move to higher paper

[zara123456789]

I would like someone to help with this issuse , my daughter is in year 10 now when she was sat her year 9 exam she came out standing and her maths teacher sent an email to me and my husband your daughter is moving to higher paper she has the capability to do the higher paper . at the moment she is doing foundation which i am crossed with her maths teacher said in black and white she is moving to higher paper, so why have they not moved her? spoke to head of maths has no obligation moving her to higher paper unless she gets grade 4a in foundation exam , which i think that is really stupid .

Seems a bit strange?

My DD is in y10 and this is how they do it at her school:

• top sets all do higher
• bottom sets all do foundation
• in the middle there are 'crossover' sets where they are taught / exposed to some of the higher-only content. For some exams/tests they are given 'intermediate' papers (as per the old GCSE when it had 3 levels), and for others they agree with the teacher which level to do. A final decision will be made after first mocks in January y11.

If someone can't get a 4 in a foundation level maths paper it is unlikely they would do well in a higher paper. The issue is more whether a high 4 / grade 5 pupil will go to pieces on the higher or conversely lose too many marks to silly mistakes on the foundation paper.

So you maybe need to unpick things a bit.

• what set are they in (and in what type of school)
• how well are they doing in tests
• are they being exposed to higher level content in lessons
• what grade do you think they can reasonably get

My DD is in a 'crossover' group. Although I'd love her to get a 6 (and thus she would have to do higher paper), realistically protecting the pass for her is most important. I will follow whatever the teachers advise this time next year. But I know the door is currently open, last month she did circle theorems which is higher paper.

I'm not sure why they told you she was moving and then you didn't. Unless it was an error in their email.

If she is getting solid grade 4s at this point in year 10 she is probably OK to do Higher. To give students the best chance, schools should have made their tiering decision at the start of year 10. Students then get 2 full years to practise the correct tier. Occasionally students will swap later on, usually downwards because of external circumstances.

You need to speak to the school and find out what they do.

If your daughter is in Year 10, I wouldn't expect decisions about higher/foundation paper to be made yet anyway. (My DS is in Year 11, and still doesn't know!)

Is the paper they sit related to sets at the school? And are these relatively fixed?

As Teen says, a student who is working at a 4+ wouldn't normally be entered for a higher paper as there is too much possibility they will have a bad day and get no grade at all!

Redsky it's not good practice to leave tiering decisions so late. Pupils and staff should know exactly what they are aiming for. I'd be concerned with a school that hadn't decided by this point in year 10.

Herc Although I might agree with you for 80% or so of pupils, surely the ones who are around the border need more chance to show where they fit best?

Why commit to higher now for someone who might for whatever reason unexpectedly struggle in y10/y11, or similarly not leave the door open for a pupil who unexpectedly thrives to try for a grade 6?

Also, as these exams are relatively new, I'd like the school to be able to adjust their tiers thinking based on the results of the current y11 cohort.

I'd be concerned with a school that hadn't decided by this point in year 10.

Really? I'd be more concerned with a school that with 4 terms to go before GCSEs had already decided.

They need to be prepared for their tier properly.

Students that follow a crossover don't learn the easy end of foundation properly and miss easy marks if they take foundation. Similarly students who end up taking higher miss content they could have learnt.

The exams aren't that new in Maths anymore. The decision is a difficult one and there are sometimes 2 or 3 last minute changes. But wholesale changes and indecision about tiers is not good for the students.

Percentages of students taking higher are falling each year. Good Maths departments should know this.

Herc That is an interesting point re missing 'easy' marks on foundation. I can't remember, are you a maths teacher? If so are you saying that all y10 classes are told at the outset whether they are aiming for foundation or higher papers?
I'm going to tag @noblegiraffe as I'd be interested on her views.

My DD's school is a good school with good results and a strong maths department I would have said. Yet they do this crossover system.

Yes I am a maths teacher.

Yes our students are told at the outset. As I said a couple of students change. This is usually from higher to foundation and we then train them in the easy marks. The first 2 years of the new exams we had Higher students get grade 3s who would have got 4/5s on a foundation paper. This changed our outlook to "if they aren't going to get a 6 then they do foundation". The consistency has definitely helped.

I am not a maths teacher just a parent but maybe they are making her sit foundation papers to show she has covered all of the basics.

Ds1 has always been in top set and sat the higher paper (he got a 9) but we were told at an exams evening that 50% of the higher paper is determining the 7-9 grades meaning that unless a child was consistently getting a 6 they wouldn't put them in for the higher paper. It can be completely demoralising when they cannot do half a paper and their mindset may mean that they bomb the paper.

Teen I always feel you are very knowledgeable but is your DD doing a bit of maths every day? In Ds1's school they had pupils go from C to A on the old system just by using the school's online maths programme.

Confiding We try to do 10mins of maths before school each day (unless she has a test in a different subject), adding maths homework on a Saturday that comes to: yes some maths most days. Neither DD nor I get on very well with online maths though. (tbh as much as I would love DD2 to end up with a 6 it really isn't at all likely as she scored

Interesting to read opinions on when tiers should be decided.
DD is at a selective indie. Until year 10, she wasn’t doing well in maths so was put into the bottom, small group set.
Since then, she’s flourished and is now hoping for a 6 or even a 7. Others in her group have recently been told they’ll be sitting foundation; I’m glad they’ve left it this late, otherwise DD wouldn’t have been given the chance to sit higher tier.

I was thinking of science more than maths when I made the comment about not deciding tiers too early.
If you're at school with a 2 year KS4, then you're only a term into GCSEs proper.

At this stage in Year 10, DS was predicted a 3 in physics.
A year later he is predicted a 7+ and hoping to study it for A Level.

Very pleased he's at a school that makes late decisions about tiers.

It's incredibly rare to go from predicted a 3 at January of y10 to a 7 in any subject. Do you mean he was achieving a 3 and eventually got a 7? We occasionally get students achieving a 3 in a year 10 Higher mock who end up with a 6/7 in the real thing. A student getting a 3 on a foundation paper at this point would have to work their socks off to get a 6 or better on Higher at the end of year 11. I've never seen a student do this in Maths. On average students go up about 1. 5 grades from now to the end of year 11. At the higher end this is usually 2 grades due to the content that hasn't been delivered yet.

With Science it might be easier to make a late decision, I don't know about the difference between the tiers etc.

What can I say Herc - DS doesn't believe in working in a linear way :)

His predictions have gone almost as significantly backwards in other subjects, so really predicting anything in Year 10 was a waste of time! Didn't realise this that DC that didn't achieve consistently was so unusual tbh.

Wow he does sound outside of the "norm". Unless the teachers predictions were just WAAAY off in year 10! With the newer spec GCSEs they might have been. With Maths we can tell where they are based on a full mock past paper.

I've been trying to come to grips with science tiers. It seems to me from a look at one of the specs that there isn't masses of difference in core content (though there is some), more in the complexity of the questions (and of the maths required). But I'm not at all certain on this. I've ordered a Foundation revision guide (already have Higher) so I can have a better look.

It varies with the science Tween, certainly in Biology there isn’t much knocked off the spec for foundation but the questions are significantly easier.
We are also entering far more students for foundation than we did under the old spec.

I agree that generally in Y10 the vast majority of students know which paper they will be sitting - by then we’ve got 4 years’ worth of data on them.

The borderline 5s are prepped and entered for higher in their Y11 mocks and after sitting a full set of papers there are always some who fall off the bottom and move to foundation (and possibly the odd surprise who moves to higher), but given that we finish teaching around Christmas there’s plenty of time to prepare them properly for foundation, and we have another set of mocks in March to be sure.