Going under from GCSE coursework

[mumofteennotfun]

My DD is in year 11 and took both DT and art GCSEs. If only we could ago back in time!
She is really struggling with the coursework workload and deadlines. She is a bit of a perfectionist which doesn’t help and work is taking her hours and hours when I am sure it shouldn’t be.
She hasn’t even started revising yet as she is just drowning in coursework!
Just wondered if any other teens are going through similar?

My friends dd is doing Textiles and Art, and is also drowning.

DS us in Y9. I'm not looking forward to the next couple of years!

I feel your pain! My y11 DD does art gcse and it has been a total nightmare! I don’t think your DD is over egging it necessarily- I thought mine was until she showed me the true horror of it and I realised quite how much work there was. 3 sketchbooks, and each page takes about 10 hours! Im just telling her to get the coursework done and out of the way asap, whatever it takes, so it doesn’t tank the rest of the revision.

My DD is also doing Art. Spending 10 hours on one page is bonkers. They're doing too much/working too slowly. I think DD realised that after Christmas she needed to speed up and spend less time on presentation but stick really tight to the brief. Teachers are very pleased with this.
By this time the students should have streamlined their presentation and be working to their skill sets.
DD's school are expecting them to do at least 1.5 hours a week extra to set lessons and are making space available lunchtimes and one afternoon after school. She's probably doing slightly more than that but is keeping to the schedule.
If you have kids in year 10 & 9 taking this subject, it's not an easy option and do not get behind on course work!
Doing it alongside DT must be pretty full on though. Exam in March here and deadline for all coursework to be finished and handed in is April. I think this last phase has put a few of them off from taking it at A level.

Dd did both. The good thing is the art is over by mid April, as is the DT coursework. DT has a single exam so compared to a lot of students, exam time is a bit easier. No way was dd spending 10 hours on a page. It was a lot 4-6 hours a week outside of school I guess, which would be several pages of photos/sketches/analysis, and she did a lot of faffy things with her book so some pages were almost like a pop up book with tabs and flaps. I think you need to look at what is getting the marks and concentrate on that. Not all of dds actual art was great but she ticked the boxes and got 9s in both subjects. Could you both have a meeting with her teacher to help her identify what to focus on for a final push?

I used to teach art and Dt gcse and a level.

Its not volume it’s depth. In fact, the top students invariably had less volume ( much less) but the work had complexity. What you leave out is as important as what you put in.

Snap DT coursework nearly complete deadline Friday but then still have art. Learnt lesson second child gcse options this week I’m only allowing one coursework subject. He won’t be doing art even though he enjoys it as he has seen his sister work so hard. Definitely put DD off art A level.

My DS in Y11 is spending most evenings after school working on his project in the DT workshops... my DD took art. I can't quite imagine doing both. (At A-level, DD's workload was similar in art, but there were only 2.5 other subjects to compete with it.) Hang on in there! Worth getting marks in the bag at this point.

I think your DD needs to allocate a fixed time to coursework (eg Sunday afternoon) and then revise other subjects.
She wouldn't spend all her time revising History to the detriment of science, so shouldn't over spend time on coursework.

Good enough is good enough.

Easier said than done.

Agreed that you need to limit the hours spent on art and DT for her sake, unless that is her real focus post 16.

I would be insisting on revision for core subjects (maths, English, science, plus one other if 5 are needed for sixth form entry) is prioritised, and then art/DT get a set amount of time eg one day a week.

Unless she wants to take art further, a poor art grade won't hold her back. A poor English or maths grade might.

My DD took both art and drama last year. Due to it being the first year they offered drama at her school the teacher hadn't realised they were mean to work on the portfolio as they went along so they didn't even start it until March. Result - DD spent most of the Easter holidays and the couple of weeks previous pretty much solely working on coursework. I was having kittens that she was spending so little time revising anything else. She was also a perfectionist.

It did work out in the end, but only because DD had worked consistently at her other subjects and revised thoroughly for mocks. Plus they were doing a lot of revision at school. And it was good to have 2 subjects (mostly) sorted before exam season.

If she'd not been up to date on her revision, I suspect I would have been "encouraging" that she timetabled in doing some as well as coursework. At least if your DD is working hard now, she'll have all of Easter to revise?

@LlamasUnited
"and each page takes about 10 hours!"
Surely this is ridiculous. Have you talked to Art teacher, Head of Dept, and HoY. Because this can't be right.

This is all so unbalanced. Yes coursework is very important. But if it's dominating everything else, then either the child's perfectionist tendencies have got way out of hand, which you need to discuss with your child as their parent. And /or follow up with school if it's not getting any better.

Gosh I wonder what has changed from doing art 25 years ago. I did it for GCSe and A-level (as a 4th A-level). I remember any study periods were spent in the art room, quite a few lunchtimes and also an hour after school most nights but other than that I have no recollection of doing much work out of school at home. The hardest bit was the history of art coursework we had to write. I can’t believe the requirements are that much greater now. My teacher knew how to steer the students into getting A’s though. No one got less than that as she knew exactly what we had to do and didn’t waste our time doing anything unnecessary. I wonder if they are doing so much that isn’t actually needed.

I think a lot has changed! I also did Art GCSE many years ago and despite being a fairly mediocre artist and not doing very much at all outside of lessons managed to get a B. There’s absolutely no comparison with the amount of work that is needed now. My daughter has just finished her DT coursework (thank God!) and it was a mammouth task.

It seems to be harder across the board. I’m sure she is doing stuff in maths that I didn’t tackle until A Level and the amount they do in English Lit is ridiculous- one Shakespeare play, one 19th C novel, one 20th C novel and all the poems. Ours was 100% coursework and we could just tackle one text at a time, not have to remember it all for the exams (although I would argue that this probably wasn’t challenging enough). The only consolation is that the grade boundaries often seem quite low, but surely it would be better to have easier exams so that they can really master the content than make it that you can get a 7 with a relatively low mark.

Dd did Art and DT (Textiles). Throughout the course, she did other subject homework / revision in the evenings of the week, and Art / DT at the weekends. (Also a serious dancer, so had to be really disciplined in terms of time management). Even so, the end of Art was a push.

It does depend a lot on how good the staff are at structuring portfolio work as a ‘little and often’ throughout, and how good they are at communicating ‘what gets marks’ vs ‘unnecessary faff’.

I also found as a teacher that time management was the key to coursework. Little and often rather than last minute scrabble at the end.

My gcse art was a load of shite. I remember doing a few different techniques - some lino printing, batique, screen printing etc but there was no artist study, no analysis, no developing of ideas. I just thought “Lino printing looks fun - I’ll do a picture of a bird” then I would do it and hand it in. My exam was a basic landscape painting with poster paints. The girl who was the best in our class and very “arty” did a Celtic cross pencil drawing. She was sitting opposite me and I remember being hugely impressed by it but she was just copying a Celtic cross picture. There was no research, no analysis. Nothing. Just a nice picture. We both would have failed today with what we did. I got a B, she got an A*.

The difficulty with coursework is that there is always that temptation to do just a little bit more in the hope of getting a few more marks. My DD spent the last couple of days on her DT project tinkering around the edges, adding extra bits here and there which took a lot of time (at the detriment to her other subjects- it was driving me mad!) but which probably didn’t make that much difference.

It’s quite different to revising a topic which may or may not come up, as you know that every bit of work that goes into the coursework will be marked and measured.

Not for everyone but can she do any at the same time? Mine had videos to watch to revise science and history - bbc bitesize, crashcourse etc and would have those on in the background while doing art, instead of music like they would otherwise have.
They had so much art to do that they would play the recorded zoom lessons from the lockdowns whilst painting- it really helped. Especially as while drawing takes a long time it doesn't take all of your focus.

The difficulty with coursework is that there is always that temptation to do just a little bit more in the hope of getting a few more marks. My DD spent the last couple of days on her DT project tinkering around the edges, adding extra bits here and there which took a lot of time (at the detriment to her other subjects- it was driving me mad!) but which probably didn’t make that much difference.

lve had students move from D/C grades to A/A* from bits of ‘tinkering’ if they’ve left out a small bit that makes a massive difference in terms of the assessment criteria, it’s worth ‘tinkering’ It can make a huge difference.

You have my sympathy. DC did DT and Art last year (now doing Art A level) and the workload is mad. But by March it is nearly over and makes exam season slightly easier. 10 hours per page is too much though.

@mumofteennotfun
Can I just thank you for this thread, my DS is currently Y9 and making choices and is looking at DT (resistant materials) and art, we have just had parents evening and I've been trying to get across to him just how much coursework there is and how much of it isn't done in school I'm hoping this thread will help him believe me.

No you’re wrong. DT Coursework HAS to be completed in school. They can do minor bits at home but the huge majority is to be completed at school under controlled conditions. This is to prevent cheating.

If they have loads to do at home, then they are wasting class time. They can maybe finish a sheet off that a teacher has seen them start, but no way shoukd they be doing loads at home. It’s against exam board regulations.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow
Sorry I phrased it wrong, I meant that if he took Art "as well" there is a lot of course work for that at home and he'd still be working hard in school. Or am I wrong there as well does all the Art get done in school as well? genuine question because it's many years since I was at school.

For DT (textiles), DD did the ‘making’ in school, and the designing, but a lot of the updating of each page of the coursework documentation was done at home, plus things like design of questionnaires, getting feedback from potential users etc. Given her design was not fir her own peer group, she couldn’t have done surveys etc in school.

The majority of both has to be done in school. It’s to prevent cheating. I’m not saying a lot doesn’t get done at home, but the majority has to be done in school.

Some schools don’t allow or give homework for it.