GCSEs 2018 (8) Dozens of DCs, 1 DH and Flashcards in the fridge

[mmzz]

Previous thread

Told dgd expect most obscure passages out of book/play with hardly any context to work with for English lit. Do that and your halfway there!
All is well now and tension relieved. Dgd said she us like Hawaiian volcano! I bunged up the fissures though
Good luck to all tomorrow you little troupers! and hold it together loving parents!

Please excuse the many typos. My phone's autocorrect is to blame!

Oh yes mmzz if I had my way I'd have dgd do an accountancy apprenticeship, shell be earning 40 grand in less than 8 years and could retire early on that salary with no stress as she's mathy any rate and no debts either!
But mmzz my point was that children themselves should have a choice as to what they want to do. My dgs really did not get a choice in real terms. He will probably do very well but it was not his choice to begin with.

More children are choosing that route mmzz that is true, but it must always be their choice, and not an alternative to academia because schools and education system have failed them.

It is the comeback of what education system was like in my day, elitist.

I think DS1 is the most wound up I've seen him tonight. The prospect of English Lit tomorrow - specifically poetry - is really winding him up. He says he doesn't understand why someone would write a poem when they could just use 'proper words'. I think I understand why he's not doing A Level.

I didn't mention to him that my 1989 GCSE English Lit was 100% coursework / 10 essays. Now that was too much coursework! The pendulum shift back and forwards with exam format - no doubt the current system won't stay the same for too long.

TBH I think a bit (not too much) of learning by rote is no bad thing. Yes you can always look things up online but lots of jobs (mine included) are based on me knowing stuff and acting on it quite quickly. If I spent all my time googling stuff I'd get half as much done.

Sostenuto, we cross posted.
Your grandson and granddaughter are good examples though. What system would you ideally like for 11-16 study that would suit both of them? What would be good for your grandson but would do your granddaughter justice?

Also, don't forget, the education system is not there to be good for the children. It's there to train a future workforce. We all have this idea that we are free individuals but really we are just one of the inputs into the economy.

@Sostenueto - that's exactly what my DF did 50 years ago. Went to Grammar but messed up his O levels and left. Became an Accounts Clerk and worked his way up to be a Chartered Accountant. It worked for him and I think it's no bad route for today's children.

Sandy if your DS is doing AQA, then it's not poetry tomorrow...

Ha @mmzz - it's CIE and definitely poetry!

A damn sight less stressful sandybay but she won't hear of it!

mmzz I get that dgs isn't academic so, therefore, apprenticeship the way forward. But, as I repeat, the school system failed him in the sense he did not get the help he needed to achieve academically. Who knows if he had got the help early enough, whether he would have been the next Einstein? We will never know now as his future is mapped out by the school system. My dgd is in a different position, she still has free choice depending on her. She can choose uni/apprenticeship/work. The educational system did not take her free choice away. But it took my grandsons choice away by not giving the support early enough or good enough and refusing to allow him to do GCSEs because his grades would be low hence affecting their gcse results.

I know education is to train a workforce and our reliance on immigrants to do jobs we should have trained our children to do shows we failed. We do need to do something about it but it frightens me to see individual choice being taken away. The old system in my day was not good but I haven't a clue how to solve it.

sandybay its Romeo and Juliet and Frankenstein tomorrow for dgd who's doing AQA or I blooming well hope it is!

Is finished on political soapbox

Did something happen at primary school, Sostenuto that left your DGS behind, unable to catch up?

Being as I had to listen for ages today various quotes (repeatedly the quote about Romeo's what's it flowering) from Frankenstein and Shakespeare it had better be tomorrows exam!

Yes mmzz we knew he had working memory problem but there were so many children already with sen that funding for him was stopped. He moved to another primary on the promise if more sen only for that to be completely cut when an influx of Polish children occurred as the government put teaching English was more important. So he moved again where he did manage to get sen but by that time and all the upheavel left him with a reading age of age 6 at 11 years old. We trued to get him in an outstanding special needs school locally but he was deemed not bad enough and absence of major behavioural issues meNt we couldn't even get him in on that.

Sorry about typos mmzz hand shaking as usual.

Personally, I believe cutting down the number of GCSE's sat would cut out a lot of the stress.

Good luck to everyone tomorrow...

Sost if you want your DGD to doing an accountancy apprenticeship, make sure she takes A level maths. That leaves her with lots of options open to her. Commun8cation skills are just as important as the maths side of things. (Don't get me started on the number with straight A*s who can't work out 10% of anything).

Eng Lit, geography, RS, maths, chemistry & Eng Lit over the next 4 days (in no particular order). The school are laying on a BBQ and rounders match for them on Friday lunchtime. Managed to grab some Ed Sheeran tickets earlier as a bribe between her final physics paper & further maths. I think it will be a bit deflating when most people finish on 15th and a few have odd papers left.

I must admit I don't know anything about working memory problems. With the right intervention is it something that can be overcome, or worked around so that it becomes irrelevant.
Poor boy though.

So you see why I'm a bit bias mmzz the lack of funding which means not all sen children receive help. The quality of help varys so much too. He is predicted a 2 in English and possibly a 3/4 in maths. He has to have questions read out to him. He's not dyslexic which was about one of a very few tests done on him and that was after 4 years of badgering. Water under the bri DG he now though.

Teenmum, you are right there! My siblings DC are doing their exams in Scotland this month too, except the only have 5/6/7 exams in total. Sometimes it's 2 papers, but always on the same day.
The upshot is that their children started revising much, much later (Easter holidays - part time), and they can still maintain relatively normal lives even in the midst of exam season eg weekends away.

It's the doing 10 exams all at once that's the killer.

Yes there is help for it mmzz. What it means is in simple terms... Say you ask add 3 plus 8 divide by 2 he would do first step but would forget how to do next steps. Very simplified but you can't do much without working memory. I call it an inability to multitask but that's not really accurate. So doing complex things very difficult for him.

His normal short and long term us absolutely fine.

Sorry meant to say his short and long term memory absolutely fine.