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.

I agree, whistl. It's unreasonable to expect 14 year olds to be working 7 days a week, day and night for 18 months.
I've suggested to DD that she makes sure her work is up to date, folders are filed correctly etc and that maybe she spends an hour or 2 a day consolidating subjects she isn't confident in. I'm certainly not standing over her, making her do it. I've already approached the HoY about her anxiety at home, but the response was that she seems perfectly happy ay school and they haven't seen any signs of what we describe.

So the school is saying that if they can't see it, then they aren't bothered (even though you are telling them that you can see it)? Or are they just trying to add to the general picture of how your DD is when you aren't around?

Is the pressure on your DD coming from the school, or from within her? Is she doing ok at school, but struggling to excel, perhaps? or maybe trying to match an older sibling's results?

My DD has a couple of bits of homework to do, and revision for an end-of-unit maths test. Two week break. No other work mentioned.

My Ds is Y12 so just starting A levels. Again a couple of bits of homework and revision for one unit test.

He did GCSEs last year and honestly there was no extra pressure in Y10 - just do your homework and revise for unit tests. It's too much to start in depth, concentrated work at this stage!

IME, there comes a point (approx March in year 11) when the teachers start leaning on the students to focus on their individual subjects, piling them with work that doesn't leave the student enough time to do everyone else's work too, plus revising the things he was actually weak at.

This is what happened to DS1. I had to step in and start pushing back, telling the teachers what he would and wouldn't do, (he was working 8am until 10pm 7 days a week and the teachers wanted more). However, this was only for the last two months.

If this pressure on your DD is coming from the school, then I think you may need to step in a lot earlier than I did. Your DD's mental health is more important.

My DD started some GCSE coursework for science in year 9 as they said the content was too much for 2 years. However, that was when she was in a triple science group. She found it too much and we got her moved to double from September to ease the pressure. She doesn't have that much HW this holiday, mainly revision. Balance is very important. There is life beyond GCSES and I know so many successful people who did badly at school that I will not be heaping pressure on DD this early on.

Flootoot - that expectation from school that students should work 6 hours per day every day over half term is frankly ridiculous (and damaging)

I know many that are away on sunny hols this week, I doubt they are revising!

whistl, the school's response was part of an ongoing dialogue with them, regarding DD's ALN. I suspect her anxiety is a combination of her feeling like she's not as able as her peers, and feeling like she's having to work extra hard to try to keep her head above water. We've previously told the school that it's very common for girls with ADHD to mask their difficulties, so I'm honestly not sure what they are trying to say when they say they don't see her the way we describe her; the cynic in me suspects they are choosing to ignore because that means they won't have to offer more support.

Floottoot the 6hrs/ day came from the school though? It is something that the head of year (or similar) has required, not a target your DD has set for herself?

If the whole year are being told that, then your DD will be one of many suffering anxiety. It's not normal.

What kind of school is it?

Whistl, it was the head mistress who told parents and year 10 pupils at a revision meeting we attended. The girls were even given a large hand out with a grid on it,marking out every day of the half term holidays, each divided into 3 hour blocks, with the instruction that they should be doing 2 x3 hours each day. If they miss a day for a family outing, they need to make it up over other days as an extra, on top of the 6 hours.
It's an indie girls ' school (but definitely not super selective and not even London/ home counties.)

To put things into perspective, many of DDs Y10 friends have gone off on a sports tour to the Caribbean for 11 days this half term, organised by the school. Can't see any work being done there!

Floottoot it's just really strange. I've never heard of any other school doing that, so what's the HT trying to achieve??

Whatever she hopes for, the outcome she will get is a year's worth of students who are either burnout before they sit the first paper in May 2020 and/or some severely anxious girls.

As you probably know, the grades are awarded on a relative basis i.e. the top x% get a 9 etc. It's not everyone who gets over 50% gets a 5 and everyone over 40% gets a 4. So, there is a need to outperform your year group - approx 550,000. However, no one else is doing 6 hours a day at this stage, so your DD won't be left behind.

Reading back, that last bit sounds a bit garbled. What I am trying to say is that although your DDs GCSE raw scores will be ranked to determine a grade, she's not competing with the rest if her class.

A number of the students on the 2018 GCSE thread achieved a brace of 8 and 9's and although they worked hard, I am pretty confident that none of them were putting in 6 hours per day of revision over school holidays in term 1 of Y10

LimitIsUp agreed. It was hard enough getting DS1 to start work last February, and that was only a few hours over a month.

Another mum of y10 boy. This thread had me hyperventilating at first, but I am reassured by the final posts above me 😅.

DS is at a SS grammar with a (unfair) reputation as an exam factory and even they don’t have this pressure. Well, at this point.

Last year in y9 they did invite all students and parents to a revision workshop one evening, with a bit of a 3 line whip, which stressed the importance of a little bit of study often, and not an endurance marathon in the Easter holidays of y11. And in a way think about it being, that old chestnut, a journey not a destination. No point getting all 9s, but a nervous wreck, self harming etc.

At this point, DS pretty much does set homework and revision for ‘end of unit’ tests only. He does HW the day it is set, so very rarely has homework over the weekend/ holidays. (Esp now he dropped art GCSE.). While there is nothing from school - as far as I know- that is not to say a lot of boys in his class are not doing an awful lot of revising. A lot of them had parents who drew up weekend/ holiday revisions plans from y7 onwards.

It’s hard to hold your nerve with all this going on with his peers, I find, but he is doing very well in a competitive environment, and has a good work ethic. And I want him to be able to ramp it up in y11, and not be burnt out. .

. nagging!

@whistl 🤣

Not much happening here this half term! Dd had Maths and computing tests before half term. She has an English test when she goes back - I have suggested she looks at Mr Bruff but I don't think she has. Generally not had much homework - she has done a bit of Spanish, and is all up to date!
She is generally quite relaxed about it all.
Her target grades are scary and I am not sure realistic they are (or how they come up with them!) 7 in English and 8/9 for everything else.

DS2 hasn't been given his targets yet. I think we get them in a school report next month.
The question is whether the targets are aspirational or expected.

Is anyone else's Yr10 working on their English Speaking & Listening Assessment? Apparently DDs has hers when she goes back after half term (got another week here).

That's early, Heifer! I don't think DS2 will do his until about this time next year.

It doesn't count to the final grade though, does it? So, maybe your DD's teacher just wants to get it out of the way?

DS2 has the first end of topic tests in nearly every subject coming up in the next week or two. I think he'll get a surrpise when he realises that the quality (precision and fullness) of answers required for GCSE is a lot higher than he could get away with in KS3.

Room for another nervous mother?

I am constantly flipping between leaving him to it and not wanting to give him panic attacks to wanting to nag him into submission and making him a revision timetable.

I have just written a separate thread as I didn't see this .

Will have a read through now.

Are you a teacher Whistl ? Just that you seem to know a lot of detail.

Joining the thread - Year 10 boy, currently away for a few days, with absolutely no homework.

He's very self motivated, and luckily for him has an almost photographic memory, so revision is not an issue. He is, however, really struggling with English (particularly poetry). Downside of a very logical brain. He's so worried, he asked if I could find him a tutor. Thankfully, he seems to understand the problem far better than his rather unhelpful teacher.