Can anyone give me any hope - Low mock grades

[Tupperwarelid]

DS is in Year 11 at a selective grammar school. He struggled with lock down education, found it hard to concentrate at home, missed classroom interaction and as a result got behind with his work, failed to hand in assignments etc.

They had exams at the end of Year 10 and if they had been his actual GCSE's he would have got 4s and 5s, not enough to get him into the 6th form.

They completed their mocks last week and I was honestly hopeful his grades would have improved as he appeared to be revising more, did himself a timetable that to stick to and was doing well in class.

However I have had emails from the school to say that he has got a level 4 in history, a subject he wants to do at A'Level and 3s in maths and biology. He actually appears to have dropped grades rather than improved them He got upset when he got in from school and says he just can't do exams and will try harder.

Is there any hope of him improving his grades? If he carries on like this he definitely won't get into the 6th form at his current school and probably won't get into 6th form at any of the secondarys either.

I don't know what to do so any advice is welcome.

Tutor for the maths; they can work wonders one on one. You could ask the maths dept if they know of anyone, maybe a recently retired member of the dept, who might help.

My kids did better in the real things than their mocks.

First things first : why did he do badly? Did he revise the wrong things? Does he have the knowledge but need to focus on exam technique? Did he really revise? Phones are a massive distraction and if he used online apps then did his concentration wander? What resources did he use? According to my kids different ones are good for different things. Did he practice with past papers or use apps like Tassomai?

He doesn't need to be in peak performance now but he should aim to improve with each mock/test. Can he work out which topics he's weakest at? How did he feel he did straight after the test?

Were the Y10 exams just on stuff they had done so far, or full papers?
Were the mocks this time full papers, or the full suite of exams ie probably containing material not yet covered?
ie are you sure you are comparing like with like on the grades?

My child didn't do as well as we hoped in year 10 mocks. So we got a tutor for 4 failing subjects which has done wonders for self esteem as she now understands concepts/calculations she was struggling with previously, definitely money well spent! No results yet re Year 11 mocks but she really put in work doing past papers and on line learning. There's a wealth of YouTube lessons and exam paper walkthroughs to learn techniques.

Was he heavily tutored to get into grammar? GCSEs shouldn’t be a huge challenge if you’re academically able, which he must be unless it’s a very non selective area? I’d be watching him like a hawk at the moment, he really should be capable enough to do so much better.

Get him tutors to help him. When I did my mocks many moons ago I realised I needed serious help. Parents helped me by paying for a tutor. I was miles off. Turning point. Got grades.
Went to Russell group uni and got 2:1.

OP just to say that I don't think parents evening will give you the chance to go into detail with the teachers. You usually get 5 mins, 10 mins max to talk about your child and its generally high level stuff. You need to ask for a separate appointment / call with the teachers - maths and history. I'd be asking if there was some sort of mentoring programme on offer - my DS was also getting poor results in Biology in the run up to GCSEs. He met with the teacher one lunchtime every week who gave him extra work/revision to do, they went through it the next week etc - 1 on 1 time.

I think 3s and 4s are really out of step with expectations at grammar school so there is something fundamentally wrong here. I know it sounds drastic, but I would be removing all gaming stuff / phone from his room when he's supposed to be working / revising. I'd also want to see completed homework, revision notes / flashcards etc, I'd be getting him to do past papers and then marking them together, go through essay plans tgogether for history test questions. I think you need to be hands-on and involved in his work.

I think tutors are great (my DS went from a 5 in English Language to a 9) in 2 years but it needs to be a team effort - your DS needs to understand the consequences of such poor results so that he's motivated to work, you need to have the school involved for some intervention and you as parents need to be involved / supervising & checking work.

Other people have already suggested the right questions to be asking.

I'd also say that in my experience some able students wrongly think GCSEs will be a walk in the park because they have got used to doing ok with average to low effort. Mock exams can come as a shock to them when they realise that not only to they have to revise the material, but also learn how to apply it to the exam questions in exam conditions.

I've worked with some hard working, able students who have got 3/4s in mock exams because they fell apart. They needed support with exam technique to get 7s and 8s at the end but they wanted to do well and worked hard.
I have also known some coasting able students who needed the shock of doing badly to start putting in the appropriate effort.

A tutor can help in some areas, but it is no substitute for the student putting in the appropriate effort in class, with their homework and with their revision.

Africa2go is spot on. Teenage boys will find You Tube, texts, phones etc just too distracting. They wont give up their phones lightly though. It takes a very mature child to accept that they are distracting.

Clearly he hasnt been doing exactly what he said he was. They arent as grown up and able to handle this sort of responsibility as they think they are. Phones are a cult now. Miss a message and dont reply immediately and its the end of the world (for them!).

In the nicest possible way he and you really needs to step up here. Tutors are a great idea but he needs to want to do this too. Exam technique is very important too and not just writing down everything you know about something when the question asked for something else.

Just as an aside. My DS is now at university. He did well in his mocks just before the pandemic hit. Some of his friends said they would bother when the real exams took place - EXCEPT THEY DIDNT IN THE END!

Whilst schools said it wasnt only mocks that would be taken into account when giving out the pandemic grades of course it made a difference. It was a hard lesson for my son's friends to learn. Some didnt get into their first choice university.