Terrible mock GCSE results

[Notagoodtime]

DS goes to a local grammar school.He has just received his mock GCSE results and they are hugely disappointing. He was graded a 1 in English lit. We know it’s his hardest subject but at no point did we think he would score this low. He has recently started going to an English tutor every other week but I fear that it is all too late. We are trying to remain positive for him but has become disengaged and says he no longer cares. All attempt to try and help him gets rebuffed.

Not if he hasn’t read the texts.

Exactly. They can’t make her do it. She’s (presumably) 16 or nearly. It is her responsibility, not just the school’s.

Take it with a pinch of salt.

Grammar schools do this to a light a firecracker under a students ass and also to send a message home to parents......it's not an actual reflection of their true grade. But it helps a kid know where to focus their revision and is reminder to parents to keep supporting.

I got a U for biology. Complete fail. It was my worst subject. I got a C in the actual exam, but for me that was genuinely hard work and alot of revision.

For my top subjects - English, History, Languages I was given C's and D's in my mocks. Got A's across the board for them. At the time of my mocks I was probably around a B.

I work in the old system - chances are the teacher knows he's fully capable of a B or a C - maybe he's hovering around a D currently. So he fails him - then the kid goes home, the parents sit on him/get him a tutor etc and the kid puts their head down because they're stressing and then will usually come out with a B or C (whatever the equivalent is).

It's tactical. It really is.

Everyone in my year got grades in their mocks way way way below what they actually got in the real thing.

It is signalling that this is a subject he needs help in though, so you're right to act and don't tell him the above.

My son got a 2 in recent English Lit mocks, never scored below a 4/5 before.
The mock was based on poetry only, not the other set texts, so it seems he's not great at that!
Was it a full mock across all texts? A very low mark across all is a worry, but if he did well in parts of it, it might mean that he didn't learn his quotes/read some texts - or it just started badly and then he gave up.

Hi @Notagoodtime I agree with much that is said here about his grade 1 - if he is bright enough to be at a selective school, something must have gone badly wrong in the paper itself - such as barely answering any questions. My DS2 was not a fan of eng Lit and did minimal work tbh but he is able, so he got a 6 with frankly v little effort in terms of revision - not boasting! But did your DS miss out several questions or write v little or miss the point altogether?

Ideally you could do with seeing the paper and then talking through it with DS and his teacher.

If he is a bright lad he can turn this around. But he needs to want to. What is his plan post-16? Were his other mocks better? If he is planning A levels, how were those grades? Tbh he needs a 4/5 grade in Eng, either lang OR lit, so maybe focus on one of those and on his grades in the subjects he wants to take further?

Btw @Trader22 that is interesting what you say - but I have to say that as a teacher I never ever did that. Mock grades were the grade that a student achieved. We tried to give them a mock in year 11 that was a s close as possible to the real thing and mark it accordingly. Honestly I can't see the point of giving a 1 to a student whose paper would actually have scored a 4!

Mind you this was a comp so maybe it's different in a grammar.

Again,the most likely explanation is he barely wrote anything and left lots of Qs unanswered.

It really won’t be the case that someone who tries and answers all the Qs, even without any revision, will get L1 if they have reasonable intelligence.

Even someone who only sits 1 of 2 papers and scores zero on the one they didn’t set, can fairly easily get a low pass without much knowledge or effort if they are bright enough to understand what the question means.

He won’t be getting L1 because he’s been so poorly taught that’s all he’s capable of, and that’s all the whole class got.

OP have you seen his marked paper? Did he basically just sit there and not write anything?

@clary - no not different in a grammar. Use the published grade boundaries to give mock performance like most people do. I've only ever worked in grammars since 2002. I've never given a mark that low in a Lit mock. Lowest has been a 3.

I'd be interested to hear what the op's DS says. Thinking back to what I was like at this age, it is presumably possible that actually he has been doing fine and will continue to be fine, but just sat there in the exam and did nothing as a form of two fingers up protest?!

Yes, that's always been the practice where I have worked, but again, not grammar schools.

I'd be bringing her home now

@Wowwellokthen I agree with pp bring her home now. We were in your position this time last year and I wish we had brought DS home.

oh no, sorry to hear that OP. I know a great English Tutor who really transformed my son's grades with English GCSE in a short space of time. Let me know if you would like details.

I would speak to school first to get to the root of the problem. If it’s because he hasn’t read any of the texts then I’d be inclined to sit side by side and read with him / get audio versions if you can.

It depends how that was awarded. If - like a student of mine - he got a 1 because that's what the real grade boundaries for that paper said, then it's an important teaching opportunity.

I think this shows what happens when you leave your kids to be parented at school. You need to bring her home. She obviously thinks she can do whatever she wants. Maybe the laptop needs to go while she isn't doing any work. I agree that it so sounds like she didn't even bother to answer the questions

There’s time. DD got a 3 in one of her December mocks and one mark off an 8 in the same subject last week. She hadn’t previously understood a lot of it and worked really hard (lots of online videos as they simplified things more than the revision guides which assume à grasp of the concept).
Go with the tutor, but also go back to basics using whatever medium helps.

I think you need to meet with the English teacher, and ideally see the paper.

As others have said, getting a 1 suggests he has essentially not engaged with the mock paper, and I think you need to really get to the bottom of the reasons for this. If it's anxiety etc, then the concern is it could impact other subjects in the summer.

What are his plans for September? What grades does he need for them? It's also not too late to investigate back up options if he doesn't get what he needs for sixth form.

For English lit there's usually a choice of questions. Did he do something like answer completely the wrong question?

Are the other grades around 4/5+ or below that?

A mock is usually a past paper sat and marked to the grade boundaries of the relevant year. I'm not sure what else the teacher should do?

For what it's worth, I think it should have come with some support or contact home.

I hope the OP returns to tell us more but, for the meantime, I am of the opinion that it is more or less impossible to get a 1 unless he missed a whole question out and then wrote about 10 lines for any other question. The lit papers have essay type questions so a 1 suggests virtually nothing written. It's quite a hard grade to get...head on the desk during exam territory.

My dc is very bright, v high CATs etc etc but in Secondary gradually started to sink lower and lower with grades with each year that passed.

Got a 3 in her English Lit mock (end of yr 10) despite being predicted an 8. Teachers said she was lazy/perfectionist and needed to write more. With help of a tutor got a 6 (& just a 6 by 1 mark) for both Lit & Lang. Great that she passed but still nothing like her prediction of an 8.
New school for 6th Form - tested everyone for SEN on 1st day. Turns out she's dyslexic - and qualified for extra time/laptop:

4th percentile for processing. 95-99% for IQ/CAT test stuff.

The fact that she's v bright masked her issues to a point, and she was used to heavily compensating with tricks she'd learnt along the way, but her SEN meant that however hard she tried, she would never have been able to write enough in the time allocated for exams.

It's possible your DC has similar issues.
I would arrange a meeting with subject teacher to discuss. It's unusual and a lot of teachers don't really understand/haven't been trained in detecting learning difficulties in very bright kids.

@picklefin

NC to answer this.

We are in exactly the same boat as you.

DD was identified as a high achiever when she started secondary, but has been sinking ever since. She’s just got 4s and 5s in her mocks and a couple of 6s - way below her ability imo.

She’s revised loads so I just don’t understand it. Her results are erratic too - in class tests she can get anything from an 8 to a 4.

We have autism in the family and I suspect inattentive ADHD but if she has it then she is very high functioning. She’s socially a bit awkward but fine, toe walks, struggles to follow instructions etc.

I feel like we’ve let her down by not seeking a diagnosis before now, and now it’s too late 😔.

(Although I’m not sure what they could have done to help tbh - it’s an average state comp).

as others have said, a 1 in English just isn't credible for a native speaker who passed an 11+ four and a bit years ago. it's almost into 'spoiled ballot paper' territory, or someone who more or less refused to write anything. I'd be very interested to see a copy of the paper.

@Eekmocks Sounds very similar - v low processing and inattentive ADHD for my dc.
I think the school system often lets these kind of students down, not the parents, so don't feel bad. For us, as our dd wasn't consistently failing, so the school didn't show any concern, no matter how many times I emailed or had meetings with teachers.
Their reasoning was that "some girls just lose interest" or "she's just lazy", and I had no idea that a child who read early, was a great speller and was good at languages could be dyslexic and the school had no idea either, but they should have known that consistently not writing enough was a sign of processing issues.
Even if it's too late for a specific set of exams, it's still so important to get a diagnosis, as it will stay with them for 6th form and Uni and the help available at Uni is huge.