GCSEs not going well

[Littleredhen39]

Just posting for advice. My daughter has worked really hard for these exams and is a bright girl predicted 8s and 9s however is coming out of most exams feeling they have gone really badly.
The over analysis of exams after has not helped and now she is feeling that she has let herself down and seems to be giving up. I have tried to tell her that she is just focusing on what she struggled with and she may well have done better than she thinks and as long as she gets what she needs for sixth form it's enough. She has recently decided she wants to do medicine so is now thinking this will not be possible for her.
She has come such a long way since the pandemic where she suffered with disordered eating and self harm. She watched a rom com with me last night and seemed much happier and is revising now but I'm inwardly panicking that her mental health is on a downward trajectory. Any advice on positive things I can say to her while managing my inner panic about the potential disappointment she may suffer come results in August?

Predicted 8s and 9s? Chances are she has done extremely well. In the very unlikely event she has had total brain farts in all of them she can retake. No biggie. She has worked hard and you are extremely proud of her. Why doesn't she go see a friend for a bit?

Sounds like she is being really hard on herself.
I have a DS (younger so not at GCSEs yet), but seems to tune into the things that went wrong/bad in an exam instead of the positives. For instance, realising he may have answered a question incorrectly will be the sole focus of the whole exam.
It may be, that she has a similar trait, so even though 90% of the paper was fine, will just focus on the possible 'wrongs'.

I hope she manages to relax a little, maybe encourage her to go out and do something she enjoys for a little while.

Sometimes kids place far too much pressure on themselves.

Would it work to emphasise that you will be delighted with whatever she gets? That you can see she’s worked hard and you’re really proud of her.

Really it’s about developing resilience, but also putting it into perspective - that she needs x grades but beyond that it doesn’t really matter (except for personal pride).

I mean, she’s probably done really well - but she’ll only know that when she gets the results - which a long way off right now when she could just be enjoying the summer.

Relaxation is the key. She will have learned so much in the last 2 yrs. Some of it has bound to have be retained. Revision should be just that - revising stuff done before. I know she will have been told this but ( DH with a degree still gets it wrong when doing quizzes ) read the question fully. Don't latch on to one word or phrase and write all that you know about that.

I think some high achieving kids can get paranoid about every mark they think they have lost, as if dropping 1 mark will plunge them from a 9 to a 4.

At this point maybe just say they won't have gone as bad as she thinks, and to get through the last week doing the best she can.

Then celebrate the end of exams and tell her how proud you are.

If she really wants you can discuss plans B & C, it's not the end of the world whatever the results are.

Students like this I always introduce to the Dunning-Kruger curve. She knows what she knows and she knows what good answers look like, so she'll be naturally more self-critical than someone who doesn't know as much.

She's worried because she's good.

The other thing I do is always remind students that yes, undoubtedly getting good grades first time makes life easier. But there's always another way if it all goes wrong. It might take an extra year at 6th form, or a foundation degree year, or something similar. And one extra year in a lifetime of 80 or more is nothing.

These exams are important, but they're not everything.

And with the curve!

Grade boundaries are really tough - aqa science ones for example have sat at around 65% for a 99 in combined science for years. So even the top students will get over a third of the paper wrong.

Also remind her that it's evolution to remember only the hard parts of the paper. She remembers the parts that gave her an adrenaline rush so that she can learn from her mistakes and not be in "danger" again.

Actually for many medical schools you can get in with less than stellar GCSE grades. It is all about being strategic. One person might have average GCSE grades but a really good UCAT (Medicine entry exam). Some places reward very high GCSEs but others are happy with 6 or 7 and appropriate (good) A levels. Bristol for example asks for a 7 in maths and a 4 in English. There is usually a medicine thread which will have advice for her about applying strategically. She probably has done much better than she thinks.

Exam season is brutal and if your DD is a perfectionist then the constant treadmill of exams she can obsess over is particularly damaging to mental well-being.

After exams I think for pupils like this, discussing the paper is the worst thing they can do. They hear of answers that might disagree with theirs or points they didn't make and then that's all they focus on. The best thing to do is to ban any thought or discussion of papers that have been done, there's no point as they are done, and only focus on working getting through the ones to come.

Make sure she continues to watch films, go for walks and do things that aren't revision. The end is in sight.

Is she in a comp or a selective/ independent school? Even in a comprehensive if she has been streamed she might not be really aware of the full range of students sitting the exams. She will probably be fine.

Thank you so much. She is really hard on herself and I have emphasised how proud I am whatever the result, Will work on fun and building resilience over the summer.

If she decides to go for Medicine then this is one of the applicant threads https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/higher_education/4704552-medicine-2024-entry?page=5 it is worth you keeping an eye on them. I did quite a lot of research for dd on thestudentroom and here because it can feel quite competitive especially for a perfectionist. She obviously also did some research into where she thought she would be happy and going to open days etc.

The thing about her anxiety is that it has nothing to do with reality. As in real risk or real hazards.
Her problem = anxiety.
Problem does not = whether she'll do well at exams.

The only way she could become less anxious is for her to come to understand that if she failed her exams (which she obviously won't) that she would still find another successful path thru life. There are lots of good ways forward regardless of the actual results.

She's doing what I call "mushrooming". I'm a teacher, and find that it can help students when we remind them that an exam is a massively intense experience. We don't tend to remember the parts that went well, as we don't need to: they go through our brain, out through the pen, and it's on to the next bit.
We do tend to retain those parts that we had to spend more time on, though, even though it will probably have been one question, or part of a question. It's a small part of the exam, but - like a mushroom popping up overnight - it quickly expands in our minds until that tricky bit has become, to us, that whole exam.

I'm usually right, and they've done a lot better than they thought.

Thank you for this I will get her to have a look after these exams are over. I keep trying to tell her that she g do les not need a full set of 8's and 9's for medicine

Great advice thank you,

Absolutely this. I think I have been guilty of this in the past. I'm sure she has done better than she thinks but if has gone wrong we'll deal with it. I think I'm catastrophising her response to not being perfect where I need to focus on helping with her resilience.

I would actually not get her to look at the moment, I would instead look for yourself and just tell her about a few places where she doesn't need high GCSE grades. As long as she is doing the right A levels (generally Biology, Chemistry (not all places require both) and one she will find fairly easy), she should be able to relax and recharge for a little bit. The next two years will be fairly intensive so she needs to get over GCSEs before thinking about medicine. I think beginning of yr12 would be a better time for her to start researching.

Talk to her about mushrooming. Talking it through can lessen the irrational panic. Gently point out the evidence that points to her having done better than she fears - mock results, actual grade boundaries (they forget that it's not the case that you need 100% for a 9!)
Don't talk about the future, other than the down time that she's earned after the exams. All talk of grades will do is to ramp up the anxiety, and is pointless as the grades are a bridge that can't be crossed until August. Lots of cuddles, lots of soothing reassurance and rational talk.

(I've got one doing GCSEs and not doing Alevels this year)

My second daughter is like this. We are in Australia so no GCSEs but she’s just finished an exam block. She’s in year 10 and it’s supposed to be a more “fun” year - a student has to do maths/English/some form of science and a humanities but there’s encouragement to try a range of subjects before committing to 6 for years 11/12. It hasn’t been fun though, with the subjects she cares about she’s very hard on herself about.

It’s a very academic, selective school and in the core subjects they grade very harshly; last term only 10 of the 200 in her year were awarded an A grade (of any kind) for English. A- is >80%, A is >85, A + is >90. To get an A in maths you have to answer the A questions which are supposed to be complex questions that aren’t familiar.

she has always been smart and done well but this year, suddenly, grades really matter to her and she’s actually studying for exams, which she’s never done before. She’s topped the year in 3 subjects so far, including physics and chemistry but isn’t as strong in maths, as in she’s probably in the top 10 in the year. She wants to do physics at uni.

a few weeks ago DH and I were at work and she went to the office and called in tears, saying the specialist maths exam was horrible, she got loads wrong, she needed to go home. We are both doctors, with patients so couldn’t take her so she booked herself into the well-being room at school and stayed there for the afternoon, sobbing with the therapy dog.

As it turned out, she got an 88% which is an A and the cause of the angst was getting two “easy” ones wrong at the beginning of the paper and she wasn’t able to let it go.

Last week she had the rest of exams, including core maths and maths extension and I was a wreck waiting for similar phone calls (maths extension is hard) but they didn’t happen, thank god.

My theory (as someone who has done zillions of exams) is that if she’s embarking on a maths heavy career then she’s going to have to work this out for herself, to some extent. She’s learned from the first term that she’s better doing swimming training in the morning before a hard exam, as it helps with her focus. She’s worked out that in a 6 mark extension question the final answer may only be worth 1 mark so no need to worry if the answer isn’t cornet and she’s working out how to pace herself for longer, harder exams.

My response to her catastrophising has been “let’s just see” and basic looking after her stuff - food she likes, cleaning her room for her, making sure she exercises but I do think, with children like these, they need to find their own way through.

This is spot on!

DD says that she knows an exam has gone well when she comes out and doesn’t think of it again. I’ll talk to her about this when she’s upset about harder questions

I know that this is an old thread but how did your daughter do in the end? My daughter has been exactly the same. Melting down about questions that are only worth one or two marks. She passed all her mocks but she is convinced she has failed most of them.