terrible school report yr 10

[twizzlerite]

DS 14 has just brought his school report home , it's so bad.....every subject lower grades than expected...mostly D's compared to the Bs/Cs he was expected to get. He never revises, he reckons ALL his friends have had bad reports. Is this a common thing in boys his age? So worried .

It's a common thing for year 10s. Then it goes one of two ways. You need to jump on this now, contact School, find out if he's been doing homework. If not ask if he can be put on a report to make sure it's being done. He needs to see he can't get away with it

Even if it's common it's not good.

"If your friends said it was ok to jump in front of a train would you do it?!" is my typical reply to that sort of "Everybody else is like this" defense. "I don't care about them. I know YOU can do better and that you KNOW you can do better."

*caveat: kids who underachieve due to being disillusioned & unhappy at school need a different approach. Need to address unhappiness to fix it.

Also, why is the school reporting in letter grades? Should be in numbers.

Was just going to ask why the grading system is not the new 1-9 grades ?

It’s a common thing for boys. Boys massively underperform compared to girls at GCSE.
So he might be telling the truth when he says his mates also have bad reports, but that doesn’t mean that everything’s ok, it means that they’re all set to do worse than expected at GCSE.

Tell him to pull his finger out, stop slacking because those Ds won’t turn into Bs by themselves.

I feel your pain. Maybe it will be the kick up the pants he needs. Put in some targets for next report window.

Thanks for your replies , I've arranged to go into the school tomorrow to see his form tutor

As others have said, you need to ask why they are marking A-E rather than 9-1.........?

Letter grades - iGCSE or Wales perhaps? (I'm not sure on either of these)

Yep we're in wales

Gcses are hard so he needs a kick up the bum - lol! My son is year 9 and I have drilled it into him next year that he won’t be gaming on school nights as he will have too much work. If your son starts working now he will be fine. Does he have the motivation? One thing I’ve found with my dd who is year 11 is that she knows what she wants to do and that gives her the impetus to work hard.

Are they marking where they are now compared to their prediction. So, DS is currently a 5 in science which is what his report says but his target is a 7 so the teachers tell me that’s fine as he’s on track. He’s currently a 7 in history and his prediction is an 8 so the teachers say he’s ahead and could get a 9. Does that make sense?

Ds are ok at this stage, surely? He still has just over a year to go. I would have thought that B/C is well within reach if he's achieving D now. He's on track.