Y9 predicted GCSEs

[AngelinaBlack]

Hi
DD has, I think, dyscalculia. She couldn’t tell the time until she was 11. She still struggles to work out duration, can’t follow multi step problems, adds or subtracts when the question clearly says multiply or divide, and can’t follow word problems at all. I have been asking the school for support over the past year but they keep saying all the kids are struggling with maths “due to covid lockdowns” and are ignoring the fact my DD struggled with maths long before covid.
She has failed all but one maths test since starting secondary school (getting 20s and 30s percentages usually) yet has been achieving high marks in all other subjects until last term. I was very surprised to see her predicted GCSE grades were 4+ for all but English (predicted 7+) , including maths. How can she be predicted the same grades for Spanish in which she usually gets 80-90% but achieved 50-something in her mock exam , as for maths which she nearly always fails? She got low 30%
on two maths papers. This was well below the average for the year group though that in itself was still quite low.
Is this possibly a way for the school to avoid having to provide help? If her predicted grade was a fail, would they necessarily need to give her additional support? The class teacher always says she’s doing well in class but when I look at her classwork sheets she has hardly done anything.
I know that 4+ is vague and broad (as could mean anything beyond a 4) but I’d be very surprised if 30% could achieve a 4 in maths.

Depends which paper.
What were here y6 sats like?

Any prediction in Year 9 should be treated with suspicion.

Firstly, is this a prediction based on her work, or just autogenerated based on her SATS result?

Secondly, it might well be that she's doing enough to be on line to get a 4 on the Foundation paper. If her test papers so far cover the whole curriculum (so only top achievers will be getting anywhere near top marks) then 30% might well be an indicator that she's doing ok. And, as getting a 4 in maths is a key target for the school, they will be supporting her to achieve this.

You can't know if the percentages are good or bad because you don't know the difficulty of the exam. For example 30% on a GCSE paper is very different to 30% on a paper that was given to end of year 7 students. Similarly the Spanish teacher might be giving tests where the whole class got 70%+ because she wants them to build their confidence.
What maths set is she in ? I know you said that the mark was low for the year group but how did she do relative to the rest of the class? Tbh I am surprised that every set had the same test when the difference between the top and struggling students would be measured in years. Is it a grammar where the difference between top and bottom sets are not very big ?

4-6 is a big band. It does't mean they think she's doing identically in maths and Spanish, just that her marks for both fell within the same huge swathe of the distribution.

For AQA in 2022 you needed to achieve 51/240 on the higher papers to get a 4. That's only slightly over 20%. Now there are loads of variables and an end of Y9 paper is not the same as a GCSE higher level paper, but you can imagine a narrative where a 4 is not unrealistic for her. Only they know what their Y9 exams were like and what their Y9 predictions mean. You really need to talk to them.

However one of the key metrics for school performance is percentage of students achieving level 5 and above in Maths and English, and state sixth forms may require level 4 Maths to do A levels. If her school think she is capable of getting a 4 or 5 with work then she should be one of the students they are targetting. They are usually very motivated to get those borderline 3/4/5s over the line, and they don't get their stats up by pretending they are all fine. Do you know what interventions they do? At our school the standard intervention is they drop a language and do extra maths and English instead. It's definitely worth a conversation with them, but private tutoring or extra practice at home might suit her better than intervention at school if it's anything like ours. It's really effective but maybe not the best fit with your daughter's English ability and and her wish to do Spanish GCSE.

Current years 9s didn’t do SATs

There doesn’t seem to be any intervention or support available at this school other than “maths club” which she sees as a detention or punishment and refuses to go. She never asks for help or admits she is confused. She always says she understands when in reality she doesn’t. I have been asking for in-class support (extra worksheets or extra repetition) over the past year and been fobbed off with “they are all struggling”.
When I went through some of the latest maths test questions with DD she had no idea how she had even got some of the answers. She doesn’t recall any maths facts at all. When faced with repetition of a topic over a number of days it all clicks and she can answer many questions correctly, but as soon as the repetition stops (to focus on another topic) she recalls nothing. Even the most basic maths concepts. Even the fact 0.5 is a half.
She has resisted all attempts by me to help coach her, including full on meltdowns, sobbing under the table, pretending to be sick to get out of “trying” some maths. She refuses to have a tutor.
I think she would respond best to a teacher giving her extra examples and asking her to complete and submit them. She will do them if asked by a teacher but not if asked by me. I can’t really afford a tutor (£50 per hour here).

This is my DD to a t. She's moving to a dyslexia school in Sept and I cannot wait till I'm not stressing about this. However, to give you a few ideas, we did:
Power of 2
TT rockstars or any timestables

10mins everyday of both. If she's anything like mine, your DD will be apprehensive about it at first but fine with it once she sees results. My DD will master something and still forget eg telling the time. It's really really depressing and frustrating and there's so few resources available in comparison to dyslexia. Deffo set up a meeting with maths in Sept.

Blimey have the Covid Year 6s got to Year 9 already ....?!

She won't have done a 'mock exam' in the sense of full practice GCSE papers in year 9. So the performance they're reporting and you're talking about is just a school devised assessment. Which could cover anything, be of any level and the results mean almost anything.

If they don't think there are gaps that they don't already have a plan to deal with (since they say everyone's in the same boat), then she doesn't need this mythical intervention you're asking for.

If there really are areas where she needs additional help, point those out instead of talking about test results. You say these were evident before Covid, but the school didn't know her then and you can explain what you've already tried or has been put in place previously.

I have pointed it out in emails to the class teacher, head of maths, head of year, SENCO and had literally nothing back other than this “they’re all struggling” from head of maths.
I have a degree in maths. I can see that DD can’t understand any maths. Her younger sibling who is 8 can answer more questions correctly than DD who is 14. Younger sibling “gets” maths. DD does not. It will cause problems for her in GCSE science as well given that one third of the course is maths based.
I wonder if the school would have to give additional support if DD had a diagnosis of dyscalculia. It’s not that she isn’t bright or that she doesn’t work hard, as evidenced by her usually high marks in all non-maths subjects. It’s that she has some sort of maths blindness/panic/fear and always has.

No, they've finished year 9 and are about to start year 10!

@AngelinaBlack In answer to your question re diagnosis- no, the school would just have to differentiate which is what they're meant to do now. This is the problem with the whole first class teaching thing. It just doesn't work. My DD has an EHCP as her Dyslexia and Dyscalculia is so severe, and even has 1:1 maths written into her plan. It's so patchy in terms of recruitment though and what we found with DD is the memory problems mean little and often was far better than the 1:1 tuition age received at school or even privately paid for by us. Have a look at GCSE maths for neurodivergent learners on Amazon. The first 50 pages aren't that useful as they just go over how each SpLD effects you, but the exercises she may find useful.
What maths set is your daughter in?

I’ll have a look at that, thanks!

She says she isn’t in the bottom set (we’ve never really been told) and is in the group doing normal GCSE maths rather than the foundation paper. The year group average of less than 50% didn’t include the children doing the foundation paper. Dd still got 14% below the average for the year group. She said she studied harder for maths than for anything else, but I don’t think she understands how to study and she won’t let me help her.

I would insist on a meeting with SENCO and do not let them fob you off. They should run a dyscalculia screener and if that picks something up then they should administer Sandwell. Good luck!

I think there's a bit of a mismatch with your proposed solutions. You are wanting a teacher to set extra work, but what is the point of that when (1) she already does very little of her classwork sheets and (2) you say the problem is she can do it by repetition then it drops out of her head? I think badgering a teacher to set more questions is the wrong battle here, and one you won't win.

You're wanting help but if she won't engage in maths club isn't the answer to get her to engage in maths club? They can't come up with a new solution for every child who feels that maths club is beneath them, or fill a tutoring- or parental-support-shaped gap because she refuses both of those too. It's a challenge for children to engage with extra help, it can hit at self esteem, but if you can get them in the door and they realise it's helping and they are achieving there, they can really fly. I wonder if this is more about her panic and embarrassment, and feeling put on the spot, and the way forward is to work on one of the already available solutions with a massive heap of reassurance, rather than asking the school for something new. Extra help tends to be far more supportive and celebratory than my own parental support has been! So do whatever you can to get her to try a few sessions of maths club, or parental help, or a tutor, and go from there. Whatever else school could come up with is unlikely to be accepted by her when she is already rejecting all these options.

Maybe try approaching it as an anxiety, like she is scared of spiders or lions and you are trying to get her to engage with one. Praise small steps towards engagement. It is quite pressuring feeling rubbish at something that comes very easily to a parent. A growth mindset can really help. Look at the 30% she got and build on it, don't let her get caught in the headlights staring at the 70%. I've watched my son get help in English from specialist autism LSAs and the biggest change is he's now genuinely proud of a 45% even though his maths and sci marks are massively higher. A 4 in English is an absolute requirement for A Levels so he is really motivated by slogging away to get that 4. He has "English specific" difficulties like not understanding metaphors, but after many years of struggling it was mainly the panic and fear of failure were standing in the way. Break that down (which is a really difficult task) and he can access the help, with a shedload of positive talk and reassurance.

Incidentally it is pretty normal at all our various schools not to finish class worksheets, especially in lower sets if they don't tailor the sheets. They tend to put plenty on to keep the quickest occupied, without any expectation for most students to get near the bottom. My daughter used to often do less than half and she was predicted a 9.

Thanks @Magneta that’s an interesting perspective.
Re classwork sheets, they are rarely marked. If they were marked by the teacher I think she would at least attempt them. What I need from the teacher though is repetitive easy examples of whatever formula she’s covering rather than what they are usually given which are two or three short questions and 10 multi step or wordy, which Dd doesn’t even attempt.
I have tried this myself, printing off sheets of easy questions but she won’t do them.
I can’t physically get her to go to maths club and in any case it is just a homework club where they can ask questions...which she won’t do, as she is scared to say she doesn’t understand. I just don’t know what the solution is.

Maths club for my very dyscalculic DD was awful. It was a computer room staffed by TA who couldn't explain anything they were just asked to rewatch the video. DD was too embarrassed to ask for help or go to the table where the maths geniuses would play supervised maths games...