DD's mocks results are a disaster - what can I do now?

[Earningsthread]

Art target grade A* - mock grade - A/B
Biology target grade A* - mock grade - C
Chemistry target grade A* - mock grade - C
English Language target grade A* - mock grade - A
English Literature target grade A* - mock grade - A
French target grade A* - mock grade - D
History target grade A - mock grade - A
ICT target grade A - mock grade - A
Mathematics target grade A* - mock grade - A
Music target grade A* - mock grade - B
Physics target grade A* - mock grade - D

This girl is talented. So talented that her English teachers in every year have told me that she is the most gifted student they have ever seen. But just look at those mock results. They are APPALLING. She is underachieving in every subject bar 2. What should I do? What can I do? There are only six months between now and the exams. The school thought she was an Oxbridge banker. I know my rebellious DD and knew she would not work. But there is not working and not working. THose mock GCSE results are appalling.

What if anything, can I do to help at this late stage?

Personally, I've never quite agreed with the parenting approach which says its our job to support them in whatever they want to do - let's face it, this is a 15 year old in charge of her life here - she doesn't see the big picture and if she did, she wouldn't have the experience to understand it. She won't believe that if she doesn't work now, it affects her chances for the rest if her life. She doesn't see that if she chooses a path where she doesn't need good GCSEs , that 10 years from now she still won't stand a chance (on average) of getting a mortgage because she has no prospects. Or funding her plans for world travel. Or pursuing that expensive hobby.

I think your job as a parent is to help her achieve her full potential, which is clearly what you are trying to do. But the hardest bit is to get her to see that NOT achieving that potential is going to set her back fro many years.

Because there's more to life, especially at that age, than grades. Your only young once after all. I could have done better in my gcse's (mainly B's and some A's and C's), but I'm glad I didn't spend any more time revising than I did because I did other stuff instead and have lots of memories and development because of that. All I'm saying is there needs to be a balance. She needs to know that how you treat her doesn't just relate to her academic effort and achievement.

Earnings I completely understand.

I'll front up here and say that what you're going through is one of myy greatest fears. I come from a disadvanatged background and have made a real go of my life. Yes, I'm a bit clever, but mostly I've grafted. I've grabbed every opportunity that has come my way with both hands.

I find laziness and arrogance beyond frustrating. It's so shortsighted.

But here's the thing, my Nan always used to say 'you can't put an old head on young shoulders.' Shortsightedness is part of teen DNA.

If you've given her every opportunity. If you modelled hard work and application yourself. If you've made her aware of the facts...then you've done your bit.

Well, I think we all project when reading Mumsnet. Even when original posters return to tell us more, we have a limited picture and use our own experiences to read between the lines.

It's an interesting thread for me as my daughter is now in Y12, having done GCSEs earlier in the year.

I am very troubled generally by the way in which people seem to confuse education with exam results. I think that the curriculum has become more and more exam focused, with the result that many students of all sorts of abilities can become disaffected. Obviously the really good teachers - and perhaps the really good parents - try to broaden things out so that young people can feel some kind of joy and excitement in finding out more about the world. But too often this gets left out and it's just, 'You must work harder'. (Shades of Animal Farm, I think.)

I live in a major regional city where there must be 1000s of young people studying Politics at A-level. Last there was a debate at one of the city's universities about immigration, with some good speakers. (It'll be broadcast on Radio 4 next year.) So my partner and I took my daughter along. She really enjoyed the debate, and we had a good discussion in the car on the way home. But I was surprised - and a bit saddened - that though there were some university students in the audience of around 300 people, there wasn't anybody else of my daughter's age,

It is if our concern about education has degenerated into, 'Will it get their grades up if I take their X-box away?' Which is desperately sad, when you think about it.

Beck I agree with you mostly.

I think just letting a kid take the easy way, cos they can't be arsed, isn't the best route.

But what can the OP actually do?

OP - my DD achieved 7a* and 4 a's at GCSE.

She then went to college and did appallingly at AS level. She really underestimated the course work and her results came as a massive shock to her.

She has really re-motivated herself this year however for A2 and is predicted A to A* in her 3 subjects and has just been short listed for interview at Oxford (we will find out in New Year if she has a place)

What I'm trying to say is that there is still time for your daughter to turn herself around but she has to want to.

We used Justin Craig between Xmas and NY last year and again at Easter, which moved her C/D in Maths to a B..... and our C/D in double Science to B/C.

Useful exam technique guidance and a fresh eye from outside school.

Frau I agree that young people don't need to spend all their life studying.

And in fact, lots of the highest achievers academically have big passions and hobbies outside school. What is the old saying...ask a busy person?

Whilst academic achievement has a high priority in Casa Wordfactory, so too do sport, music, reading, telly watching, zombie zapping and eating crisps.

DD took a large proportion of year 9 out of school to appear in a west end show. School were fully supportive as were DH and I (though I'll admit to an initial wobble - I'm only human).

It didn't affect her grades.

But here's the thing. The girls at her school who are underachieving aren't doing wonderful things that are going to enrich their lives. They're just wasting endless hours on FB!

I think FrauMoose makes a good point. Young people are coming out of the sausage machine extremely well qualified but in too many not very well educated. I think it merits reflection.

If the average Oxbridge applicant has 8 A*... WTF were they doing interviewing DS, who, erm, doesn't?

I didn't think he had much chance, but it might have been kinder to look at his string of A, B and A* and just not interview.

Oh well.

Mind you, he is extremely good at the things he chooses to be good at, and Earning's daughter similarly won't need brilliant science results to do English as a degree, surely. She'll need very good English at A level, I would think, not Physics.

NorthernLebkuchen "My concern is my child's happiness not grades on paper."

I'm sure this is the OP's concern. But she has a child who is the opposite of yours. Your psychological approach must be to reassure your child that results aren't important, as your DD stresses and worries. The OP has a daughter who needs to work, so the approach of "results don't matter" would just reinforce her child's attitude.

I think that the early experience of school doesn't help. Bright children can just coast through the early years, and revise at the last minute. Children who struggle more are able to experience the satisfaction of working hard and achieving through that.

We all want what's best for our children on this thread. The OP needs to change her DD's mindset - not just for exams, but for life. You can't coast in a job, or you get the sack, and that goes for jobs from cleaners to MDs of multinationals!

Totally agree with wordfactory.

"She'll need very good English at A level, I would think, not Physics."

But she won't get a very good English grade if she hasn't learnt to work hard. The question on the thread is how to get the DD to work hard before it's too late, using her own motivation. It is disappointing to see your child not applying herself. Education is really wasted on the young.

What does your dd want from life, OP? She sounds underwhelmed by life and school at the moment, with the expectation of more underwhelming experiences to come. And let's face it, there's no better way to kill a genuine passion for a subject than to get someone to revise hard in order to pass a formulaic exam. Is the idea of Oxbridge or any of her other supposed ambitions anything more than a word and an incredibly vague notion in her mind? It's very hard to work hard for something if in your head you don't really have any clear idea of what it really is you are aiming for and why.

I don't think you need to be this involved.

Agreed, actually, Stroke.

All the same, she may just possibly be crap at science, even GCSE science, and busily not working so that she can shrug this off.

Similarly or more so for music, where DS2, who is bright, keen and working at it, is still struggling to get above a B despite having had two grade 5s and a 6 under his belt for some time now. Analysing and composing music is a different skillset from playing it.

You know your daughter, OP. Is she as good an all-rounder as her teachers think, or is she brilliant at English and therefore somehow expected to be an ace at everything?

"she may just possibly be crap at science, even GCSE science, and busily not working so that she can shrug this off." Yes, I agree. I put that in an earlier post. Children who have been praised for being clever can feel really exposed when they start to find the work difficult, and it's easier to pretend they do badly because they haven't revised than because they can't do the work.

The OP really needs to sit down and ask her daughter pertinent questions, rather than nag her DD to revise. Ask her DD what she wants to achieve, and that it's up to her, and not her mum, to achieve those goals. Better to work hard and get a B, than to not work and get an A* - something along those lines.

Big mistake is teachers telling her/you how clever she is. From my own experience it breeds complacency (that would be me and ds).

Ds is Grade 8 music but still finds some of the GCSE tricky - the ABRSM stuff is traditional and for the GCSE there is quite a bit of analysing of modern music and knowing terms that would have the powers that be at ABRSM reaching for the smelling salts.

The French listening is difficult. The average native English speaker is innately crap at this task. Have to pick up marks elsewhere unless you are going to move a native French speaker into the house for a few months.

But the good news is that these results are a fantastic wake-up call. They're not the real thing!

wordfactory Thu 19-Dec-13 20:49:52

"A good set of academics are becoming imperative if one is to have a life of meaningful independence."

Does this mean nobody will get a job as a plumber or an electrician or a carpenter in the next generation? Or merely that this isn't seen as meaningful?

In the MN world it is impossible to live on the income of a skilled craftsman or find meaning in a life that is not lived among high flyers.

In RL I know quite a few young people who seem to manage this rather well.

But then I know quite a few people who are graduating from universities other than Oxbridge and walking straight into employment too.

I agree that the OP's dd needs to change her mindset. But not because a top university is the only way to earn an income. More because the other jobs, the non-Oxbridge jobs, involve hard work, too.

My very bright nephew left school and set up his own carpentering business: he is still doing very well despite recessions. But I don't imagine it's less hard work than writing a PhD. He has done well outside of academe precisely because he was prepared to work hard.

I don't think the OP has told us yet whether her daughter wants to apply to Oxbridge.

yes lainiekazan - prizing should be for effort and not for posessing talents

Could it be that she actually does not like science and so is putting more effort into the other subjects. With the projected grades she was being put under a lot of pressure, possibly for the first time in her young life.
Now is the time to provide support and discuss options to go forward with. There are, however, many ways of earning your living that do not involve going to a 'top university'

Agree cory 100%. MN is verging on obsessed with certain lifestyle and incomes which for many are not even on their radar yet they seem to have good lives.I think we are going to see a huge shift in our lifetime as degrees are 2 a penny and there is just very little work in the UK and a deadly shortage of housing. We need to start focussing on the bigger picture. University guarantees nothing apart from debt. I looked at my ds and his mates last night 10 of them and wonder if the 3 who aren't at university actaully made such a bad choice!

It seems incredibly snobby to say that those who are not university graduates doing traditional professional jobs do not have 'meaningful life experience.'

There also people who have done the good degrees and - even in these straitened times - gained access to professional jobs and incomes. But who are pretty miserable and drinking themselves stupid in such little spare time they have.