Thread 3: Continuing to GCSEs Summer 2020 - Happy New Exam Year!

[OrangeCinnamon]

Continuation of previous thread
Thread 2

Thread 1 Year 10

At the end of last thread there was a bit of talk on prom dresses ( recommend Fonthill Rd in London if you can get there) by @proggymat and @crazycrofter

@TigerMum had a query regarding moving to foundation level at this stage.

Sorry peeps thread progressed without me noticing so none can reply to your queries!

@justherewithmypopcorn I think they're all super selective round here, as there are only 8 grammar schools in the whole city.

crazycrofter thanks - that's interesting re tier. So all 5s are not equal then!?

It's not a selective school, no, just a normal comp. The reasons why DS might take foundation rather than higher are a bit long and complicated to explain here and are still being fully explored!

I did suggest to DS that either he/I contacted the school or that he just wrote 6 down as his predicted grades so that at least they consider his application (in fairness 6 is his target and his predicted grades are a bit random, so that is as accurate as anything else IMO!). His preference is to stay where he is (which would be fine) but I'm encouraging him to have an alternative (this school offers subjects which his current one doesn't that he might be interested in).

DD got her English lit result back yesterday and was gutted to get just below a 6; it's her strongest subject and she wants/ needs to do it at A level.
Looking through her paper, she realised that an extra sheet she'd used for one of the 30 mark questions was missing; her teacher then said she thought it was odd that she had finished the question mid-sentence. This is the second time this has happened - in the year 10 exams, her Macbeth paper went missing, never to be seen again.

Obviously, there's no way of knowing whether that part of her answer would have taken her up to a 6 ( I suspect it would, because she scored 10/30 for the part she'd written that was marked and she says the part that is missing is a whole side of writing), but I'm still annoyed. If it happened in May/June, how would we ever know that something had got lost? Whole papers missing are easy to spot, but a random extra page?

just Thank you. Exactly mocks are a learning curve.
Also that's worrying!
A whole extra sheet -with in this case 2/3rd of the mark riding on it-going missing in an exam proper would be devastating.
I'm sure in your DD's mock, had the missing extra sheet not gone awol her grade would have been a lot higher than a 6!
I too would like to know how the extra sheets completed are accounted for at the end of the exams.

Proggy, she was in tears last night, saying she'd failed, she's let herself down etc, because it's the lowest of her results so far; she's always got strong 7s and is hoping for even higher in June.
What's weird is that DD has separate invitation for the first time in the mocks, so the invigilator would only be collecting her paper, which leads me to think it's the teacher that's lost it.

Her teacher has said she'll look for it, but the exam was a fortnight ago, so it could have been thrown away by now. 😩

She most certainly has not let herself down- 2/3rds of potential marks on an important element of the paper have been lost through no fault of hers!
I would seek clarification at school about how extra sheets are accounted for in exams.
it's scary!

@Alsoplayspiccolo what a shame, that's really shoddy. I'm pretty sure that in the real thing, they will be writing in answer booklets not on loose pieces of paper, so hopefully this wouldn't happen.

It sounds like she'd have got a 7 at least if they'd marked the rest of that question. I hope she can see it in perspective once she's calmed down.

In the actual exams there are answer booklets with lost and lots of pages : don't panic!

In mocks, it is good practice to either use those answer booklets (this is preferable as the line spacing and margins are so different it is worth practising with them) or A4 sheets , treasury tagged together.

Not all exams in all subjects do provide answer pages/spaces in the same booklet as the questions, but they do all have standard booklets. Extra pages (rarely used these days) are always treasury tagged on in real exams.

Thanks, crazy and Piggy, that’s really reassuring to know.
DD’s teacher tried to pin the blame on her, because she hadn’t written her name or subject on the extra paper BUT given that DD gets extra time because she is slow at processing and has executive function issues, she would have needed the invigilator to remind her/ check that she’d done that, and actually, the paper would still have been lost - it might just have been easier to trace back to her once found.

It’s been a real blow to DD, because the subjects she’s done amazingly well in aren’t the ones she wants to continue next year, so her initial elation has popped and now she’s panicking about English lit.

What a rollercoaster!

That's really useful Piggy to know, thank you.

Hope your DD is feeling better today Also, and knows that her mark was not reflective of her actual performance. It's not great for DC to experience a sense of mis-justice, on top of all the pressure that comes from these exams.

sorry, cross post.

Please be assured exams - whole or part do go missing all the time in school. I spend the whole exam season deleting emails form teachers asking if anyone 'has the rest of Jonty's paper' or has seen 'Engelbert's Macbeth answer'...

sigh.

Despite all this it always seems to go smoothly on real exam days!!

Oh Piccolo, your poor DD. Agree she absolutely hasn’t let herself down.

I hadn’t thought of papers getting lost so it’s very reassuring to hear that all goes well on the real exam days, thanks Piggy.

I can completely imagine papers (or bits of papers) going missing during mocks. It’s not ideal but I can see how it happens-mock papers are generally batched up by teacher name and left in their pigeon holes in the staff room for marking. Far too easy for papers to then go walkabout, although must be so frustrating and disheartening for the students.

In the actual public exams teachers are not present and don’t even see the completed exam papers - the invigilators and school exam officers deal with everything from start to finish. Where I work no public exam paper leaves the hall until it has been cross-checked against the list of names issued the exam board, we also do a quick check that each student’s paper and any continuation sheets used (each exam board will have their own continuation paper where students have to fill out candidate number etc and fix continuation sheets to main paper) have the correct summary information on. Then the batches of papers are put in alphabetical order into a plastic envelope with the summary sheet which is sealed ready for collection to go to the exam board. No chance at all to go missing anywhere else round the school!

I really feel for all the dc who’ve had mock papers go AWOL but it really shouldn’t happen in the real exams.

Help, DD just keeps putting off revision. It’s really stressing me out, trying not to push her as she has anxiety problems but did not do to well in 1st mocks due to lack of revision so starting to worry. 2nd set of Mocks after Feb half term.

Doing extra hour every day at school, but nothing at home, am I worrying too much?

@Tigerswife Does she needs specific grades to stay at her school / get into another one for A levels? That can be a great motivator!

Has she finished syllabuses Tigerwife? DS has finished in all but 2 subjects and they are doing loads of revision at school. So it might be an hour at school on top of the school revision is good enough.

Thanks for your reassurance, she’s just said they have still to finish courses in some lessons, but are doing revision in some and they did revision instead of pe yesterday.

She needs 5s to get into college so no big marks to reach. Lowest mock was a 3, some 4s, 5s and a 6.

Although quite a lot of students I teach are revising at home (mainly the most able and most motivated/girls!) and revision stuff is starting to kick in at school, I still maintain it is early and wouldn't feel bad about any child that hasn't started 'proper' revision. I can see you have a separate concern with the Feb mocks tiger, which are probably a school's attempt to monitor students and keep them ticking over. But, in all honesty (and it doesn't feel this on hyper motivated MN sometimes!) most students do not really start revising until Easter or a bit before, and they do just fine. Don't panic!

My DS plans to start revising again at home at Feb half term. The older one certainly didn't! not sure he ever started

I think with the hour at school I wouldn’t worry at this point. Tigerswife It’s tricky when they have anxiety. With DD it got to the stage where getting just enough became the motto as she developed stomach migraine shortly before so was obvious the toll the stress was taking on her.

We’re a mixed bunch on here but there are so very high performing DC (who are doing amazingly and that’s fantastic) but I was thinking the other day that if I had been here with DD I would have been really stressed out as there was no sign of revision at this point. I think pragmatism is the name of the game at the moment and revision will depend a lot on individual DC, the revision in school, grades needed for 6th form.

It’s important for us to try and manage our stress, the exams can become pretty consuming and it might be helpful to plan things to break the time up to escape from it all for a bit - even a few hours can help.

Didn’t see Piggy’s post and glad to see she feels it is still early as I feel that but had a slight element of doubt in actually saying it !

Thank you for that post @Piggywaspushed it’s good to hear a voice of reason! I worry about my DS but would far rather he wait and then get some sensible revision in, rather than start too early and burn out.

Also good to get a reminder that very often MN is not reflective of real life - there are often what feels like a disproportionate number of parents on here who have highly able children flying through the 11+, getting rafts of incredible gcse grades etc etc etc. Not disputing any of them of course - there are plenty of highly able children around - but there are far, FAR more middling to average to struggling ones, it’s just that those kind of parents often don’t post on MN.

Tigerswife it sounds like your DD's school is 'full on' with revision particularly if they have cancelled PE to do more revision-which I would find worrying. I can't see why there would be any need for further at home.
Too much revision can be counter productive and unhealthy. I say this as a parent of a self confessed perfectionist who has a tendency to go into full blown rivizilla mode if I don't keep an eye on her.
DD has done one set of mocks and thankfully they're over with and no more to do. Two and sometimes 3 sets must be be absolutely exhausting!
DD won't no any more revision until half term. In the meantime she is going to go to the gym more often-she comes out of sessions absolutely buzzing.

Also good to get a reminder that very often MN is not reflective of real life - there are often what feels like a disproportionate number of parents on here who have highly able children flying through the 11+, getting rafts of incredible gcse grades etc etc etc. Not disputing any of them of course - there are plenty of highly able children around - but there are far, FAR more middling to average to struggling ones, it’s just that those kind of parents often don’t post on MN.

Agree with this and have found myself worrying about DS getting 6s and 7s when seeing all the 9s and 8s people post. I have to give myself a firm mental shake back to reality!

DS not doing any more revision yet, they are going through the papers in school over the next couple of weeks and finishing areas of the curriculum not yet covered. We are taking a mini break over half term and then I think we will start to bring the revision back in. School, of course, will be doing it anyway.

Still only had 5 results back, Chemistry was lowest score - anyone know the best way to revise this? Seems his calculations were fine but the descriptive side of it was poor.