Teaching GCSE Maths resits in FE

[Becauseimworthit79]

Has anyone got any positive stories about improved grades in the summer?

The results for resits are very poor in my college, and it seems students either get the same grade or do worse the second time round. Our tutors are highly qualified and as far as I know do an excellent job.

What could be done to improve achievement? Feeling a bit down that 20% is considered “good” for our results.

Thanks.

How big are your classes and how many hours per week?

There’s a free conference for gcse resit maths at Sheffield Hallam in March if that’s any use? www.mathsresits.co.uk/conference-2018/

Thanks Noble. My situation is unusual, I was asked to teach half of someone’s class after half term because of its size. My main role is not a main scale teaching role but the head knows I’ve had GCSE maths teaching experience in a school before.

Thanks for your link. I will have a look at it.

6% of ours got a C last year.
Tutors try everything, but 6 months is not enough to teach all the missing building blocks and exam strategies.
High percentage of neurodiversity here as well, it was much better when we could do functional skills instead.
Very demoralising for everybody.

Commiserations House, although it is heartening to know that I am not alone in this struggle.

I agree about Functional Skills, as it seems more accessible for the learners.

I’ve taught resit a few times, although in a sixth form not FE, with small classes (around 5). We’ve had two hours per week of lessons. With that set-up, it’s still not enough time to get them through it. The only ones who have passed have put in time outside lessons doing productive work to address weak areas (not just practising the things they like or just doing endless unreviewed past papers). The ones who turn up to lessons because they have to but aren’t really arsed don’t make it. Obviously there are also some who really try but had too far to go but I’ve never seen anyone not try hard, yet pass.

Noble, the class size is 11 learners and lessons are 3 hours long with breaks at the tutor’s discretion.

Lack of attendance for GCSE and Functional Skills is an ongoing problem.

God 3 hours is a long time. Is that every week? Are they Foundation or higher?

I guess I'd do a mock, QLA it, find out their weak areas and then spend each week with one of those as a focus. I'd also do numeracy work (numeracy ninjas?) and something with a mix of questions like corbettmaths 5-a-day. But they really need lots of guidance about how to work productively outside of lessons.

Results aren't going to improve if kids aren't showing up to lessons though! How frustrating.

I 've got 32 re-sitters in 1 of my classes this year. I'm marking mocks right now and the results are not great 😣

32 resitters? Bloody hell.

Thing is, those kids didn't get a pass in a most-likely much smaller class, with the school no-doubt putting on hours of intervention sessions. The notion that they will suddenly pass in larger classes with fewer teaching hours is bonkers. They'll be doing well if they don't actually get worse.

Yes - I've begged for them to be split (although oddly they're my favourite class) but we're so very short staffed. They've advertised jobs so many times but barely anyone applies.

Ours have to do 3 hours of maths in the morning and 3 of English in the afternoon. and only 30 min morning break, 30 mins lunch, 15 mins afternoon break despite them nearly all having an EHCP stating they need regular breaks. Lessons are taught by agency staff provided by the council.
Its one of my biggest problems at the moment because these students are slow processors and have other learning needs, and then have to catch up on a whole day of missed sessions.
Noble, I think FE colleges are slightly different to sixth form. Most of my students have left school with no GCSEs, no motivation, and little parental support, and the structure here is to encourage self directed learning. Its really hard to get them to attend when they feel its pointless. Yes, they need literacy and numeracy skills, but they are not getting those sitting in a classroom for 3 hours trying to figure out GCSE level texts. Bloody government and their bloody stupid ideas.

That sounds horrendous, House and pointless. Little and often is way more effective (although perhaps harder to get the students in and the teachers to teach?). I think FE and sixth form are the same in that if the students don't care, they aren't going to pass, but FE obviously has resitters on an industrial scale and, as well as students who have made a positive choice to be there, also students who have either failed to qualify for sixth form, or who have rejected their secondary school due to disaffection with traditional teaching. Compulsory resits aren't increasing the GCSE pass rate, they're simply drawing out the failure first achieved in Y11.

Have I misunderstood you or are you saying that the 3 hours are spent in self-directed learning?

Sorry, the 3 hours are spent with an agency tutor (not necessarily the same one each week).
Self directed learning is used here to mean they take responsibility for their own attendance, so there are no consequences if they don't turn up.
I've been pushing hard for embedded learning, and was getting somewhere until the gov changed the goalposts in 2015.

Not even the same tutor each week? So they don't even know the kids? Do they even teach them?

Nope...nope....probably nope

The AoC calculated that last academic year £109 million was spent on resit courses where students still failed to get a Grade 4.

Nationally the pass rate for students re-sitting maths is 26% so it's not just individual colleges struggling.

You may want to read this but unfortunately, there are no silver bullet solutions
Report of Effective practice

and I agree that the problem is much worse in FE than sixth form because there are no repercussions. If a student fails to show up or decides not to return to class after a break there is nothing we can do about it.

It is also really difficult to get parental support when the students have started college. There is definitely a mental shift with parents when the students leave school.

Yes Noble, every week for 3 hours. They cover maybe 2 it 3 topics per session and do practice papers.

I think it makes more sense to do 2 1.5 hour sessions per week. Like you say, little and often.

3 hours is too long. I totally agree with the opinions on here

There are consequences for colleges as I think vocational courses are funded via English and Maths attendance now... whether kids who don't attend are then not allowed to progress is a different matter though.

Is that right Playmobile? IF that is the case, then I’d hope vocational tutors would do more to ensure their students attend maths and English lessons.

It's a condition of funding that students study maths and English if they don't have a GCSE pass, which I guess means being enrolled on a suitable course. There's no requirement to actually enter any student for an exam, but the percentage of students who go on to pass maths and English are published in the league tables.
I don't think the DfE check attendance.