting anything from a nearly 12yr old to a 18yr old who should be a bit more independent. Not that it's wrong for a parent to help at those ages, but just in the background guiding unless they are really struggling with a subject.

It also does sound like you are trying to find something to blame for the discrepancy and it might just be your dc is not that interested in those subjects and not retained the information

.....and, not everybody agrees it is a good thing for young children to have to go to tutors on top of their school week.

Do you know what the class averages were for the different papers? Some might have been a lot harder than others.