Year 11 - 2024/2025: Half way, half baked, half term!

[QueenMabby]

Continuation of the year 11 support thread. Go!

But to do this properly you have to let students sit that as a first option and not put them through multiple failures at something they just can’t do

This is exactly what I was trying to say.

I hear you on not expecting multiple failures first @mojobrojo tho I should note that the mark for a grade 4 will not vary that much tbh. Like, by 2-3 marks max year on year.

The fluctuation in pass mark is immaterial to the debate really - it just highlights how it’s a flawed system. It’s the fact that supposed competence is not being determined on the basis of actual competence (has met a baseline core set of skills). Instead it is being determined on the basis of your position within the normal distribution of performance for the people you just happen to have been born in the same academic year as - whereby 30% are automatically assumed to not be competent to fit with the grading system.

i don’t have any investment in this from the perspective of my own kids - they’re both quite academic. But I do teach in HE and come across young adults whose confidence in their own numeracy has been completely destroyed by GCSE maths!

The problem with having a fixed rate of failure is that when teachers are familiar with the standard required, and knowing that it damages a young person's confidence to take an exam they aren't ready for, good teachers would and should recommend that pupils don't take the exam if they aren't likely to get a 4. However, if that happens in a widespread way, then only children of a certain standard get entered for the exam, and if a fixed percentage of them will get better than 4, it just means that the standard required for a 4 rockets up. So to prevent that insane inflation, schools have to insist that children who are not ready to take the exams must do so, not for their own benefit but deliberately to make them fail in order to keep the average mark low for the benefit of more able pupils. The success of the more able pupils is built on a structure that relies upon something that damages the most vulnerable. This is shameful.

Hi, thank you.. ( I replied and when I posted, it just disappeared, so apologies if this is duplicated!!).

He needs 4 x Grade 4’sc including Maths and English, but DS said the interviewer apparently told him he could get in with “just Maths and English”, but I’m 🤷‍♀️unsure as to whether this is the case ( appears to be hearsay round here )…

Thank you for your comments re Plan B… as I now realise.., that there is not one in place! I feel completely stupid….. Do you know if there are “ usual/standard” Plan B’s in a worst case scenario hits your DC? I hate to even write it in black and white 🫣!

Thank you for that! 🙏

Thanks and apologies @MrsHamlet I was obviously panicking! Hope you enjoyed your extra sleep.

I agree with what everyone is saying about the standards required for a pass in maths and English. It must be extremely demoralising to have the decks stacked against you.

Some of the professional exams I have taken had a 30% pass mark which just seemed weird and arbitrary and led to very bright and capable colleagues being in absolute despair when they failed; whereas for others, everyone passed if they got a certain percentage.

The latter model meant that those who passed were still completely competent and secure in the profession, but they hadn’t spent thousands of pounds and years of their lives retaking.

@Writteneggs as a chronic insomniac, it was a nice surprise! I'm about to start marking so my work days will start at 5... yawn.

Evening all! (NB-TLDR!!)

I’ve had no WiFi!! I am SO sorry to the lovely posters who have replied!! I am back and playing catch up. Last night was unexpected. After the obvs wretched day, DS16 was decompressing online last with his friends ( he doesn’t really see any IRL friends regularly), and I took DS18 into town to meet his friends who’ve come back from Uni ( he is back from travelling and off to Uni in Sept)… all good. I came home and kept bright and breezily checking on DS16 ( now back to “just” DS!!). He was brightening up, chatting with his friend in Newcastle who also “ had a shocker”… so…… playing games, starting to slowly chill…all ticking along ok… until 💥 POWER OUTTAGE!! 🙀 So, no WiFi!! .. PLUS DS18 was still out in town with plan to message me when to pick up…. which couldn’t happen as no WhatsApp ! And, we live in the countryside and have sketchy mobile reception.. so I couldn’t call him, either ( and no taxi/Ubers).. anyway! I drove to get service, but he’d already tried me countless times, I was panicking as it takes about an hour to walk home.. country pitch black lanes.. ( which he has NEVER done at night), but finally located him safely outside the only takeout in the early hours to find he had been a grown up, realised he couldn’t get in touch, and arranged to stay at his mates for an impromptu after hours play pool and sleep over there…. So, I ended up giving them all lift home with their pizzas and beers to his mates, as it was pouring down, and I came back home again, to find DS had used his no WiFi to shower his toy 🐩, and hairdryer him! 🤩🤩🤩.

Anyway! It really tickled me….it really was validation, to me, on a teeny level, of course, that our DC are so much more resilient than we ( I’m meaning probably me, as I’m fairly stressy as a parent and overthink/ overworry….) give them credit for. They had bought sussed out the situations they were in, and cracked on with it!!

I finally got to bed about 4am, proud and happy- despite the trying day for DS, and we have both woken afresh (well, hardly!) and realise the only way to look is ahead….

Today, the Memes have added to the positivity!! Thank you!!! 🙏🙏🙏!! Plus, he has opened up about the exam yesterday, a little..I’ve never read it, he told me the extract sounded like Handmaids Tale X 👽 !! I’m still not sure what he wrote about in Q5. ( tho I do know he said he did write about “dishwasher sky”… not “ dishwater “?!!)…. Oh, and he said in Q4, they had to argue that the extract isn’t mysterious…? When he thought it so patently was?! and, at least we are talking normally and essentially having a bit of a giggle about a situation that can’t be changed, so a waste of energy to expend on what has been, we can only try to strategise the HELL out of Paper 2!!

Well!, as I said, at the start of my TLDR post ( sorry !!).. huge 🙏to the lovely posters who replied to me earlier, and I’m starting my replies now!!! (🤞for the WiFi to play fair)!

I hope all your DC ( and you all!) are having as lovely a weekend as we can right now)…😸

ps- I ordered a copy of the damn book Midwich Cuckoos from Amazon! It sounds SO intriguing!

Ahh good to hear things have calmed down in the sisublondie household and that you’ve raised teens who can survive without WiFi. That’s pretty miraculous!

Hello 👋🏻

I also have DS who struggled with the extract on language P1 although he managed to answer all questions so hopefully will pull some marks even if he's misinterpreted it?!?

Thing is...he's a borderline 4 student (dyspraxia and slow processing so gets extra time thankfully) so obviously I'm slightly panickng that he won't get the magic 4!

Any top tips or strategies for P2? We'll be throwing everything at it over the next week or so to maximise his chances.

@Sisublondie
Plan Bs go like this for me:

Plan A : A levels at v high entry 6th form -> Plan B lower entry A level 6th/college
Plan A: A levels lower entry 6th form/college -> Plan B T-Level at college or a Level 2 to resit one of Eng/Maths followed by A levels if rest of result were good
Plan A: T-Level/Extended Diploma at college -> Level 2 at college then 2 years with Plan A
Plan A: Level 2 at college -> Level 1 at college followed by Level 2

Plan A: Apprenticeship -> Plan B level 2 or 1 at college, followed by apprenticeship

If he has applied for a college to do a vocational course, just check they do have the next level down and you should be OK.

Plan b for dd is maths and/or english resits (she'll get get grades for her a level choices easily)
She has point blank refused to consider any other courses/6th forms
So. High stakes.

Glad to hear you’re all bearing up - even without WiFi @Sisublondie
Interesting discussion re ‘passing’ Maths and English. Of course the wider question is what GCSEs are really for at all, given that most young people are in education until 18 now, so they are no longer the school-leaving exams. If they are meant to show that someone has reached a certain level of competence in a particular subject, then there’s no need for them to be taken all at once or at the same age. So if eg you’re good at Maths, you could take the Level 2 qualification at, say, 14/15, then go on to higher study, while someone else could wait until they are secure at 17/18.
This would be similar to US high schools, where students in the same grade are offered different levels of a subject, including first-year university level courses (called Advanced Placement, or AP), depending on their ability/past attainment. You can still graduate high school by accumulating the right credits at a lower level, but colleges look at what courses you took, among other criteria.
I doubt there’ll ever be such radical change here, partly because of reasons of cost, but also because there is a very English attitude to education that we must constantly sort the sheep from the goats.

My DS is planning to do a level 3 extended diploma BTEC. He only needs 4 GCSEs at 4 and above but he has to pass both maths and English language. The college have said there is no opportunity to resit for timetabling reasons. His plan B will be to do a level 2 course in a similar subject whilst resitting. His maths is fine but English is borderline. However he will be disappointed to have to resit as he got 4s in English in the mocks and his target grades are 5s.

He didn’t seem to find the exam on Friday too bad (which worries me me since so many found it hard) but he did say that there weren’t many language features to pick out so he ended up just commenting on adjectives etc. His main issue has been with timing as he really struggles to complete the exam in the time allowed. He did the questions in the order 5, 1, 4, 2, 3 as the creative part is probably his strength. He had been struggling to get to Q4 previously and it seemed crazy to risk losing 20 marks due to getting bogged down in Q3. We’ll have to see if this strategy has helped…

Same here. DS refused to
entertain any other possibility other than A-levels (or maybe BTECs) at current school. So we need to English and maths. Scary not to have a back up plan and very stressful! He would not even go an look around the local college.

@ChannelLightVessel i agree with your points. Was thinking surely the main purpose of education is to enable kids to enter the workforce and be employable ultimately. Was thinking in my day there was the CSE alternative so half my year were given a paper more for their attainment level which they might have had more chance of doing well in. I don’t see why you don’t have a lower option for English.

This is where I like the Hants system of (almost) no 6th forms in the state schools. Students have to make an active choice of where they are going next. I think it forces them to consider wider options and not just go for the default easy choice, even if that choice doesn't really suit them.

There are issues with the Hants system of course, but on balance I think it is good. From here within 1hr there are: 2 or 3 colleges offering mainly A levels, one college with mix of A levels and vocational, two vocational colleges, and an agricultural college

My DS is really looking forward to college. He doesn’t want to stay in sixth form and have to wear a suit!

@Delatron
To be fair to dd she did agree to visit other 6th forms/schools and I agree that her 1st choice is best fit for her but she has point blank refused to have one of the others as plan b.
I sort of understand. Very little in the way of choice here and lots of 6th forms locally have reduced their subject offering.
One was a very strict 6th form with a uniform - that was a hard pass 😁
Two were PA specialist schools, and it surprised me that she wasn't keen.
So here we are.

That does sound like a good system! I’m not sure A-levels will suit DS but we’ll see how the GCSEs go - he could surprise me and he has knuckled down finally. Would like a back up option though!

Yes I kind of understand DS not wanting to go to the local college - he needs a bit more structure and they are very flexible there. I’ll just have to hope for the best!

There’s a similar system where we are in Yorkshire. Most schools don’t have sixth forms and the few that do (a couple of the more academic state schools and the independents) have quite a limited offering so only suit a very specific type of student. It means the norm is to move on to one of the large colleges that all offer a wide range of qualifications. I think it does make them consider what really is the best option for them.

@Whoooofirst of all….. HUGE HIGH FIVE to your DD for achieving the Drama Award!! 🥇 That is amazing! And, to get a lovely gift, too! What perfect timing, too. She must felt SO validated, proud, worthy ..( I don’t quite know the word I’m trying to find- sorry!) ..by her school/teachers to get those and the Award will hopefully boost her confidence all round! Fabulous!

I did chuckle at your DD’s response to your enquiry about how physics went …””It went “…. “with a grimace””!! .. 😈😹.. I do have to say that responses like these do show us that despite them being mini-adults in some ways, they do sometimes retain that brilliance of innocence… or, basically, they can sometimes just say it as it is!!!

I totally get what you are saying about your DD and Plan A. Am I right in thinking, re what you said about her A Level choices being fine, grade wise, worst case scenario she could start those, but resit, God forbid, one of the necessary Maths / English there? ( which 🤞🤞🤞absolutely won’t happen).

Yes, the functional skills exam……? Well, I will honestly say I have had zero knowledge it existed till you guys mentioned it! 🙄🫣! It definitely sounds like something I need to investigate further, as after DS commencing Friday, I’m not sure resitting that sounds attractive to him… I’m hoping the functional skills obviates the necessity for the creative writing part? Tho, that is really interesting what you said about your older DD found Paper 2 easier, without the creative writing part? (I’m going to crack on whilst our WiFi is acting well, catch up on here and look further into components of Paper 2.. need to know more about it as DS doesn’t like chatting extraneously about exams… funny old thing!)!

Well, 🤗 to you and I hope you’re enjoying your Bank Holiday weekend! It’s very touristy where we live and it sadly looks like it’s about to start hammering it down……🙄!!

I’m hoping the functional skills obviates the necessity for the creative writing part?

Correct.

by recollection, there are 3 parts to FS (City&Guilds).
. Speaking & listening. Write a speech, answer questions on it; listen to someone else's speech and ask questions; have a debate about a pre-given, pre-researched topic (showing you can articulate and reflectively listen)
. Reading. Understanding the difference between eg factual leaflets, advertising, instructions etc. Discriminating between fact and opinion. Much more accessible texts.
. Writing. 2 pieces of writing, one formal, one informal. eg An email to a friend telling info about your holiday, and a letter of complaint about parking. Bullet points of what content to include given. However more marks proportionately for accurate SPaG than in the GCSE!

Edit to add: You do have to pass all 3 bits, you can't ace one and be hopeless at another.

If you're talking about AQA paper 2, @Sisublondie, the writing section is transactional writing - although the mark scheme is identical to the p1 mark scheme.