Angry, upset and annoyed or over reacting rant

squibbs25

Deleted as double posted!

daisiegg

squibbs25 wrote: »

Thanks for all your responses.

I am really concerned that the school expect the children to take this exam early.
Ds is thinking I'd a career in haematology and I believe that he should be taught the curriculum fully before any exams take place.
The school has been a farce from day one. They push the kids through, he took Spanish gcse at the end of yr 9 got a D, apparently was a few marks away from a C, the teacher talked him into re doing it the following year although he wasn't have Spanish lessons but the teacher did offer an after school club after school on a Monday.
History was taken in June (yr 10) along with the Spansish, English lit (that no one knew was being taken til the exam list came through!) science foundation level.
The history grade was a D again a few points away from the C, the teacher wanted ds to retake but we said no, teacher was not happy at all. I said tough! If he wants to do haematology then he needs to concentrate on his sciences, English and maths, without the pressure of another exam.
The Spansih he did was a 2 year course that was condensed into 1 year which actually turned into 9 months as the exam was early may!

My husband and I have been talking and I am going to speak to the head teacher tomorrow about ds not taking the exam early as like the general opinion we believe it's more damaging than helpful.

Again thank you for taking the time to respond x

Gosh, that sounds terrible! :eek: I work in an outstanding school that gets some of the best results in the country and we don't enter anyone for any exams early; certainly not in core subjects. The only exception is sometimes languages if a student is bilingual already and it would be really easy for them to get a top grade in the language GCSE, they will enter them in Y8 or Y9 just so they get another A* under their belt. The idea of entering students early for exams that they are only going to get a D or C or B in is just mental!

As others have said with the changes to the GCSE this won't be able to happen anymore, but that doesn't solve your problem right now. If you feel really unhappy about your son doing this exam early I would stand your ground. Good luck.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Counting_Pennies wrote: »

They are streamed into groups of 20 for maths, and the top 20 have their own maths class every day, so I do not see why it is necessary for them to have additional lessons on top of their daily top set maths lesson outside of school time to coach them for GCSE. If they are capable of reaching GCSE this should be achieveable in their current lessons. The middle class do not get additional coaching to get them into the top set, nor do the bottom class get coaching to get to the middle class, so why should the over achievers be given even more teaching time?.

Do you realise what a bored teenager with a high IQ is capable of doing to amuse themselves? Multiply that by 20 and you get the class most feared by teachers.



To give a couple of examples from my school, investigating the chemical energy stored in foodstuffs led to the creation of IEDs and the entire school computer network was reprogrammed in fifteen minutes. Plus a whole load more, even just being able to argue/debate until the cows come home and tag team the teacher, hassle them for something harder to do and then give the teacher stick for not being able to answer a question correctly, can act as an interesting diversion from having finished everything within ten minutes.

Personally, I mostly just stretched out my legs and spent my last years at school half asleep (from watching late night monster movies on TV) or drawing cartoons, occasionally waking up to answer questions (always correctly) or to come top in exams. If I could be bothered to turn up in the last year, that was. And I got As - no A* grade existed at that point.

I did end up teaching GCSE Business Studies in my last year (yes, literally), though, as a teacher went on long term sick leave and they couldn't find anybody to replace him, so I 'looked after' my class whilst the remaining teacher went off and taught the other one. But that was because class was on a Wednesday and I had Graphics later in the day, so always went in for that.




Providing additional support to both lower and higher ability learners is called differentiation. Or damage limitation, depending on whether you're studying education or actually doing it.

paulineb_2

A member of my family is a teacher, she teaches 32 kids, all with varying abilities. Staff also need to follow a curriculum as well. Theres no such thing as A* in Scotland where I am and when I was at school which was 30 years ago now, there was no such thing as kids being encouraged to sit exams early, even the brightest children didnt. I sat 7 Ogrades when I was 16 and then went onto my Highers.

In my mums day they did, she sat some of her O levels a year early and bypassed others and went straight onto Highers.

You are always going to get a mixture of abilities in every class and teaching methods are changing all the time and I would suspect not for the better. Theres also concerns about workloads increasing, simply put, some lessons if they were taught the way the curriculum developers wanted them done, there simply arent enough hours in the teaching day to teach it that specific way.

If for example a teacher in primary 3 or 4 has a kid who can hardly write or do their times tables and it can happen, they might also have a gifted child in that class. Its practically impossible to tailor lessons that are going to hit the learning needs of every single pupil in that class. Some kids will be ahead and some will be catching up, because when teachers take on a class, they are also taking on the successes or failures of teaching staff who have taught the kids in previous years. If there are kids who have spent 3 years at school and barely done any work, it is going to impact on the rest of the class.

Class sizes in some schools are getting bigger all the time and not smaller. Budgets are also getting cut year on year and in some schools teachers workloads are increasing.

I think people should have a think about the work that teaching staff in some schools have to do. Add that to children who have learning needs, behavioural difficulties, maybe people might see then why abler children arent getting pushed, because theres so many kids of different abilities, different backgrounds including some kids who dont want to be there, dont want to do work and possibly have parents who dont care what they do at school or at home. The mix of kids in any one class from year to year will make a massive difference as to how that teacher teaches the class.

The relative of mine who is a teacher has been teaching for 40 years now, has spent a lot of time in her own time, tutoring kids who need extra help, for nothing, she wont accept payment for it and has always had a special interest in trying to get the best out of kids who have been perhaps written off as not being academic, because some kids do get labelled. But shes also very good at getting the best out of gifted kids as well, shes very good at what she does and she cares a lot. Not everyone does and thats the bottom line. Some kids get written off and it shouldnt happen.

My brother is left handed, he was written off at primary school as being slow and he wasnt, he also lacked confidence. If he had done in life what his teachers predicted, hed be doing nothing, he has a degree and a good job, it took a teacher who actually saw his potential and gave him confidence that made the difference to his life. Other teachers just labelled him.

As for me, I was very academic at primary school, by the time I got to secondary I lost my way a bit, school bored me. I felt very much that when I was at school everything was tailored to the very academic, I wasnt but I could have been. In spite of not doing as much studying as I could have when I was in third year I was in the top 15 exam marks wise out of the entire year, but I still struggled, I struggled with the choices I made subject wise, I didnt know what I wanted to do and it took me a false start before I got my degree, Ive spoken about that elsewhere.

I also think a hell of a lot will depend on how much support teachers get at each individual school, the resources they have or they dont, the support they get from senior staff, support with pupils who have educational or behavioural needs, support when incidents happen. Ive known of kids who have severe ADHD to be in a class with no learning support and the teacher has to divert all the time onto that child, because their needs are so great that its a much different class than it would be if they werent in it. Add to that staff being laid off (its happened in a lot of schools up here due to budget cuts), classroom assistants, theres only so much teaching staff can do at times. In some schools there isnt even a budget for pens and pencils, staff have to take their own in, such have been the cuts.

As for UCAS, Ive no idea whether a GCSE or a standard grade counts for much when it comes to choosing someone for a course, yes you are asked to list them, but its always been A levels or Highers that they ask you to list, in fact if you have a Higher in a certain subject, it was Highers when I was at school, you didnt list the O or standard grade because the Higher is at a higher level obviously and theres no need to list the subject twice. And that was always an accepted way of putting your subjects down, that was almost 30 years ago now though.

Having just googled, it seems that GCSE grades do count for more now and that if there was a difficulty in choosing between two students, the one with better GCSE grades might get the place. Although it also says that its only some universities that would care and others would go on how well someone does at A level or Higher.

Counting_Pennies_2

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

Do you realise what a bored teenager with a high IQ is capable of doing to amuse themselves? Multiply that by 20 and you get the class most feared by teachers.



To give a couple of examples from my school, investigating the chemical energy stored in foodstuffs led to the creation of IEDs and the entire school computer network was reprogrammed in fifteen minutes. Plus a whole load more, even just being able to argue/debate until the cows come home and tag team the teacher, hassle them for something harder to do and then give the teacher stick for not being able to answer a question correctly, can act as an interesting diversion from having finished everything within ten minutes.

Personally, I mostly just stretched out my legs and spent my last years at school half asleep (from watching late night monster movies on TV) or drawing cartoons, occasionally waking up to answer questions (always correctly) or to come top in exams. If I could be bothered to turn up in the last year, that was. And I got As - no A* grade existed at that point.

I did end up teaching GCSE Business Studies in my last year (yes, literally), though, as a teacher went on long term sick leave and they couldn't find anybody to replace him, so I 'looked after' my class whilst the remaining teacher went off and taught the other one. But that was because class was on a Wednesday and I had Graphics later in the day, so always went in for that.




Providing additional support to both lower and higher ability learners is called differentiation. Or damage limitation, depending on whether you're studying education or actually doing it.

I think we will have to agree to disagree.

I have never said over achievers should not be taught more complicated subjects. The opposite, they are streamed so the high achievers are in different classes. I object that they are given additional teaching resources outside of the school hours at additional expense to the school, when others are not given the additional help.

Why can't the middle achievers who are also streamed into a class of their own get additional teaching hours to get them up to the next SATS level.

It has to be fair.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Counting_Pennies wrote: »

I think we will have to agree to disagree.

I have never said over achievers should not be taught more complicated subjects. The opposite, they are streamed so the high achievers are in different classes. I object that they are given additional teaching resources outside of the school hours at additional expense to the school, when others are not given the additional help.

Why can't the middle achievers who are also streamed into a class of their own get additional teaching hours to get them up to the next SATS level.

It has to be fair.

As the curriculum is written with the 'average' child in mind and most children are 'average', the kids in the middle are getting the appropriate level of teaching/help for them to meet the level appropriate for them.

The kids on either end of that range need greater differentiation. And that's where the greatest level of improvement in attainment is seen; both ends are likely to have kids with varying preferred learning styles, a lot of lower attainment kids are likely to learn more effectively with visual and kinaesthetic activities, for example. But that hasn't formed a huge part of a lot of schools' or teachers' teaching methodologies until recent years.

To put it bluntly, an average kid with average attainment isn't suddenly going to become gifted and talented with another couple of hours' tuition. They are what they are; average. They're getting what they need in class already.

The kids either side have additional needs that they do not have. If those needs are not met, both attainment and behaviour suffer.

Fair is ensuring that the kids with additional needs get additional help. Not ensuring that those who do need it aren't allowed it because of a belief that everybody should be treated the same.

Counting_Pennies_2

As I said agree to differ

FBaby

Counting_Pennies wrote: »

As I said agree to differ

To be honest, it strikes more as a mother who wishes her child was more advanced and is disappointed that he is not given more chances to be so by the school.

I don't understand as you can't see that gifted children have more needs than the average child academically. They are the one who on the whole lose out since 9 times out of 10, they have to adapt to a system that is not tailored to their needs. Both my children learn very quickly, so get the lessons and exercise that are done in class in about half the time the average child need. If ALL lessons were tailored to their level, they would learn twice as much in a day than they currently do. On this basis, we could say that they are majorly failed and that a couple of additional hours a week is only a small compensation for the fact that they have to adjust to the average pupil.

As a parent, I accept that because I do have a choice to put them in the private system (although not totally convinced that it would fully resolve the matter), however, I do appreciate that their school take some initiatives to support their needs.

What you don't seem to accept is that it has nothing to do with boosting their abilities so that they get even better grades, it's about making them feel 'normal' by sitting in one hour class where they are challenged so that they don't get bored wondering what to do to fill the 1/2 hour left in the lesson and make them realise that sometimes they do have to push themselves and even deal with the frustration of not understanding something (which happen with my son the other week, a good lesson for him to deal with).

Dunroamin

Simple answer - grammar schools!

Seanymph

the school are marked on C's and above. So they only need your son to get a C.

They are marked on 5 C's per child - so they need all kids to get 5 C's.

The kids can do a foundation paper which is easier - the highest grade they can get though is a C - or a Higher Paper, which allows them to get a B or an A.

The motivation for schools to put pupils into a higher paper and delay their taking it so they get a higher grade is not there for some schools who need to improve their table ranking.

My daughter took French at year 9! Got a C, wanted to do A levels and had two years of private lessons (then changed her mind but that's a whole other post!) - meanwhile school crammed her for a C at Spanish (it was a 'language school so needed a percentage to do two languages - that was enough to count) As a parent I was proud she and her classmates where singled out as 'gifted at languages' and would take two languages - I had no understanding how that would handicap her when it came to A levels and University.

C's don't count there unfortunately!

So I think you are very right to be concerned. The school WILL have an agenda - and it won't necessarily benefit your son.