Fed up after options evening

[toomanyoptions]

Hi, my ds(12) isn't the most academic kid but tries so hard, he is a little below on maths/english but hopefully will improve in time. tonight after options evening at school I noticed he is being put forward for the lowest group, practically all BTECS in motor mechanics/hairdressing etc with only a few GCSE options. The school did tell me that they 'band' kids from their results and a computer programme decided to put him in this group, and I am so annoyed that he isn't automatically being offered the chance to pick other subjects and seems to have been sent to the bottom of the pile at a young age!

I think the school should be encouraging all kids to try for the GCSEs rather than just get lumped in with a group where vocational subjects (not even that many offered!) are offered. ds is very upset and feels like he's stupid :(.

Pictures. Plenty of schools do have a 2 year GCSE course and that includes very many independent ones. If your DD had to leave, you probably would be able to find her a suitable one to match her current learning. Her school is probably not worried about league tables. I expect dance results count more.

"MrsBright is right. Schools do everything they can to massage the results because of these stupid league tables."

This is true - many schools do play the league table game - sometimes, sadly, at the expense of the needs of students.

Which is why I think this situation is so odd. The league tables that will exist in 2016 will be based on the 'best 8' qualifications which can include a max of 3 non-GCSE subjects (and stuff like double BTEC only counts as 1 subject).

Most schools 'playing the game' are running a mile from these 'double' or 'quadruple' BTECs and towards a more traditional GCSE based curriculum for most students.

You must fight this - they have no business placing limits on such a young child.

Some children who attain high levels at your sons age could stagnate and not improve that much later on and some children struggle but in year 9/10 start to flourish and everything comes together for them.

Do not let the school intimidate you, they try to choose as few as possible to enter the higher otherwise it would mean that the teachers actually have to do their job and teach, motivate and guide the children, so they just pick the children who they don't really need to work on.

My son is in year 9 and the school are trying to push him into double science not triple- even though he got an A* on a paper he did at the start of year 9! Go figure...

The teachers have certain children they look out for and the rest are left by the wayside - it's disgraceful!

I'm going to my sons options evening tonight to TELL them he's doing triple science.

Good luck and let me know if you need any more advice.

In no school I've ever worked at were certain children 'looked out for' and the rest left by the wayside. Please don't generalise.

Look in your dc's exercise books. How is his literacy? Can he spell and punctuate accurately? Is he meeting his target levels- if not, how far away? This updated info should be in his ex books somewhere, we are halfway through the academic year.

What level is he on for maths, English and science at the moment?

It looks as if most secondary schools go by the following system to correlate KS3 levels and GCSEs from the end of KS3 (Y9)
Level 3/4 (or below) expected GCSE grade G-D
Level 5 expected GCSE grade C
Level 6 expected GCSE grade B
Level 7 expected GCSE grade A/A*
So that children on the lower levels at the end of KS3 will be placed i e. BTEC group.
However if your child is only currently at the end of Y8 and is at the younger end of the year group, then you need to check that the computer program is adding on anything extra to allow for starting GCSEs a year early. For example this decision may be based on ds being level 4 now whereas he will be level 5 in a years time!
Some schools however do start most children on GCSE courses and make a decision to move to Btec later on for children who are borderline. Level 1 BTECs are equivalent to GCSE grades G-D whereas level 2 BTECs are equivalent to GCSE grades A*-C so I would check what sort of BTECs are being offered. If they are level 2 there isn't much difference in the long term ! HTH

OP, you are right, he's 12.

You need to fight this,he may be capable of much more than the schools computer banding programme thinks. (that such a thing exists is terrifying)

FWIW back in the old days when the banding system was in place and the bright kids got to do O levels and those who seemed to perform less well got to mend chairs, my friend was streamed to do CSEs. Well it turns out that this was based on her English marks alone. She's now a professor in Physical Chemistry and has worked at CERN on major projects. Don't accept it.

Get an appointment to see someone and take an hour off work if you have to.

Do they have any evidence that he would be good at motor mechanics etc? Or has the computer just decided that if he's not good at academics he has got to be good at practical subjects? Or are practical subjects rated so low that it doesn't matter if you are absolutely awful at them?

I have a ds who until very recently was only moderately good at the academic subjects: he might have been pretty predicted C's and D's (we are now looking at B's).

But ds is dyspraxic. he didn't learn to tie his shoelaces until he was in his teens; the main reason for his poor academic results was that he did not have the motor control to hold a pen and listen at the same time. He'd make an absolutely crap motor mechanic or hairdresser! He may not get brilliant results in English literature- but he can't complete his textile work at all. How could anyone come to the conclusion that he should be set to do practical subjects?

I'd hate for a computer to set him up to fail in this way, when there is a chance that he might just be able to work hard and get through his GCSE's and manage a white collar job. At least manage it better than he could conceivably manage any blue collar job.

To my mind, this is a terrible way of looking at practical skills: don't let's try to attract kids with any talent for working with their hands, let's just bung all the hopeless ones in together, because fixing a car or building a house doesn't take any skill, does it? And it doesn't matter if you get it wrong, does it?

(I suspect that's how our village carpenter ended up a carpenter: my parents' house still shows the signs. My db's house is downright dangerous due to an electrician whose career choice had probably come about in the same way)

I loathe the idea of 3 year GCSEs
so, so glad that DCs school does not do it - or early entry

DS has got his options evening in a couple of weeks
my only real regret is hat he will not be able to do Latin as DD has.

3 year GCSEs - that's sort of what I did at school and it's not as bad as it sounds if done well.

We had a sort of staggered options process so we dropped some subjects at the end of Year 8 (or 2nd year as we called it then!) so in year 9 we did fewer subjects but longer on each and then, at the end of year 9 we took our final options.

It allowed us to go into things more deeply rather than just rattling through the syllabus - that deeper knowledge helped gain higher grades as you knew stuff inside out rather than just the surface stuff.

have booked time off to see teachers next week and am going to insist he takes the gcses he wants to. am fed up of sats determining how he will end up! may as well get him signed on the dole now but he has such determination and really does try hard, it's so frustrating. would have liked one more year to choose options but he has to now let so many go that he may have improved on.

it's kind of weird that they think he could be good at mechanics, he hates to get his hands dirty and prefers to spend hours memorising facts about dr who (he's a bit obsessive and knows alot). i just dont' get why he finds certain subjects hard as he whizzes through the bbc bitesize site. wondering what to do really as i said i think the school has decided not to bother.

Our dcs school start options from yr 9. I was worried at first, but dd is now in yr10 and seems to be doing fine. With regard to Science, she sat core in yr9, is doing double this year, and triple in yr 11. I think that they only do triple if they think they are capable, so if not would just do double next year.

The thing is, the school do know what the likely outcomes are for different students who enter GCSEs from different starting points. These are different to what they were in our day.
It isn't being kind or 'giving a chance' to children very unlikely to succeed, to put them onto those courses. 3 years of slogging away to then fail does not benefit anyone. No one likes to think their child isn't suited to certain courses, but not all children are.
By doing the BTEcs etc there is probably a better chance of doing well in the core subject GCSEs so English and Maths and achieving passes in those is what is the absolutely key thing.

Go in for a further chat if you want to. You dont need to fight, but just ask for clarification of exactly why he has been put on this option. But be willing to accept this might be the best option for your son.

But Chocolate, if he is bad at the BTEC subjects he is going to be spending a lot of time trying to complete those tasks, thus taking time and energy away from his English and Maths.

How is it kind to put him on vocational subjects if he has no talent for those and hates doing them? Or doesn't it matter if you fail in motor mechanics? I can't imagine anything crueller than being the one boy in the class on motor mechanics who has no interest and doesn't understand what is going on.

And what kind of a life would it be, fixing other people's cars up and getting it wrong? He could do a lot more damage there than in your average pen pushing job.

Why this attitude of "all you can aspire to" connected to the practical jobs that we all rely on to keep us safe?

I'm beginning to see why so many installations in our house over the last 20 years haven't seemed to work very well. If being an electrician or a plumber is a default position for somebody who isn't particularly good at anything, rather than a job for somebody who is clever with their hands, then I'm not surprised that the chandelier blew the moment we plugged it in. It explains some of the haircuts I've had over the years, too

For the record, my academically brilliant nephew chose to become a carpenter. He is a very good carpenter who has done some high quality work and runs his own firm (started at the age of 20) with great success. That is the kind of man who should be a carpenter. Somebody like ds should not. Not in a world where I might need my house fixed.

Cory, our very best local carpenter/builder originally took a degree in architecture and structural engineering. He builds house extensions that blend beautifully, stand up to anything, stay warm, and come in on time and budget -- which takes a huge range of skills. (Your nephew's name doesn't start with M, does it?)

Toomanyoptions

I recently found out that predicted GCSE grades are based in part on factors like parental occupation and where the child lives. You might want to enquire about that. Also, if you could talk directly to some of his current teachers about how they see his work, that might give you a clearer picture.

Cory

My daughter is dyspraxic, and one of the frustrating things about it is that it involves not just a learning difficulty, but a developmental delay. If she could have started school a year or two later than she did, she would have struggled so much less, not just academically but emotionally. She had a gap year after secondary which I'm sure helped her be more ready for university. She has finished university now and has 'caught up' at age 23, although she will never be exceptional academically.

My suggestion would be to fight for a 5th gcse subject. If he achieves 5 grade Cs then he can go onto level 3 quals at a college.

I think the OP is right to go in for a meeting to get more information about what the decision is based upon. It may well be that BTECs are still the right option for him, but a meeting will give a better chance to explore what all the options are and to find a combination that can work for him. If there really is nothing, then perhaps it is time to look elsewhere.

The point was made upthread that GCSEs are becoming more exam and less coursework focused. Whether that is right or not, is not the issue here....but it does affect whether the courses are suitable for some children.

More information is definitely needed. I don't accept the view held by some on here, that regardless of circumstances the OP should fight for him to do GCSEs. She should fight to find what is right for him, which could be a different thing entirely.

This same kind of thing comes up when people want to move into the 6th Form. Increasingly schools set a requirement such as an A or perhaps a B in the subject to be studied at A level. Some parents don't like it.....but statistically people starting subjects with less than a B at GCSE in that subject have a high chance of failing the course. Who does that benefit. I know some of you don't like the idea of statistical evidence and want every child treated as an individual. I agree that they should be treated as an individual, but statistics need to used as part of the information. It does sound like the OPs sons school have made a lot of use of a computer programme to generate what is suitable for everyone. In most schools, there would certainly be a big element of teacher judgement too. teachers know things which statistics cannot tell.
Having a meeting will allow the OP to get more information and also make the school think carefully about her son as an individual. The end result maybe a change or it maybe what the school said originally.
I hope the OP and son find a meeting helpful and that the next stage of education is a success.

i understand that btecs may be the best option for him but he also wants to take resistant material and art which aren't on the path. have booked time off work to discuss this so thanks for all on this thread. It's so hard and i know Gove has changed the English papers to be so much harder! just so worried about what ds can do in the future.

i know tomotoes and i will ask the school about this. at out local art college to get onto the introduction course they are asking for art gcse E or above so there are options for lower attained levels.