So disappointed with ds GCSEs

[Gigabell]

He got mostly 4s, a couple of 3s and one 5. He was predicted 6s and 7s.

This isn't the first time he has not performed as well as expected- we had the same issue with the 11+. He seems to be perfectly capable until the exam.

It makes me feel like a failure for not pushing him more, but I feel like I do push him. We had so many arguments over the last couple of years about refusing to revise or barely putting any effort in. It frustrates me so much. He refused to attend revision sessions before the exams, and if we suggested things to help revise he wouldn't listen. Dh and I did very well in our own GCSEs many years ago without any of the support or help we have provided ds so it feels like a kick in the teeth. We failed and got it wrong somehow and somewhere.

He has always been like this though - he just won't be told and now he is sad. And I feel terrible. All his plans are up in the air while we wait to see where he can go next.

We have given him so many opportunities - all the extra curricular I wished I had had a chance to do but never did (tailored to him and his likes of course), music lessons, sports, trips and visits, a house full of books and every other resource we can provide. But it all means nothing, he barely puts any effort in and it feels like he just doesn't care.

And then, all the school's words about "if it doesn't work out there are options..." turn out to mean nothing because when I asked what next they basically just shrugged and said he doesn't meet the requirements, there is nothing we can do.

I am of course venting here to avoid damaging him by saying something hurtful and harming our relationship.

All will be well.

I know it is a stressful time.

I did well in my GCSEs but my A levels were shocking. I managed to get into uni and the rest is history. Today I have a career I love and have to pinch myself that it is real.

I’m currently doing a year-long course for senior leaders. The thing that has struck me most about the participants and the high profile speakers is that it is the ones that have experienced adversity that have had to find a path forward that is right for them. They are the ones making a difference in society and are happy with who they are.

Good luck to your son and wishing him a happy and fulfilling future!

I feel your pain. DD dropped grades

You haven't messed it up - he's got mostly 4s and from what you said I think passed English and Maths.

If he won't engage with academic work outside of the school day then A levels wouldn't be the right route for him.

I'm sure he will find a college course or apprenticeship that is just the right fit for him and his strengths.

He's passed maths and English, which is the most important thing. It sounds as if the actual exams are the biggest barrier for him - not everyone is at their best in exams. Sixth form college may well suit him better, especially a BTech course in a subject in which he is interested. These tend to be completely based on coursework. Perhaps level 2 would be better to start with as it will help him find his feet which, in turn, will build his confidence. Even though it feels like it at the moment, it is really not the end of the world and he will succeed and find his own way.

I work as an EO. The amount of student that are predicted high grades. Top students who simply get in the exam hall and rush to finish and then spend the last 50% of the time sleeping is shocking. One of our rooms of 40 students had 16 sleeping at one point. Could this be a case ? Half hearted attempt / too much pressure

I had to put huge effort into getting my son to revise for GCSE. I started before the first mocks in Year 10 and kept pushing the boulder up the hill. I simply didn't take no for an answer. Luckily at least a few months before the exams he started working hard himself but some subjects he disliked I still had to basically sit next to him to make sure he revised them. It was utterly exhausting. I had also made him apply to one sixth form which would have let him in with pretty poor grades as a last resort option alongside applying to the options he wanted. Thankfully he received good grades but he still missed a criteria for one of his chosen subjects so both me and DH turned up at the school pleading and because it was a minor miss they let him in.

So for some kids the amount of support they need from parents to do well is near impossible to provide. I definitely came to the verge of burnout.

I do not agree for a second with those who say he needs to sort himself out. They are 16 and the options - if you can't get into sixth form - are complex and overwhelming and many at this age have no idea what they can realistically aim for. So I would be heavily involved in researching options for him and getting him on some kind of trajectory with prospects, a chance of obtaining a place and something he has some interest in.

While I would tell him that my love is unconditional I would also be clear that in my opinion he has let himself down by not trying hard enough and now you seriously expect him to change this attitude and try harder on the new path ahead.

I would be pushy and demanding because this is the last chance you get to have any influence at all. There's a real chance he has learned his lesson and he still needs your support at such a young age.

Jesus, all this talk of a boy's failures. 🤦‍♀️😢
I fear this boy feels he can't ever live up to his parents' expectations and can't/doesn't know how to tell them he doesn't want to.

You did your best; DS did not.
He didn't revise for exams and probably did not sit as many practise exams as directed either.
Tell DS that his results were not surprising, given his lack of effort but that he is now an adult, regardless.

DS needs to take responsibility for his own future. He needs to get up, get dressed and go out to find a job or apprenticeship.

Borrow a resource book/list of careers gained through apprenticeships from the school careers officer. DS needs to identify his strengths and interests and start applying.

Well I hope he learns a lesson through this.

Why not resit the GCSEs with more preparation? English and Math resits are offered in November, the rest in the summer. I wouldnt base his next steps on an unsatisfactory exam outcome.

You haven't messed it up. Your son is not you. I say my this as kindly as possible but it is not all about you.

If your son has got all 9s would it have been mostly because of you or because of him? If you would say mostly because of him (which I assume you would), then the same is true of him getting lower marks, unless you did something directly to sabotage his exams in some way( no I thought not)

It may be a disappointment but it is not the end of the world, look into local vocational colleges if 6th form colleges or achool won't have take him . They offer A levels and lots of other different level 3 qualifications

Work might be the making of him. Not all children are made for studying. It’s great that he likes the look of the apprenticeship!

My bright son’s attitude and results were similar, though he had what he needed for 6th form- just. But - he very quickly dropped out. Went to college to do hospitality but that didnt work out as he took the same attitude with him. I think at 16 some kids, especially boys, simply don’t have the maturity to apply themselves to study.

so, he got work in a supermarket and a year later did level 3 engineering at college and smashed it. Decided engineering wasn’t for him and did 1/3 of a degree with OU while working full time in various jobs.

now, aged 23 he is starting at uni to do years 2&3 of a psychology degree. He’s focused and really wants to achieve.

Meanwhile his severely dyslexic little sister is doing amazingly well in a levels and in track to go to a Russell group uni. Two kids brought up with the same values, opportunities etc.

my point is, you can’t force a kid to want to do well and have that focus and it takes some longer to get there than others. This is not on you.

no one wants their kid to underperform at gcse but it really isn’t the end of the world, there’s more than one route to success and hopefully this will be the wake up call he needs

I say this as a parent whose ds is going into year 11 and I am very into academic performance, dc at grammar, always thought they'd go to uni, wanted them to do law or finance etc.... now I think it doesn't matter. I can see AI is coming for jobs and competition is going to be fierce. Non academic routes / trades etc will be more secure.

The smart children are on their way to vocational courses now. Talk to your ds about his interests and find something practical to study. Would a cooking course suit him?

Some kids would absolutely rebel against this approach and refuse to do any work at all - what works for your family won’t work for everyone.

does your son now have an intrinsic focus and desire to do well? Interesting it was you pleading for his 6th form place rather than him.

OP, I think your relationship will be better if you stop comparing your teenage self to him. I know it’s tempting but don’t tell him things along the lines of “well WE had to walk 3 miles barefoot to school” I am exaggerating and know you wouldn’t say THAT but I hope you get the gist!

Your son will find a way!

I find it odd that the school was predicting 7s, then shrugged their shoulders when he didn't get 7s. That's simply not good enough. Schools have to submit predicted grades to the exam boards...Either the predicted grades were wrong or the exams need a re- mark.

No they don't. They submit entries, that is all. Can you not see how problematic it would be for schools to be submitting predictions to exam boards??! There is a lot of misunderstanding around the difference between target grades (generated by SATs and largely out of schools' control) and predictions - not helped by the fact that many schools use the terms interchangeably and/or don't explain the difference properly. The systems for generating predictions vary between schools and sometimes within schools between subjects and can be somewhat ad hoc. In any case they are predictions and therefore, by definition, can be 'wrong', or not come to fruition for a number of reasons.

I would be interviewing the staff concerned.

😂😂😂😂

There is a huge spectrum between micro managing a young person's life and completely leaving them to it - and all of this and in between is being suggested on this thread.

I absolutely wouldn't leave him to it. One of my nephews sounds similar. He enrolled onto a completely unsuitable college course and after it he spent two years in his bedroom.

You need to keep nudging him in the right direction imo - yes, you can pivot in the next few years but it isn't as easy to reinvent yourself as some are suggesting. For starters college funding only lasts til age 19 and then you have to self fund.

So best to get it right first time. And that probably needs some parental input.

Sounds great. I think this route will be better for my son. He was predicted 7 in English Lang, top set etc but came out with a 4 yesterday. 6 in Lit, but the ongoing assessment will suit him better than the final exam approach. Exciting.

So my two both now clear of GCSE'S and grade wise they both didnt get predicted and did. My daughter passed English but not as High as her teachers wanted and got a 1 in RS, My Son did better than expected given is working Memory/ADHD issues but he got a 2 in RS not what his teacher predicted. I told both of them I didnt care about the RS grades. My daughter is now a fully qualified nursery assistant and my son is currently an apprentice Chef and loving life. I did ok in my own GCSE'S went to Uni got a degree in Environmental Science and now work as a Community Support Worker for people with Mental Health issues. They are just grades, a snapshot in time. English or Maths can be retaken if needed. Look into apprenticeships as well as college courses that's where my two excelled. You haven't failed him and he hasn't failed. If the lowest he got is a 3 that's and old school D. There is way too much pressure on students and parents alike for the elusive 4 and over. Give yourselves a break and think outside the box going forward. I wish you both luck.

I have similar, my DH and I excelled at studies and did exceptionally well - great careers, worked hard - our children have all the help we didn't have, and you know what it seems to have backfired. You cannot motivate someone else, you cannot study for someone else , they need to find their now path and their own passion. One of my DC mentioned they felt the subconscious pressure to follow in our footsteps and achieve stellar results ( and they are naturally smart) but they felt the subconscious pressure and so didn't want to try and then fail, so they failed anyway.

I don't have any magic answers, but now I try so hard to let go, it is their journey and not mine. I will not be there when they land the job later because of the marks they got due to my 'help' and they cannot sustain it, at some stage they need the hunger and the drive to succeed or pursue their passion . It is obvious for me now in hindsight, but even so there is no easy answer.

Genuine question; how do you resit GCSEs? Maths and English I know you can do in parallel with A levels or btec if you need to up the grade but how/where can you repeat a whole clutch of GCSEs? I have known people repeat a year of A levels but I have never known anyone repeat a year of GCSES.

I taught in college, GCSE. We had to submit predicted grades every year. All kids had targets too. They were assessed on arrival in college. They were expected to improve by the end of the year. We had multi coloured spreadsheets which tracked progress throughout the year. Poor attendance was monitored and tracked. Failure to complete work was tracked. Weak areas were flagged up. Extra revision sessions were put in place.

In February, we had to do predicted grades for all students. It was easy to predict the 7s and 6s. The borderline passes were difficult to predict, we had a lot of those. It was also generally obvious which ones were going to fail. We used mocks and work throughout the year in order to arrive at predicted grades. I find it difficult to believe that a kid who got a 7 in his mock, got a 3 in his exam. Our marking was also monitored by the department. I was the internal moderator for other teachers' marking. The HoD said the predictions were for the exam board. Maybe she lied.

Whatever. We had a staff meeting where our predicted grades were discussed for each teacher. After the results came out we had a department meeting where the department's performance was discussed and each individual teachers predicted grades and exam results were shared with the rest of the department. We used this data to improve our teaching for the following academic year. We also analysed which questions students had performed badly on.
If any of us had got our predictions wrong by 3 grades, the HoD would be wanting to know why. A few marks is acceptable, 3 grades is not.

If you think that I never had parents requesting meetings to discuss their kids progress, you are very much mistaken. They invariably left looking down in the mouth because they had not known that their kid wasn't trying or was messing about in class.

From my personal experience, I think colleges are much more organised and staff more dedicated than in schools.

One final note, a friend of mine bombed her A levels, when her mum contacted the school to ask why and whether they could have a re-mark, the school replied "No. She was expected to fail".

@HarshbutTrue2 I'm a former HoD and now on SLT and can tell you categorically that predicted grades are not submitted to exam boards. It is not uncommon for schools to have thorough internal procedures in place for generating predicted grades such as you describe, but it's also not uncommon for them not to be in place for any number of reasons, such as staffing shortages, time constraints and lack of being arsed as they work in a school instead of a (fee-paying?) college (hint: the last one is sarcasm). I think your HoD was infantilising you all by pretending your predictions were being sent to the exam board - I would have been embarrassed to have done that but perhaps, despite you all being so much more dedicated than the lazy-arse school teachers I have worked with, she felt you wouldn't have taken it seriously unless she lied?

However, I agree a teacher giving a prediction following the process you describe and being 3 grades off would be concerning, but we know very little about how the predictions given to the OP were generated and cannot assume the process was such a thorough one. And, if it were, as you say yourself, the child's own effort and dedication play a huge part in deciding final outcomes in the end and those can't always be predicted.

As you say

If you’re aspirational target was 6 , you got say 5/4 on an April mock with a nice generous mock paper ( they don’t sit a full complement often ) and then you did naff all revision , watched a few YouTube videos , didn’t take up the school support and the papers were pretty evil and maybe missed the last meaty questions off and wrote absolute bobbins because you confused the topic say in History which is easy to do - I could see how you’d come out with a 3 . I’d ask for mark review though and the papers back tho’ I think as the class teacher I’d be asking questions . If you get a 3 in mfl - you were doing the wrong tier paper for a start if your target was a 6 . Thats a disaster - never come across that . But the OP doesn’t say what they were getting on the mocks just what they were predicted - was that the target grade perhaps