Foundation vs higher GCSEs

[Tetchypants]

My son’s been told he’ll sit foundation level science (combined) unless he does well in his mocks next month. I understand this means the highest grade he can get is a 5? He’s disappointed about this as this sixth form he wants (not to study any sciences) needs a higher average grade than that, and science counts for 2 grades.

Say he gets good enough marks to sit the higher, would the paper be so much harder? Hard enough that a 5 would be much more difficult to get? Longer paper? Harder questions etc? I’ve tried to find the marking and grade boundaries, but am just getting confused. I feel if he pushed himself more over the next few months he could achieve a higher grade and he agrees.

Thanks, and it’s AQA combined science if that makes a difference. Hope someone knows the ins and outs of this and can help!

The risk with combined science is if they don't do well enough they fall off the bottom of the grading completely. iirc The first year they had to add in a 3-3 grade as so many didn't reach 4-3 and I think it is still there.

Is it just your DS who has been told this, or everyone? It would be a perfectly reasonable warning to give. He knows now what he needs to do - work hard for the mocks (when are they?).

The Foundation papers have less content to learn. When DD2 dropped to Foundation I found that the content that was dropped was all harder to understand and learn and was the stuff she had naturally omitted anyway. With less to learn you can learn it better, or spend more revision time on other subjects.

There should be crossover questions - those that appear in both foundation and higher, but foundation I think has more low mark questions than the higher paper. I think the maths requirement might be slightly lower too?

I hope he has a Plan B for 6th form choice.

Thanks @TeenDivided he says the majority of the class have been told they’ll sit foundation unless they do well in mocks after half term. He’s in the second to top set apparently, but doesn’t like the subject and doesn’t try very hard with homework etc.

I suppose my hypothetical question is, if a kid in his position sat both papers, and got a straightforward 5 in foundation, how much harder would it be to attain a 6 or more in the higher papers?

He is sitting the higher in maths for definite. Yes he has a plan b for sixth form but would be disappointed not to get in (to do humanities and a language)

Yeh what @TeenDivided says. Foundation is easier to achieve a 5 in - so if a candidate is hovering around a 4/5 then F is the shout, My subject is MFL but I would give the same advice there. The content of the H paper is much harder, and if a candidate is working around a 4/5 grade, much of it will be so challenging that they may lose heart and not even do the bits they can (IME anyway).

But yes, if he has mocks next month then he needs to work hard for science (and all of them obvs). If a student was achieving a strong 6 I would have no doubt about putting them in for the H paper FWIW.

Btw the grade on your GCSE certificate does not specify H or F paper - it just says grade 5/5 (or whatever).

With less to learn you can learn it better, or spend more revision time on other subjects.

This is the crux of it I guess. Do we just park it up and accept he’ll hopefully get 5s, or push him (and possibly speak to his teacher) at the risk of doing less well in more pertinent subjects.

@clary while we’re here, and as you teach MFL… one of my kids does Spanish, the other French. What sort of mock grades should they be expecting at this stage to be able to do it at A Level? I got A’s in three languages, and did one at A Level, think I ended up with a C.

You have given a pretty good reasoning for him to take foundation below.

He’s in the second to top set apparently, but doesn’t like the subject and doesn’t try very hard with homework etc.

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@Tetchypants overall I would expect an A level candidate to achieve a 7 at GCSE to take it. Just bc anything less would suggest they didn’t have sufficient mastery of the basics of tenses and vocab.

As far as current mocks go - this is yr 11 yes? It depends if the mock is an actual GCSE paper - so there may be more work to do before the exam - or if it is more based on what they have done so far, an edited version IYSWIM. I imagine the syllabus may not be finished? If the former, a 6 at least; if the latter then a 7, as the paper is taking account of themes not yet covered. What are they achieving atm?

For the science papers:
I'm guessing he's sitting all 3 paper 1s. There are 3 further papers - which they are unlikely to have covered the content for yet. Kids generally do better on the paper 1s than paper 2s (paper 2chemistry is sometimes the exception if the kids also do Geography).
So, if he gets 4s on this set, I'd stick with foundation papers.
The foundation and higher papers are the same length. The hardest questions on the foundation papers are the starting questions on the higher papers.
It's generally easier to do well on the foundation papers.

My DS took triple science but was borderline foundation/higher for 2 of the sciences.

He found it comparatively straightforward to get a 5 on the foundation papers.

On a good day with a following wind, he could get a 6 on higher papers. On a bad day, he struggled to answer anything at all.

he didn't "need" the science so opted for foundation and banked those 5s.

The issue here is that your DS "needs" the science results for his sixth form of choice. I think the school's attitude of demonstrating he can do well in mocks is reasonable. If he doesn't want to put in the work, he's not going to get a better grade on the higher paper and runs the risk of a poor one/no grade at all.

I'd also suggest you need a Plan B for sixth form :)

Ok, interesting that he may not even have covered the higher level stuff yet. If that’s the case I think he’ll struggle to catch up on the curriculum so far plus learning the higher stuff.

Yes to PP, year 11. I’ve just looked through his exercise books as we’ve laid everything out ready to make a revision plan tomorrow. His humanities books are great, he’s obviously working well at those - brilliant teachers, good feedback and interesting subjects. His maths and Spanish look good too. His science is shite, particularly chemistry.

There’s no point me encouraging the higher with him or with school, is there?

I have been telling him for a couple of years to keep on top of his least favourite subjects in order to make revision less of a chore. He hasn’t. Just feel sad and annoyed that he might be letting doors close behind him already.

Couple of things from your last post.

1. If you don't already have them the cgp revision guides for science are excellent. He doesn't need his class notes, just those books. However they come in foundation and higher so you may need both ...
2. He may not have done all the topics yet, but for those topics he has done he will have covered the points that are in higher but not foundation. It is the same topics for both tiers, just more detail. If you compare the revision guides you'll see what I mean. Or look at the spec on the aqa website.

If he has mocks coming up he should have been told what topics to revise, or which paper they are doing (the same topics are on the same paper each year, unlike maths)

I think if his school is asking for a certain grade average he also needs to consider the min grade for the A levels he wants to do too. For example some schools will expect a 6 6 as a min if a child wants to do psychology.
My son was offered a choice for foundation or higher for Spanish so I did a lot of research into the whole foundation or higher thing. Foundation exams are usually easier but also shorter.
We opted for the foundation as my son didn't need Spanish for his A level choices so we figured he could ease up on this subject and focus elsewhere - he ended up smashing the foundation exam with something like 60 marks over the amount he needed to get the 5 he got so I suspect he prob could have done better in the higher paper than a 5 but since having a 5 for spanish is not effecting him at all I am still glad we made that decision as it took the pressure off and he pushed his grade average of 6.3 at this time of year up to 8 something in the final exams.
My son is at a grammar school and in year 10 he was moved from the triple sciences to the combined science class AQA (although higher paper) as he was not doing well in sciences. We ended up paying A levels students to do papers with him over the weekend from about this time of year until the exams so for about 9 months - and he ended up pushing up his grades to a 9 9 in combined sciences and his grammar school gave him the choice to do science A levels if he wanted to.
This really comes down to how much does you son needs or cares if his seience mark is a 5 or not and balanced with if you think he can handle the stress of focusing on his sciences. some A level programmes and some uni's expect certain gcse levels (if he has his eye on uni).

The biggest difference between the higher and foundation papers isn’t actually the extra content on the higher, there isn’t actually masses more. The style and type of questions on the higher though are a lot harder, many foundation pupils can actually struggle to understand the question never mind the science required.
I’ve been teaching science for around 25 years and when students are working at 4/5 but could get a 6 with a fair wind it is a difficult decision to make. My usual opinion is that if they are border line and not that bothered go for foundation.

My son’s been told he’ll sit foundation level science (combined) unless he does well in his mocks next month. He’s disappointed about this as this sixth form he wants (not to study any sciences) needs a higher average grade than that, and science counts for 2 grades. But doesn’t like the subject and doesn’t try very hard with homework etc. I feel if he pushed himself more over the next few months he could achieve a higher grade and he agrees I have condensed that down. Surely he can't be shocked? Put in minimum effort, get out minimuim grade. This now affects his sixth form choice so it has come to bite him on the arse. Lots of children have this realisation around this point.

I am a draw a line under it and move forward type of person and my stance is this comes down to how much he wants it to be honest. But he doesn't have a lot of time on school's November mocks schedule. However, they don't enter them for their exams until next year and for my sons it was after February mocks. @clary can you possibly confirm when students are entered for their exams? This is probably the kick up the arse he needs. He has half term to spend some time on this and gee him up, he might hate it but he can do well in it. I hate doing laundry but I fold it beautifully

For science if he has access to his year 10 exam papers it might help him to look at why he didn't get full marks. Hopefully they went over them in class and he wrote in the correct answers. Are there scientific language terms he is missing? Does he understand the content? Did he answer the question? Did he communicate effectively?

There are videos on Youtube (Free Science Lessons, Primrose Kitten) who are great at teaching science. You can also increase the playback speed to make it faster so it takes less time as long as he can understand it and absorb it. Also Seneca which for some parts are free.

DD was a different position because she sat the foundation paper for French, which is only one subject. Looking back, it was the right choice for her. She did very little work for her actual GCSE and sailed through the exam with a score of eighty something percent, so she probably could have got a 6 in the actual exam, but the lack of pressure enabled her to put more work in elsewhere and get 9s in the subject she was taking for A Level.

@Tagli as a teacher I would want to decide by Christmas, as from January imo you need to be doing the right kind of practice/exam questions - in MFL the writing paper for example is very different H to F, apart from the single crossover essay.

The actual deadline for schools is mid feb tho.

@clary thank you I knew it was next year but not when. I don't really know about foundation papers as my DC's were always on higher papers. I know for maths you need to be a strong 6 to sit the higher paper but with other subjects and especially MFL I don't know what the difference is between higher and lower in terms of specifics of knowledge. I do know science revision though as DCs both used the ones I mentioned above. Plus mine worked over summer holidays of year 10 to year 11 to secure their grades.

@Tetchypants I totally get that you want the best for him & I would be the same too. However, from what you’ve said he’s doing well in the subjects he enjoys and wants to pursue further. Few people are complete academic all-rounders or interested enough to push themselves in subjects they don’t like or don’t have a natural aptitude for. If he goes for the solid science 5s as a previous poster said he can concentrate on the subjects he’s interested in and push his grades up further there.

I thinking of doing higher in combined science but when I did higher mocks in June I got a U but when I did foundation I got a 4 do you think I should do foundation. I just feel like I can do higher

Do foundation.
No point in doing higher unless you have a realistic chance of a 6.