How hard is it to tutor your own child for GCSE English?

[shelsco]

DS1 is in Year 11 and has had the same English teacher for 4 of his 5 years at secondary. Unfortunately she's not great. she doesn't mark their work unless its an assessment and doesn't really explain well. She also apparently doesn't cover the stuff that she should at the times she should then crams it in at the end. The kids don't even have a copy of the books they're studying. She has the top set every year so her marks aren't dismal but quite a few of her classes seem to have pupils who end up getting tutors or their parents tutor them. I found this out at parents evening from another parent who's older ds was in her class and this mum had tutored him and was now doing the same with her younger ds (who is in my ds's class). I've since spoken to another 3 parents who have pretty much said the same thing.

I've contacted the school and the head of English rang and sang this teacher's praises, saying she was outstanding in a recent Ofsted. None of the other parents will complain but the results in the lower classes are the same or better than those in her class and she has the top set. I'm already in a battle with the school regarding getting extra time for ds's dyslexia and don't think a different battle will do much for our case so I was wondering how realistic it would be for me to try and tutor ds?

Has anyone done this and how hard was it? I'm a primary teacher but I'm not familiar at all with what is required for GCSE English. Would following the York notes and study aids and going through them with ds be enough do you think? Or would more specialised knowledge be needed? I know its possible obviously as other parents are doing it. It's just I'm pretty busy and don't know whether these parents devoted hours of research or whether they just read the texts then worked through study aids etc.
Any advice appreciated!

You'd be brave! She can't be dreadful or she wouldn't be getting decent results.
Which GCSE are you talking about? Lit or Lang? Study guides are useful, but won't cover everything. I'd start by getting the past exam papers, looking at the requirements for the top band assessment criteria and then figuring out what he needs to know. So start at the end and work backwards, if that makes sense?

Did I write that post. No I can't possibly have done as I don't work....would conflict with turning into dyslexic yr 11 DD's English tutor.
Have just spent an hour printing off 30 war poems for her up coming assessment.
Predicted E aiming for a C. Sigh

And strangely I gave up DD's extra time battle today after months of trying.
DD doing IGCSE's so less info on them but have printed the course guidance note,past papers and have study guides.
I think the only way is for me to do the course with her then I will fully understand it.

Personally, I'd say there is an awful lot parents can do without even necessarily having to "teach" their children the material. As a primary school teacher, you're obviously a graduate yourself and you've learnt a lot of study skills along the way. These can help an awful lot, in terms of teaching your son how to be an independent learner, how to go about researching things he doesn't already know, different types of places he might find useful information and knowing how to evaluate whether the information he has read is good quality/reliable or not (though the latter, I say coming from a background in science, not English).

Whilst these things don't actually teach the material, they will support him become a more independent learner and that is something he can carry through to other subjects too.

Someone on her recommend Mr bruff, Google him he's amazing.

I'm convinced he helped DS get an A in his English exam.

As well as working with study guides, helping your DS to regain the confidence to perform better in his subject is very important. As long as he understands that by working through the course material and improving his skills will also include him feeling supported in his learning he will notice improvement in due course. I think that progressive confidence building in the form of lots of encouragement as well as empowering him to believe that he can succeed (setting him exercises that you will then mark, which will help him prove to himself that he has the ability), will improve his performance dramatically.

I did English as part of my Uni course but the difficulty with teaching ds1 study skiills is that he doesn't learn in the same way as I do. The English teacher always gets the top set and has a core of kids who are really talented in English who do well regsrdless. I sippose she must ocver the material but she certainly doesn't do it in the depth that some of the other staff do. She doesn't mark their work unless its an assessment so they don't et any feedback to help them improve. At the moment a lot of the kids in lower sets get the same or better results as her set. Maybe I'm being unfair but anyway whatever the issue ds isn't the only one struggling with her. Her queue at parents evening was a mile long.

You'll need to know what exam board and syllabus; there are 3 English qualifications and a variety of routes through them. Find out what books they are studying and buy copies? Controlled Assessment has to be done in an exam environment but you can help with the preparation. Exam boards have copies of the specifications on their websites, but be careful as the exams have changed repeatedly and so old exam papers and mark schemes may be out of date.

Seems very odd they are against your DS having extra time. Have they said why?

It's very complicated but It's basically stubbornness and not wanting to admit they were wrong. SENCo felt he couldn't really be dyslexic after his dx and gave quite a bit of inaccurate evidence assuming I would believe her. She said access arrangements couldn't be made after year 9, exam boards didn't accept reports from external assessors, ds didn't qualify on school's concession test (she had tested hi hgihest score not lowest score from report). As the specialist assessor works for a LA making access arrangements she told me the info was inaccurate and suggested school put a submission in the JCQ and discuss it to see if the evidence we had would be accepted given ds1's extremely low processing scores. They said thye had and it had been rejected but when we asked for a copy it turned out they had told JCQ there was no evidence.
we asked them to follow the JCQ regs and trial extra time and they refused. DS consequently lost 30 marks on his Science GCSE due to lack of time. We got LEA in. they found in our favour, despite school telling them we had no evidence( and hiding the evidence we had so far!). since LEA intervention when they were told to record unfinished papers from mocks, they still haven't recorded evidence na djust keep saying there's no evidence of need and he'll be fine. they are fixated in fact that because his reading comprehension is high, he can't really be dyslexic!!

So the official line is they don't want JCQ to accuse them of cheating but as scores are very low and lots of evidence of unfinished papers, failure to meet targets etc and none of it has been recorded, its looking increasingly like either stubbornness, ineptitude or both!!

By the way, I realise that extra time wouldn't have been trialled in GCSE! Just meant that had it been trialled they could have collected more evidence in time for his GCSE. (Even though LEA ed psych and specialist assessor felt we had loads).