GCSEs 2018 (2)

[Stickerrocks]

Pre-empting our 1000th post.

@wifeyhun Tennmum is right - it all depends on how hard the schools are marking (and where they are guessing the grade boundaries are).
Tell your DD that she has enough time to turn it around and by August, no one will ever want to know what her mock results were or be able to find out. They are just the warm up.
If she starts studying little and often now, she can have a completely different set of results in August.

Were her results typical for her class / school?

Well we are back from parents evening and not as bad as initially dd told us. She is only a few marks off a 6 in English and a B in IT, (still old level apparently). A 4 in art, a Merit in Performing Arts. Geography only a few marks from a 5.

Maths only a few marks off a 4 but this has never been strong subject for her.

Science was only a 3, been having a lot of issues in the class with the teacher and behaviour in the class. The whole Science class seems to be doing not too good there are a lot of unhappy children.

DD is feeling a bit more positive, the teachers all feel she lacks confidence in general and have assured her she can do it.

Off topic, but I wanted to share a little laugh I had today which cheered me up a bit... Met someone called Holly Wood

wifey glad it went well and glad to say ours was encouraging this evening although I ended up having a rather long discussion with the art teacher. It turns out Mr Perfectionist should have kept the rough sketches he threw away! However, it should turn out ok in the end and he's got good ideas for his exam.
DS very noncommittal on A levels so just about every teacher thinks he's chosen their subject. His certainty is psychology and he's still keen on maths.
He's not sure about computing - if his biology result is good he thinks he'll swap computing for biology. I am secretly quite pleased but saying nothing!

Oddsocks

What I don't get is this progress 8. Top school in our county got 0.88 but only 64% got a grade 4-9 in maths and English. My dgds school came 2nd but had 90% got a grade 4-9 in maths and English???????
I would have thought actual GCSE results a better indicator?

Oddsocks

Actual results are Attainment 8.

Progress 8 takes into the sats results you were talking about the other day.

There you go wifey! Not bad at all! And enough time to sort! and fingers cross loose, glad it went well for both of you. Our parent evening February 1 st. Exam rota handed out today and emailed to us too. By what dgd said yesterday mist subjects going to be close to exams before they finish teaching

Ahh my mistake mmzz, still....GCSE results more important IMO.

Progress 8 shows how much progress a child has made since their year 6 sats.

So a school can do really well with a group of lower ability children but another school can let a group of high achievers coast.

It's all about knowing whether the school is helping children reach their perceived potential.

Mine too but the problem they were trying to solve was the selective schools coming top all the time. It was implying they were the best schools when sometimes they had an intake that they'd have to be really incompetent to fail with, whereas some non-selective schools were making a huge improvement.

The question we all really want answered isn't good l how a school does on average but how it does with students like our child. That's impossible though

wifeyhun that doesn't sound bad at all. She has time to boost the maths & science up to where the others are.

If you can afford the cost, I'd recommend Tassomai for bringing the science grades up. DS1 (not able at science) used it for the 6 weeks before his GCSEs and managed to boost his science grades from to a B in Biology and a D in Chemistry.

I must be dumb!

Well my dgd above what her SATs say she should be so must be a good school ( or an awesome child) or both!
Level 4 SATs = 4-6 in GCSE
Level 5 SATs = 7-8 in GCSE
Level 6 Sats =8-9 in GCSE.

Except for that damned English

And that's down to my dgd complete aversion to the subject!

So under level 4 sats => GCSE 3-U??

Just a note SATs = GCSE results according to Fischer family stats for top 20% if schools expected progress.

Well going by that scale mmzz I should say yes but really it all depends with these damn new levels! Especially when you get to top of one level and bottom of next level it will be a toss up for what grade you end up with.

IMO system unfair for everybody.

Why unfair?

I mean they are using do many different lits if stats to determine grade boundaries no one us ever going to know what they are from year to year! My dgd was the last lot to do the old SATs but piloted the new sat grammar paper. So this years cohort at a disadvantage for English and maths. Next years cohort much more prepared because of the primaries teaching the new harder SATs papers. So they gave longer to grasp it all. In fact, our headteachers said last year, forget keystage 3 and 4. Think of GCSEs as a 5 year course, not a 2 year course with the year 6 SATs the preparation for the GCSE 5 year course.

Alexander that's so infuriating. I hope they give her the same questions.

That's bad Alexander, and yes it should be the exact same paper!