Can any English teachers help with a question about summer 2022 Eng Lit GCSE exam?

[NotAnother0ne]

I'm hoping an English teacher can give me some advice. DC has SEN and finds English very hard. We're doing everything we can to help him get a grade 5 but his school have thrown a huge spanner in the works.

During 2 lockdowns, 2 periods of isolation and for all his homework I've sat with him to stop him getting distracted. Due to this I know his class have done hardly anything on poetry (either the anthology or unseen) so assumed his school would drop the poetry anthology for this summer's exam.

Bizarrely, they have decided to drop A Christmas Carol which they have actually studied on and off since Yr7. Apparently, as a cohort, A Christmas Carol was the poorest scoring question in their recent mock exams. This might be due to the fact the top sets were told which 2 poems out of 15 to focus on which obviously isn't a fair reflection of a real exam. We've spent the Christmas holidays working on poetry but DS is really struggling and I just don't think he'll be able to learn 50% of the Eng Lit Syllabus from scratch whilst also revising his other subjects by May.

I plan to speak try to speak to Head of English and DS's mentor / SENDCO tomorrow to discuss this. The school aren't going to change their minds but is there anything stopping DS answering the 'A Christmas Carol' question in his actual exam?

Yes- they will be registering for particular units and the N option (19th century novel) will not be selected and therefore the paper not provided. They will sit the poetry and the modern text.

You COULD speak to the school and see if they would do an individual option entry for him, but in that case he would probably miss out on in-class revision.

@Evvyjb thanks for your post, that's what I suspected might happen. It's a big risk to ask for him to have an individual entry and therefore no further teaching on ACC but it's worth considering. We're in the fortunate position that we could pay for a tutor if necessary. For a kid that really struggles with English he actually got 63% for the ACC question which was bloody amazing. There's no way he'll get even close to that for the two poetry units.

He will still have to do the unseen poetry however - that and the Shakespeare is compulsory, then the other paper is the 2 options

I know he'll struggle with Unseen Poetry but focussing on one poetry unit rather than two feels a bit more doable. I'm going to speak to his mentor first as she knows DS very well and understands how hard he finds English and how this announcement has absolutely thrown him.

Why did you 'assume' the poetry would be dropped?

@KaptainKaveman

Why did you 'assume' the poetry would be dropped?

Probably because they haven't covered it "Due to this I know his class have done hardly anything on poetry (either the anthology or unseen)" and yet they had covered ACC since year 7.

Ds2 is year 11 also, they dropped An Inspector Calls because they hadn't yet covered it and they felt that doing the poetry would help children with the unseen element which is heavily weighted marks wise.

There is a good study guide that helps to break down the anthology, I have linked the Power and Conflict one, you can see inside how it helps spell it out for them. www.amazon.co.uk/GCSE-English-Literature-Poetry-Guide/dp/1782943617?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

If your son listens to any music with lyrics get him to tell you what he thinks the song is about, it is the same for unseen poetry. What does the title say, does the poem reflect the title? ie On a Daughter Leaving Home you expect to get details of packing up a car but instead you get a description of a memory of her learning to ride her bike. It is hard for some students to make the connection between worrying about children no matter what age they are, even when they are adults.

Sorry, meant to @NotAnother0ne to ping you.

@KaptainKaveman because the whole point of introducing optionality into what will now be Paper 1 is to let schools drop a topic that they've hardly covered. In our school, this is poetry.

@OnTheBenchOfDoom thanks for those tips, they're very helpful. We have most of the study guides but not the one for poetry anthology so I'll look at that.

I spoke to DS's mentor on Friday that agrees that it will be very hard for him to get to the same level in poetry that he is with the set texts. Hopefully I get a call from the Head of English next week.