Y11 2023/24 thread 5 - results!

[Techno56]

New thread as no 4 is nearly full

The English grades are certainly quite a shocker.

I'm interested in how others did in English Literature. DS took it with Edexcel. (In fact, his three grades were the three subjects he did with Edexcel.) He is great at literature, reads voraciously, is analytical, sharp, loves taking texts apart, was getting very good marks in class and got a 9 in mocks.... he got a 7 and he only just got that, he's sitting precisely on the bottom grade boundary. It doesn't 'matter' as such, he's not now planning to do it for A Level (he decided that a couple of months ago) but it's a shame. And so few of his peers at school got the higher marks for Edexcel English Lit.

As it is, there seems little point in going for a review (is there??) because like I say, he's sitting right on the boundary and I don't want the review to find that in fact, the marking was TOO generous and he'd lose that 7!

The very last thing the head from his old mainstream school said to us before DS moved to his special school in Year 7 was "he won't be a credit to any school, he's unlikely to get any qualifications"

That’s disgusting and everything I hate about certain schools. Very quick to put down young people for not fitting the mould academically and/or socially.

Good on you and especially your DS for not letting those arsewipes stop you moving forward.

No @GlomOfNit not worth asking imo. Your ds has the best mark he will get for the subject I would imagine. I think my dd was predicted a 5 and got a high 7 in Edexcel English lit. She said she really liked the paper on the day and knew she’d done really well.

I find the English AQA grades interesting. DD got a 9 in Language and a 7 in Lit. This is a reversal of her mocks and all practice papers leading to exams. She also felt that lit went really well but not language. Her friend got a 6 and was also predicted 8/9. Apparently the majority of the class got grades much lower than expected in Lit too with a lot of 5's and 6's. She goes to a grammar school where the cohort is bright and conscientious. It feels like something has gone amiss.

There was a theory last year that alot of kids were following English You Tube/Tiltok accounts etc about how to get high grades in English, there's loads of them around and alot of children were writing very similar answers based on the content of these videos. Not sure if there's any truth in this at all.

Didn't get what he needs and he is distraught. Considering I have a school avoided I'm so proud of him . I'm anxious and feel sick. I want to phone in sick for work but I really can't.

My son is gutted. His food tech he got q two yet he submitted everything even whilst he was off school. He's had his first migrane in months. And I'm so angry with school

DS1 got 2x 5s (English lang and lit), 5 x 4s (maths, double science, history, RE) 3 x 2s (engineering, PE, Art). The 2s were all expected, school changed engineering course at the end of year 10 because of staffing issues, moved the short course sport to GCSE PE and he ended up hating art.

The maths result is fantastic for him. English and history grades are a curveball. He got 8s and 7s at mocks in February. Need to speak his sixth form college next week as 2 of his 3 a-levels are impacted. He is heartbroken. As a family we've gone through hell this year; my DH has 3 different chronic illnesses all caused by one genetic blood disorder, toxic narcissist MIL who lives 250 miles away was diagnosed as terminally ill in January and given 8 weeks to live, she is NC with all family apart from DH and one of her siblings so DH has been driving 600 miles a week to support her every week for 8 months because she has outlived every timeline we were given. Then in the middle of exams he got a stomach bug.
Yesterday the school basically ignored him and anyone with lower grades and fawned over the ones who got the highest marks. No teacher sought him out, nobody offered words of advice or support or helped us make sense of marks or grade boundaries. He's the kindest, most caring, loveliest boy, he's so easy to be around and these grades don't define him etc but right now, at this moment, they are defining him and it is incredibly painful to watch him go through that.

I'm certain in 5 years time this will all be water under the bridge but right now....oooft.

I’d really like to understand what’s happened across the country in English - it feels like many of us have found it an anomaly.

I remember from my own GCSEs that there were different exam boards but why does that continue? Surely if successive governments want to improve education a simpler way would be to have one board and to standardise exams and not make schools pay to enter students? Am I being too idealistic?

That’s so shit for your boy and of the school. My DD got similar results, she’s very dyslexic and has slow processing skills so these results were great for her. She passed foundation Spanish with a 4 (believe me when I say this is amazing for her) and her Spanish teacher came and gave her a huge hug because she knew how hard she’d worked to get it.

Your son sounds amazing, I hope things work out for him.

My daughter thought eng lit was awful and she got a 9, even getting full marks in paper 1- Macbeth/CC which she is gobsmacked by! She got a low 8 in language having come out very confident. She would usually get the other way around! So proud of her, these kids go through a lot of stress and it’s so great to see them get the marks they deserve.

You have to pay for exams because they have to be set, standardised, printed, distributed twice, marked, checked and stored. It's a huge operation.

@MrsHamlet ok I get that but if it was all one board surely that would be less work (cheaper)? Also wouldn't for some subjects and certainly for checking marks were added correctly wouldn't there be a good case for using AI?

All of the boards are trialling AI for different elements of the process. It's a way off before it's a large scale thing.

In terms of checking marks, the software does that already - I can't move on without putting something in the box.

Different boards give choice. I certainly wouldn't want to lose that.

Really interesting to read this thread and see the discussion over aqa English. Ds got a 3 in English Language, predicted a 6 so this was a big shocker. The school didn't mention anything to do with looking at it again. He is still able to do the btec extended diploma that he was planning to do anyway, along with a resit so I don't know if it's worth asking the school to look in to it? I don't think resitting is the worst idea but he's just perplexed as to how it went so wrong. He felt good when he came out of the exam so it just feels odd!

@Peggy0907 if he's going to resit, I'd suggest he gets the marked papers back so he can see where he went wrong and work on that for bect time

The other big discrepancy in English will be between the igcse and gcse, with private schools being able to sit the former and which is 50% coursework for language and 40 % for literature, which means teacher assessed marks in the bag and less to revise and practice for the actual exam. It’s incredibly unfair for such a critical gcse that this divide exists.

@Peggy0907 I would ask if the school can look at the script at least. 3 grades below predicted and having to resit, you have nothing to lose really. By not resitting he'l would have an extra 3hrs a week for more interesting activity.

I totally agree and it’s been the one thing that has really angered me this year!

Absolutely agree. A 6 to a 3 is a huge drop. What did his teacher say?

But do they really allow for much choice? In English Lit ds studied the exact same 3 set texts dh did and he's 50 this year and couldn't that be done within one board? I know that school funding is shocking and don't know how funding works for exam entry but if that was standardised and centralised would that not be better? Maybe I'm over simplifying and just conjecturing in my naivety.

Absolutely nothing. He was just told to still head over to sixth form enrollment and they'd let him know his options. Only option he was given was a resit. They seemed to be focusing more on getting interviews with the ones who achieved highly.

That’s not on. You’d think the staff would have highlighted on paper which students they needed to meet with been they arrived, checked for shocks and made a plan. I’m so sorry.
I would get a tutor and bash it out in November so he can focus on the new courses

So interesting reading all the stories on English! Everyone I know had a bit of a shock with unexpected results and generally a 2 mark drop from predicted/mock - all different schools (but all AQA)....... DS was disappointed with his yesterday but seems to be fine now, his other results were amazing so it's trying to make him focus on all of them than the one that went a bit wrong!

It's so stressful and hard for these kids, their education has been frankly a mess for a lot of the last 5 years and I think they have coped admirably and should be bloody proud of themselves