Year 10 GCSE Support Thread

[OrangeCinnamon]

Hi all,
Can we have a thread for Year 10 support please? Even though Dd started in Y9 I have already noticed a massive ramping up in pressure and her anxiety I imagine it is a fine balance of being supportive but not a helicopter parent. How do you motivate but not nag? How do you encourage good study/revision skills without being overbearing? How can I help my Dd to be resilient....so many questions hoping for some hints, tips and support along the way.

Dd is Summer born so struggles sometimes. Her main loves are Music and the Humanities subjects. She bobs along with Maths and Science and despises French. Wants to be an international popstar, historian, writer, journo or judge! She sufffers terribly with low self esteem but hopefully this term will be able to get her on a course of cbt.

Wow, I don’t envy you! :) I’m one of 5 and so is my husband so I know what it’s like - our families were a mix of boys and girls though! You obviously know what you’re doing by now though!

Can I please ask what grades your children are currently getting? My daughter is getting between 4 - 6 she has had one 7. I’m wondering what the likelihood of these going up is, she’ll need higher grades for her A Levels. Is this about right or is she getting behind?

DS2 is typically grades 6-8.

However, two years ago, at this stage (November of year 10), DS1 was getting grades, many of which bore no relation to what he eventually got. e.g. he got a 2 for History at this point, then a 5 followed by lots of 8s and 9s later and he ended up with a 7.

Basically, what they get now isn't a much of guide to what will be on the results sheet in August 2020.

Can I join?

DD is in Year 10 at a girls grammar. Lots of pressure, and she has anxiety.

Can I ask, how much homework do your kids all get?

@whistl thank you much appreciated that is reassuring. She does hardly any work and doesn’t receive much homework, we are doing more at home than provided by the school. It’s mostly self motived, school provide websites for them to work from.

Villanellesproudmum DDs homework grades tend to be 6, 7, 8 ( a couple of 6s) but her latest test results were mainly 6s with a 4 for Chemistry. Her target grades are 7 8 so I was a little worried but as others have pointed out, they are learning how to answer the questions, so the scores will improve. Also she didn't revise as much as she should/could have done so I think she is on track.
Re homework - she is getting a lot at the moment, always seems to have 3 or 4 pieces waiting to be completed.
She has recently finished her GCSE English Speaking and Listening presentation so that's now out of the way - she must have spent about 15/20 hours on researching/writing/practicing that. So hopefully she can now get on top of the homework as usual.
She plays hockey for club on Saturday and sometimes trains on Sunday so is finding she needs to be even more organised than usual. We've had some very late nights when she has decided certain works needs to be completed now. Last night she panicked at 11.00pm that she needed to put her retest in her bag but couldn't find it so redid it - I told her to stop at midnight, this morning she found it... No point in me moaning/shouting as at least she cares but just needs to think about it before bedtime!

@Heifer is your daughter in year 10? Ours don’t do any actual GCSEs tests until year 11. I’m referring to the English Speaking & Listening. I don’t even know what that is?!

I’m so worried about this, she can go a week without any homework. And she wouldn’t hide it because we also receive homework diaries

Dd is at an independent school and they don’t use the GCSE grades so we have absolutely no idea what she’s heading for! I think she may get predicted grades at the end of year 10.

It’s frusttating but maybe better in a way? Nothing is guaranteed anyway and I’ve just said she should do her best. Even if she was getting 8s or 9s now, doesn’t that just lead to disappointment if the actual result is lower? I’m pretty sure we had no clue what to expect in our day and my results were a pleasant surprise!

In terms of how much homework she gets, she’s managing to get it all done in the week. On average I guess she has 1-3 pieces a night but the only time consuming ones seem to be the humanities.

I’ve just gone through all this years subjects on the school website and ordered relevant revision workbooks from Amazon. Hopefully that’ll fill some homework gaps.

Villanellesproudmum yes DD is Yr 10. The English Speaking & Listening presentation/talk is part of the GCSE but isn't graded the same way. Everyone has to do it apparently, but it's not recorded with the GCSE. DDs school have decided to get it out of the way early. It's a pass/distinction grading. I believe that if they don't pass it on their first attempt they can do it again and again until they do.
They have to pick a topic then do a 5 min talk about it and answer questions after. My DD picked to talk about Terrorism in the UK.. She had to present to other pupils and answer 5 questions from them and the teacher. Not sure when they find out if they have passed or not although DD said she saw the teachers sheet and that she had ticked all 5 boxes for the pass and 3 of the distinction boxes.

Thanks again Heifer something else to enquire about.

DS2's school does the English language presentation in year 11. As far as I remember, they do it, get a grade and never hear about it again.

May I recommend Mr Bruff and Mr Salles for English?
www.amazon.co.uk/Salles-Guide-100-English-Language/dp/191138225X?tag=mumsnetforum-21

Thank you @whistl reviews are also really good, added to the basket! Daughter is going to love me

I also have no clue what DD is getting right now - she brings back marked tests/assessments, some graded, some not, but when I spoke to teachers at parents’ evening they admitted that with the new spec it was hard to gauge grades from class assessments. It was the same (worse) last year for DD2. DD3 is predicted 7s in biology, chemistry, physics, maths, music and sociology, and 6s in English lit, English Lang, and French, but she’s told me she’d be happy with all 6s and 5s in the worse subjects.

She’s been finding school very stressful lately - lots of tears and a ridiculous amount of time spent on homework. I’m so worried about her. She’s just had a huge panic attack so I’m keeping her off tomorrow at least, maybe for the rest of the week if needed. I really hope things start to look up soon

Pancakemum why can't the school use the exam boards specimen materials and the mark schemes from the summer to work out what marks you'd get for each type of answer and what % you need to get x grade?

It will be stressful, as you know, but this is quite early for it to feel that bad. Do you think there's a connection with how the teachers are handling it?

whistl I think they don’t really have enough material - their assessments are made up of past papers (from the previous spec) or questions the teachers have composed themselves. There’s just not enough on offer - they’re trying to avoid just guessing and throwing random meaningless grades around, so someone doesn’t think they’re on track for a 7 and then get disappointed if they come out with a 5.

Teachers and support at school are absolutely amazing. She’s going through a lot at home right now and even though I put absolutely no pressure on and never compare them I think she can’t help but wish she was as academic as her sisters (not realising of course that she’s a million times better at diving than they’ll ever be).

Pancakemum, sorry to hear your dd is struggling at the moment. Our dd is like a yo yo - everything is awful one minute and then a couple of days later she’s blissfully happy! It’s really exhausting! I think they need reminding that GCSEs aren’t the be-all and end-all. I was actually quite glad, in a discussion about sixth firm choices, to hear dd say ‘it’s not all about grades you know, I’d rather be somewhere I was happy’!

I think it’s probably best if they don’t get GCSE grades for every piece of work. They’re still 18 months away from the exams!

Just to say, I can understand how hard it is if her older sisters are very academic. I was no 1 out of 5 and pretty academic myself but no 2 was considered to be a genius, never got less than 100% and I remember in sixth form actually finding it really demotivating as I realised he’d always outshine me! It’s good if you can big her up for her other talents - my parents over-emphasised academics!

Pancake i was thinking of something like this:
qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/GCSE/mathematics/2015/specification-and-sample-assesment/GCSE-Mathematics-2015-SAM.pdf

That's edexcel maths, but there is something similar for every exam board and every subject. It is what the teachers at Ds's school used last year to teach what correct answers should look like.

Last year, they did have to guess grade boundaries, and that was very error prone. However, they don't have to guess this year because they will be very similar to the ones that were published in August.

Here are the grade boundaries for 2018 for Edexcel GCSE. qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/Support/Grade-boundaries/GCSE/1806-GCSE-9-1-Subject-Grade-Boundaries.pdf

They go subject by subject, paper by paper, option by option. AQA, OCR etc all have similar publications (and percentages).

The maths and english 9-1 GCSEs started in 2017, but the 2018 grade boundaries were very similar, so its reasonable to expect the 2019 grade boundaries will be similar to 2018 and 2020 will be similar to 2019 etc.

Last year, no one knew what to expect and it made it difficult, but now they have enough to easily predict with a high degree of accuracy.

Ds has only been getting grades in maths, science and occasionally English. They range from a Grade 2 to a Grade 8!

A bit of a rant!
DS2's school is definitely deteriorating. When DS1 first went there, it was such a good school but the HT left three years ago and since then it has slipped and slipped some more.
It is still living off its old reputation and the GCSE results are still very good, but that's results from DC who were being educated when the school still had the old HT or he'd only recently left and not much has changed. As a parent though, i am noticing things sliding more each year - behaviour, discipline, the teacher's commitment.

Today, I've been told that the teachers aren't going to produce a report each term for GCSE any more. The reason given just doesn't hold water, so it must be that its too much effort.

Thanks for the link @Whistl DD doing edexcel music so good to gauge the requirements. I’ll have a google for the AQA ones.
It’s odd that you’re not going to get a report. DDs just had the first progress check with current grades, end of Y10 target grades and predicted Gcse grades - all a bit on the low side but not sure how reliable they are.

What do you call 'a report' wordy text for each subject, or just effort, attainment and predicted grades?

Our school doesn't do wordy reports at all.

Our school has never done "wordy" reports. In fact, there isn't a single word on it, apart from the pre-printed headings. It is one of those traffic light reports with numbers for working at grades and target grades.

They used to do three reports a year at GCSE, and we would've had the first one by now if it was this time last year, but this time they aren't sending out reports until its nearly half-term in February.

I mind because three years ago (when the old HT left), the SLT changed the KS3 reports into something that doesn't actually say how well they are doing. So, really the KS2 SATS is the last report I've had that tells me whether DS2 is able or not.

I have been curious as to what his teachers think of DS2's ability - and did he pick the right subjects to do at GCSE? - and I thought the GCSE reports would tell me, but the first one didn't turn up and now I've learned that they plan to send it in February.

Now I'm wondering if they will change the GCSE reports to the meaningless rubbish they started putting out for KS3!