Any GCSE resit successes?

[BreakfastClub]

Hi,
my DS did very well in his GCSE’s but achieved surprisingly low in English Language with a 4. His mock was a 7.
he did quite well in paper 1 but not well in paper 2
He was still able to enrolled to sixth form for A levels with his other grades.
We are having the papers checked just incase but are already considering a resit for November.

I’ve been reading a lot lately where students struggle to pass on resits! Has anyone had any success stories where they achieved higher grades with a resit??

Tbh I might think twice about bothering to do this. Some unis will ask for a grade 6 in English and maths but I think (tho check) that Eng lit will also work for English here. In any case IIRC it was more commonly unis wanting a 6 in maths for STEM degree courses; DD applied for English at uni and even she did not need more than a 4 in Eng lang GCSE (tho unsurprisingly she did better than that).

But success stories – mate of DS's got a 3 in Eng lang in summer of year 11; was admitted to sixth form anyway (surprisingly; they must have seen his grade was a big surprise/unexpected disaster) retook in the November and got a 6.

@clary That's good news regarding the resit at 6.
DS achieved 7 in maths and 6 in English lit which we are very happy with.
we have already looked at degree courses and the ones DS is interested in require min 5 in Maths and English so English will be a problem

Ah OK; I just did a quick search and came up with UCL for example that requires a grade 5 in Eng language and maths for all courses; I presume there are others. There are lots of great unis that don’t tho, so even if he doesn’t get higher than a 4 he shouldn’t despair.

DD had offers for English at Birmingham and Warwick and neither requires more than a grade 4 in English, even to study English (obvs there is a higher grade req for A level English in that case!). So there are plenty of other options.

As a general rule I don’t think it’s a great idea to fix on one goal only (not saying this is your DS). I have seen posts where YP have grade x GCSE (a great grade) and “need grade y” for their chosen course. So maybe that is not the course for them.

I should add that DD did not end up at Warwick or Birmingham and in fact we both think that this was a good thing for her, for a number of reasons.

There’s a big difference between GCSE and A level and the workload is much greater. Would it be extra pressure to resit and keep up the advanced work?

My son got a 3 in English language in June of Y11 and then 3 again in November resit. Got a 4 the following summer! (5 in lit and maths first time)

It is absolutely possible to go up considerably in the resit (I know someone that got a 3 in June 2024, 3 in November 2024 and then 7 in June 2025). You really could do with getting the papers back to see where your DS went wrong.

@Bluevelvetsofa I am hoping that because the resit is in November it won’t intrude too much with A levels. Also, it’s the first year of A levels so hopefully not too heavy in workload.