Low GCSE expectations - what have your state schools done to support?

[Testina]

I’m trying to support my Y10 niece who isn’t a particularly academic child in the first place, and who has missed a lot of Y10, attendance around 50% and I’m not sure how much attention she pays when there.

My view is that she should concentrate on 5 GCSEs to pass and write off the others. To the extent that I think she should be doing catch up work on those 5 and not even timetabled for the other subjects.

However, before my brother has a meeting with school to talk about their ideas and what’s possible, I thought it might be useful to know if there’s a common way that schools approach this. The attendance issue won’t be that common, but ability to pass 8 GCSEs must be. Is it a “thing” to drop subjects?

Any experiences, for idea, gratefully received!

History is a lot of revision. As is Geography.
RE is imo more straightforward.

Anything with coursework is great if she can keep up with it, but dire if not.

English Lit is not so bad if the plays / books are available as films as watch them enough and quotes go in by osmosis, but the poetry stuff is tougher.

You say she 'won't choose to commute'. I kind of don't blame her. If DD used college transport it would be an hour door to door for her, which she wouldn't cope with. So we drive her and it takes us an hour round trip twice a day, 4 days a week which isn't doable for most families. We are lucky we can.

(My comments on Eng Lit are based on how well DD knows Macbeth despite never studying it at school, similarly A Christmas Carol and also An inspector Calls. If you watch something, read the study notes and discuss, you can get quite a long way.)

Oh yeah, I didn’t mean that as a criticism of her! I live in a city where you could reasonably consider 3 different colleges by bus! Ignoring sixth from A level places. But there’s one college in her town and that’s that.

It’s been blood out of a stone getting her Eng Lit set texts from her. Like I sent a list of her exam board choice Shakespeares to her and she picked R&J. I probed and said, “did you do that last term?” Nope. Y7. But she thinks maybe they did a bit of Macbeth last term 🤦‍♀️ Obviously I can bypass her to school for the info, but it kind of shows the difficulty!

She only has one coursework subject and that’s Art - notoriously for being one you have to really keep on top of, with a lot of work! You also have to show profession and a “journey” so you can’t just knock a portfolio up last minute!

I’m holding on to this though: even if she fails the whole damn lot, she will know that we love her and we care.

Yes! I really think this too. And that’s why I think a reduced timetable could help. If instead of sitting in French doing nothing she was instead sitting in learning support room watching one of those with school’s agreement on a tablet, it could make a difference! But I don’t know if that’s the kind of suggestion which would be considered or laughed out of a meeting… hence the thread!

The parents seem quite hands off?

This could be an issue if the school think she won't be working / encouraged to work in the freed up periods. You can't realistically drive it from 3 hours away.

One parent is entirely absent.
The other is extremely loving but overwhelmed and naïve.

We absolutely do permit part time timetables, and this is sometimes kids going home at lunch, or only rocking up at 10 am and leaving early. Or going to learning support/library for some lessons. We offer extra lessons in maths and english from y7-y11 and a student at her level would definitely already be in those and doing at least one less GCSE, then in y10 and 11 we offer extra GCSE ( well foundation level really) science and again those students would typically have dropped at least 1 GCSE ( or never started the full complement).
The school may well also have a deal with some alternative providers to help kids like your niece. I appreciate the only parent left on the scene is massively overstretched but the school seem to have been rather less than proactive with a kid with such poor attendance and associated issues,

That’s all really interesting and helpful, thank you @JaffavsCookie

I am wary of judging the school when I’m getting the information second hand, and know that my brother isn’t pushing them at all, but they really seem to have done very little.

We allow PT timetables but only very rarely. So we might let a student drop RE, and give them 2 extra periods in study base in that time.
A very very few students - all of whom have ECHP - are attending alternative provision, so they do English, Maths and maybe one option, but are educated elsewhere the rest of the time. It very much depends where you are - our AP is incredibly limited and we can only access it when someone else moves on. We currently have 3 y11 in AP and 5 in y10 desperately needing those places.

Further to my answers above, both my DC, neither of who had EHCPs were able to drop a subject.
DD1 was able to drop History Feb y11 after a recent dyspraxia diagnosis and bombing out of both History & Eng Lang mocks. Dropping history allowed for extra work on Eng Lang leading to passing it.
DD2 was able to drop Geography March y10 after not coping with general work load. Then covid hit and it all went to pot anyway.

You sound like you really want to help her which is great. Getting her tuition in maths and Eng will certainly help. However, your niece's parent will need to step us to supervise her doing work and revision at home. Even if she is allowed to drop subjects and sit in a room studying on a tablet, she actually needs to be reliable enough to use the time to study. If she is not self motivated, it will be a waste of time and she may also then turn to messing around with other kids who are out of lessons for whatever reason.

I think an awful lot here depends on the school and what they are set up to offer.

In most schools, it would be unusual to allow a student to drop 3/4 subjects this early on in Y10. Most schools also don't offer part time timetables long term, as they are not meant to be used in this way. As she progresses through Y11, it's more likely that you/she will be able to get the sort of accommodations that she wants.

Not every school has streams that offer additional maths/english lessons, either. So your options do depend a bit on what the school is able to offer.

The thing is, in Y11 especially, you do get a lot of students asking to drop a subject and use that time to "revise in the library" etc. In most cases, it isn't workable or appropriate- which is why schools may seem resistant at first.

Given she obviously has various challenges, it does perhaps make sense to look at an official part time timetable in the short term- which would mean her coming home to study, rather than studying in school. However, depending on how her timetable looks, it probably wouldn't be easy to set this up so that she just went in for English/Maths/Science.

The school's long term goal would likely be getting her back to more full time attendance in Y11.