Report looks bad - what does it mean?

[Palika]

Not being English and not knowing the school system very well - what does DS14 first report of year 10 mean?

All his predicted GCSE grades are Cs and Ds - does that mean he is not 'university material'? He wants to be an academic engineer - is that pie in the sky?

The comments say that he is immature, has a bad work ethic and does not focus.

Part of me wants to say - it is what it is and give up. Just accept that he is not as clever and motivated as the rest of the family and live with it.

Another part thinks - I could monitor his homework more closely - make sure he works harder - get him a tutor...

BUT I have done that virtually all the time since he shows signs of not achieving very well - and clearly it has not worked.

YET - last year he achieved a level 7 in math - his tutor was so excited that he emailed me. He said that it is a clear sign that he IS intelligent and that he can get good grades if he puts his mind towards it.

Oh god, parenting is so difficult.
Please tell me, what do you tell yourself to come to terms with poor school achievement? How do you make yourself not mind so much?

thanks, everyone for your kind support. It is very helpful!

What worries me at the moment is the teacher who told me (rather proudly) how accurate their prediction of GCSE levels are. If that is true it would be very worrying indeed.

So, we were in school for the parent's evening. It is not looking quite as bad but I am still confused. There were only of Ds and Cs but the math teacher and chemistry teacher both said that DS can get an A. What??? - he's got As in the hardest subjects??? I am happy, of course.

But even if he would get an A in math and chemistry he could still not get into sixth form becasue he needs 4 Bs - and at the moment he would not get that.

For those of you who are teachers or have an insight into the system - can anyone explain to me how he can be so bad in most subjects when he can have As in math and chemistry? Is it just lazyness?

GCSEs measure how successfully a student learns the things in the curriculum, Pal. Mostly they're about remembering and repeating facts. In many subjects it's about using specific techniques - e.g. How to analyse a poem; how to do quadratic equations...

Generally, kids are taught these things slowly and over and over again, so they have more than one chance to learn the same thing. Some kids need this repetition. Some get bored. Some don't bother. It is possible for a bright, motivated kid to learn what they need for a GCSE in just a few months. My SIL, who has been head of English in two different schools, says she can and does routinely get kids from E/D to B and sometimes A between Feb and May/June.

Maths and chemistry exams test facts, not opinions. A young person doesn't have to put together an argument or explain a point of view - s/he just has to use facts and set methods to work out the right answer to given questions. Maybe your son is particularly good at this...

GCSEs measure how successfully a student learns the things in the curriculum, Pal. Mostly they're about remembering and repeating facts. In many subjects it's about using specific techniques - e.g. How to analyse a poem; how to do quadratic equations...

Generally, kids are taught these things slowly and over and over again, so they have more than one chance to learn the same thing. Some kids need this repetition. Some get bored. Some don't bother. It is possible for a bright, motivated kid to learn what they need for a GCSE in just a few months. My SIL, who has been head of English in two different schools, says she can and does routinely get kids from E/D to B and sometimes A between Feb and May/June.

Maths and chemistry exams test facts, not opinions. A young person doesn't have to put together an argument or explain a point of view - s/he just has to use facts and set methods to work out the right answer to given questions. Maybe your son is particularly good at this...

Can't really offer advice but wanted to share my experience.
DS1 got low predictions in year 10. All Cs. He was gutted as he is a grafter but a late developer.
Talking to the school they use something called FFTD which I think uses all sorts of outside data. There was also the suggestion that low predictions would spur him on to work harder.
After all that worry he got 10 As & A*s.
I think you sound like a lovely supportive mum, don't give up hope.

I'm a teacher and this seems simple to me - the teachers are telling you what he COULD get (A, A*) if he stopped being lazy and disruptive and DID SOME WORK....

The grades you've been given are what he'll get if he carries on with his current approach.

You're right - he needs to know what's out there waiting for him. Get him a part time job doing something repetitive and boring. That usually works.

Level 6a in science equates to achieving a B at GCSE so it's a good level not off the charts or anything.

Oh, guys, I am so so grateful for your input. It is particularly reassuring to hear that one can learn all the GCSE things in a few months (apart from French I suppose - I put DS through German GCSE last year and even though he is bilingual that wasn't easy, really)

Thanks, Flow, also for the suggestion that he might have a weakness in formulating his own suggestions - that is true - (apart from frequently trumpeting some preposterous views that have no foundations whatsoever )

His best feedback was from the chemistry teacher - so I said to him 'just be everywhere how you are in chemistry'. It's great that he now has at least a model of what is expected from him.

I also thought of making some real investigation of finding out about lower level careers and maybe take him to places to investigate. (not with a sarcastic mood of 'see where you will end up' but just kindly and informative.)

He has also booked a place for his work experience in a tractor repair company. That should give him some idea what it would like to work there.

There is the possibility to get a summer holiday job if he applies himself - that would be all very educational for him. And if he then decides that he would like to work in that way it will be fine with me. (It's been a bit of shock but I am coming round to the idea)

I give careers advice at an international school and there are always plenty of kids who are still away with the fairies and very out of touch with reality about what the future holds if they remain unmotivated. I would be very calm and rational but make it clear which jobs and careers are interesting and/or well paid and what you need to do academically to enter them.

Kids are different and some are motivated by money, if you explain how much it really costs to run a household, buy a nice car, go on holiday, have the lifestyle he wants etc, you might start bursting his bubble. I also don't think you can blame it all on the school, as parents we have a responsibility to help our children be aware of what it will take to succeed in the fields they are interested in. I also second him getting some kind of job.

Which country are you from as you keep talking about not understanding the British school system?

Colleges around here only require 5 GCSEs, minimum CCCBB. Only limit is which course you can get on (eg., C in math will not get you onto A-level maths, probably). In OP's position, I would check more colleges; some run catchup courses, too, chance to retake GCSEs & get better marks.

NVQs & Apprenticeships are routes into engineering type jobs without needing the best GCSEs, there's more than one path. Obviously try to get him to pull socks up, but good to know what Plan B is if his GCSE marks aren't great.

He fancies himself as one of the physicists of the BigBang theory. But I think underneath there are growing doubts whether he is really up to a higher career path.

I see a lot of this in my boys & remember being like that myself. A weird mix of recurring arrogance & desperate insecurity. It contributes a lot to underachievement; "What if I try my hardest and still don't achieve much?" is too scary too risk. I am chipping away at this fear.

"What if I try my hardest and still don't achieve much?" is too scary too risk." I think you've put your finger on something important there, lljkk. In my own son's case, I think this fear underpinned a whole load of problems: underachievement and disengagement at school; messing about; 'self-medication' with cannabis especially to try to tolerate being bored, damp down the energy that made him mess around and care less about all the difficult emotions; anti-social behaviour, because why not get into trouble if he wasn't going to amount to much anyway... In the end, because he stopped trying, he lost his sense that he could succeed... And that lasted several years...

I've said elsewhere that if I had my time again, I'd make sure he had more experience of failure. That sounds harsh, but I think he had no sense that he could actually survive failure - it felt so painful an idea that he avoided trying altogether. I reckon he needed more 'practice' at struggling with something difficult and then pushing on to success, to learn the satisfaction of effort...

Re the accuracy of grade predictions, teachers cannot predict the future. Those grades aren't set in stone. They are the best guess of a experienced professional, certainly, but they are based on how your DS is working now, and if he continues to work that way. They can absolutely change.

What you have on your side at the moment is the recent change that have made all GCSEs linear. In previous years your DS would probably have already sat some modules counting towards his GCSE, now he has got time to get his arse in gear. I have seen kids mess around in Y10 and then buckle down in Y11 and make enormous progress.

He cannot actually leave school at 16 and go straight to standard employment, he will now need to be in education or training (including apprenticeships) until 18. There will be various pathways open to him.

This motivation absolutely needs to come from him, so looking at it in terms of planning his future is a good way to go. He can't get to the school sixth form on his current grades, so he needs to investigate colleges. He won't have good enough grades for A-level, so he needs to look into BTECs or other options. He needs to see what he will be faced with if those predictions come true, and also see what options will be closed to him. Quantum physicist? No, not with those grades in science. He also needs to know that if he wants to study maths further, he needs to aim for an A, not an A. He could do A-level maths with an A, but to not struggle with it, he needs an A, or as close to one as he can get.

As for why he gets good grades in maths and not other subjects - if you are good at maths, you don't need to actually put much work in. If you understand quadratic equations, you don't need to sit there and solve hundreds of them to be able to do it in an exam. It's a good subject for bright but lazy kids in that way.

^Kids are different and some are motivated by money, if you explain how much it really costs to run a household, buy a nice car, go on holiday, have the lifestyle he wants etc, you might start bursting his bubble. I also don't think you can blame it all on the school, as parents we have a responsibility to help our children be aware of what it will take to succeed in the fields they are interested in. I also second him getting some kind of job.

Which country are you from as you keep talking about not understanding the British school system?^

Honeyandrum,
We talked to DS over dinner and told him (kindly and calm) what he could afford with the salary of a car mechanic and he started to feel so sick that he nearly threw up (honestly - I can't deny it filled me with glee)

I am German and the German system is highly selective, competitive and rather harsh. It makes boys better achieve than they do here in Britain (as far as I know) but it totally fails to look after lower-achieving pupils (where the English system excells)

In Germany you pretty much know from age 9 if you child will go to university or not - pupils are divided in associated schools at age 10. (I am so glad I had DS here in the English system because at age 9 he was very much hampered by his learning difficulties)

lljkk

DSs biggest fear is not that he would fail but that others are envious of him if he gets good marks.

DS had some mild learning difficulties when he was younger and found it very hard to make friends and the ones he got were all the autistic and badly behaved one's and it was quite traumatising for him as he was often rejected and excluded He has very low self-esteem about making friends now and at school he gets so anxious about fitting in with the others that he can't eat his lunch.

(I discovered a while ago that he looks thinner and thinner and try to feed him fattening foods. But the problem is that he has now new (cooler) friends (including some girls) and that he is too nervous to eat around them. (I talked to him and hopefully he will start eating again))

Due to this fear of rejection DS avoids to be 'better' in any way than others - he totally tries to be the underdog that nobody envies.

Two years ago it was so bad that he refused to buy raffle tickets at the school fair for fear that he could win and then the others would be envious and 'hate him'. Poor little sausage...

I am very psychologically minded and I really click with DS on that level. He is very much willing to discuss his fears with me and take my advice and guidance. However, I cannot just switch off his fear of being envied...

We have now started some simple visualisation techniques where he sees himself as having achieved his aim and thinks looking back 'thank goodness, I did not allow myself to be held back by my fears of being envied. I went for my goal and I achieved it and I got new friends on the way'.

Time will tell whether this will help him

Yes, looking at projected salaries is a good idea. Going on a job search site and bringing up the earnings of various jobs compared to the qualifications needed can be an eye opener for kids who assume that they will instantly start earning the same sort of money as their parents, and be able to afford the same standard of living.

I've said elsewhere that if I had my time again, I'd make sure he had more experience of failure.

Flow
interesting point, flow. As you have read in the previous post DS had ample experience of failure. He only learnt to ride a bike at age 9 and also to use the swing. He was excluded from all the boy's games because he was not good enough. He could not even play 'it' because he was always the first one to be caught. How do you explain to a 5 year old, why that is?

He also had a whole catalogue of ADHD symptoms that hampered him in a multitude of ways but was never so bad that I considered going down the medical route

We worked for years and years with physiotherapeutic methods (some with qualified practitioners, some that I learnt from books), behavioural methods and nutritional approaches. Around the age of 12 all the symptoms were gone. (we had made detailed lists about them) - and I was worn out by the parenting job. I had really run out of steam, which is one reason, why I do not cope very well with the teenage problems.

Coming back to your point - I can only hope that DS has learnt something about overcoming future problems through his difficult history (without mum working with him all the time)