Why is there such a big difference between English GCSE results and all other subjects

[Cobwebs5]

This is a super selective grammar. Good results for sure. What do you think of the English results ? I have a feeling that this pattern isn’t specific to this school. What is so different about English ? I have a friend whose daughter got 9 grades 9’s and a 6 in English language.

Mr Salles has analysed hundreds of marked papers at every grade and the conclusion is, to get the top marks you have to make a lot of points. You have to write a lot. You have to be able to write very fast. Very depressing.

Yes here he is being absolutely scathing about the AQA English Language papers and lack of movement of grades on review by them as the largest exam board used in England.

I’m not sure that he does sit it every year, in the video he said he sat Edexcel (almost blind to it and scored 99% previously only dropping a mark where he hadn’t directly responded to something in a question which he said was fair) This year he sat AQA and did trial the method you mention, starting every new point on a new line starting with ‘this suggests’ which the examiner didn’t like and which he felt negatively impacted his own flow of answers.

His point was a more general one though - he thinks AQA is an unfair exam which doesn’t properly examine proficiency and skill in English unlike other exam boards. AQA have changed their exam questions from this year forward so hopefully that will improve the exam experience and outcomes for pupils.

fronted adverbials? I have fond memories of my ridiculously young, not desperately literate, child bringing those up a few years ago.

Yes, they’ve changed it and made it………………. worse.

As others have stated, I think it’s a combination of Covid, Phones & Gove!
Look at the St Paul’s boy’s school results and there is a definite drop in % of 9’s within English Language compared to other subjects so I think this is an issue across all types of schools.

I totally agree about spelling. I remember seeing my DC’s primary work and wondering why the spelling corrections seemed to be so random. Some things were picked up, others weren’t. I got the impression the teacher thought correcting every single mistake would demoralise the children? I thought they knew best and didn’t interfere.
DC did amazingly in their GCSE’s, but their spelling is still poor for someone so bright.

Another with kids who do well but can't spell. It's not just primary, nothing is ever marked by a teacher at all in secondary. My daughter really struggled with how what she was producing in English was worse than the level 6 model answers but as she never got teacher feedback on her writing other than a grade in mocks, she never really understood. I just don't think you can exclusively live mark in English.

Most of the recent posts seem to be about why standards of English are falling among our children and while this is very interesting and very important it’s not exactly what I’m getting at. I don’t think I’m explaining myself very well. Broadly speaking, the percentage of 9’s in English is the same as other subjects. Candidates with a profile of 9’s in all other subjects can get 6’s in English. Grammar schools get less 9’s in English than other subjects. Therefore we must have students with 6’s in other subjects but 9’s in English and schools with higher percentage of 9’s in English than other subjects.
So who is getting the 9’s in English ? Does anyone have an example of a school where the percentage of 9’s in English is higher than other subjects.
I’m obviously aware that lots of high achieving students get 9’s in English.

The entry tests for private and grammar schools seem to favour children who are strong at maths. Yes, there may be a comprehension, but generally speaking, the questions in maths, non verbal reasoning and even verbal reasoning are all maths/logic skewed and multiple choice - they have to be due to the number of children sitting the exams. I’ve had 3 children at different schools (grammar, private and comprehensive) The comp school has the strongest results in English, drama, media, history etc. The science and maths results are very poor in comparison as they can’t recruit teachers.

Your opening post was pretty clear but I think you are fixating on the idea there are a set of mirror image schools where students mostly get 6's but 9's in Eng Lang and Lit. The reality is that grammar schools make up a tiny proportion of all schools in England and comprehensive schools are probably more likely to focus on English (and Maths) relative to other subjects because that is the critical priority and that emphasis helps higher attaining students at those schools (my children included).

So the 9s are likely to be dispersed across a huge range of schools and perhaps typically go to students getting the odd 9, some 8's, mostly 7s and the odd 6 or 5; that sort of grade profile would be more normal. The fact that it is harder to discern how to get top grades, in a hyper-structured way perhaps expected by grammar students, may also act as a head wind to selective schools.

Not a mirror image school and not 9’s and 6’s specifically. Just some schools where the percentage of 9’s is higher than other subjects otherwise how can the percentage of 9’s in English be the same in total as other subjects.
I wondered if @mrshamlet might comment.

I've just looked our nearest Girl's grammar, and their English results seem in line with Maths and other subjects wrt 9s. None of the boys grammars have published results for this year

None of mine went to grammar. DS2 struggled a lot with English. He was one of those kids who scored high in the Yr6 SATs, so he had an unrealistic predicted grade and was in top set, which was completely inappropriate. We got a tutor and he got over the line. He's autistic and was also in burnout during Yr11 with 50% attendance

@Cobwebs5 Very off topic but this is my old school! I left 15 years ago so it has probably completely changed but I remember English Literature results being the lowest at GCSE in my year (lower than English Language). I hope your DD is enjoying the school.

I have noticed the very high uptake for Latin GCSE. This is very unusual even for state Grammar Schools.

Coming back to the subject concerned, I have 3 DC 2 DD's at a girls Grammar school and a DS at a 'High/ Upper' school or whatever. DD'1 who is in year 11 was called in to an assembly where the head lambasted the whole year 11 on potentially 'poor' English GCSE results her landmark being anything less than a grade 6 was a failure and a waste of five years of a grammar school education!

A circular letter was sent to all year 11 parents outlining the schools concern about recent changes in a number of pupils attitude and attainment. The school emphasizing no sixth form place is available for girls who do not attain at least 4 grade 7's

To get a 9 I think children need to be taught the tricks to get to a 9 and that requires a teacher who wants to play the system and is knowledgeable enough and has the ability to do it. It means children want to have to learn the tricks and have the ability too. The teacher and the children still have to have the ability.

My lessons (not English) were not as exciting or free thinking as the Head of my department’s but I got much better results with my mid-set group than his top set. He told me to stop teaching to test.

Didn't the pupils realise before that anything below grade 6 IS a failure for a grammar school that by definition has an intake of above average ability?

They've taken a selective place from someone else and can't be a*sed to work (hence the mention of "attitude") to achieve a mediocre grade? That's a waste of grammar school time indeed.

They should have been lambasted well before Y11.

100% this.

I have one DC who took GCSE in June and is naturally very good at English, still reads for pleasure and did well (2x9). However, she ended up spending far more time revising the triple Science content and History content, at the expense of English. So English language she passed bang on the 9 boundary. She did virtually zero language revision because all the effort spent on revising lit quotes! Which I think is a royal waste of time. I actually asked to see her language paper and whilst her analysis was very strong and her story creative, her letter and persuasive writing could have been stronger - those are the ones she will need for the job market. She certainly did not use all the tricks and did not learn the hacks. I personally wonder whether the English teacher simply had to spend far more time on English lit.
DD was always good at spelling, never revised for spelling tests and always got full marks in spelling tests as a young kid. She has strong innate inference skills on feelings and authorial intent, she is a “people” person.

She is not doing English at Sixth Form. She does not particularly like complex books sadly. Whilst she reads a lot it is more teenage drama stuff, but it was enough to get the 9s at GCSE. I doubt it would have been enough for A level.

Well I agree, anything less than a grade 6 is failure at a grammar school. If you take the top 5% of pupils at age 11 and the top 5% nationally achieve 9’s at GCSE then I’d say anything less than a grade 8 and something is going wrong. I suppose they are not exactly the top 5% as there are some who would pass the 11+ but don’t take the test, there certainly were at my daughters Primary school. My daughter’s school has a positive progress 8, around +1 I think. The HBS results posted early in the thread are exactly what I would expect, that’s a bit unfair as they are truly excellent.

My dc super selective grammar also has a wider spread of results for Eng language and lit than for other subjects. I think mostly because around 70% of the intake live in households where the heritage language is not English.

Plus, even at a super selective, there is a range of ability from clever to genius. Throw in puberty, discovering the opposite sex, parties etc it’s easy to see why kids can go off course. Lit requires a lot of work too and is quite subjective as all the successful marking reviews show.

Interestingly, Michaela that has predominantly inner city ESOL intake gets nearly as many 9s for Eng Lit as for Maths (53 and 59 entries iirc). Their Eng Lang 9s reflect their intake or are probably slightly better than expected for this demographics (33 entries) but apparently it's easier to achieve 9 in "subjective" Eng Lit, even for ESOL pupils.

I don't know how they do that and what exam boards they use.

You did well to spot the school from the results !

I really do not think it is about ability. I think they typically have 8 other content heavy subjects to revise for and many do not revise the same number of hours for English language, in particular.

Mine ended up with the highest 9s in the two subjects she disliked the most, simply because she did the most revision in those! GCSEs are largely learn the stuff and learn how to answer the questions according to a set mark scheme. And then they have the exams all at once in a short period of a few weeks.

Also are those results definitley post remarks? Because DD has quite a few friends whose results have gone up. One went up 24 marks! Almost 3 grades.

You were making him look bad ! I’m sure this is part of it at my daughter’s school. I’m not sure she will be taught any ‘tricks’.