Daughter melts down in exam conditions GCSE exam revision advice / suggestions?

[SpookyFrank]

Cynical truth is that GCSE results are more crucial to schools and their league table ranking than they are to the poor pupils sitting them.

Very much so, and the pressure put on the kids is unconscionable IMO.

The way the curriculum is set up with regard to GCSE's also actively inhibits learning; the kids get taught GCSE-level stuff starting in year 7 and then obviously they struggle with it, they assume they're rubbish at whatever subject it is and they give up.

 

[SpookyFrank]

What happened to coursework in schools?

It doesn't exist in science. Couldn't tell you when this happened or why, but the answer to both is likely to involve the name Gove.

Still, why would you need to learn about extended written communication in a discipline where you're judged first and foremost by how many people read the things you write?

 

[maomao]

Cynical truth is that GCSE results are more crucial to schools and their league table ranking than they are to the poor pupils sitting them.

Teachers at exam-factories like the cesspool I am leaving in 6 days are constantly bombarded with propaganda about how the only way to really help kids is to get them good gcse grades.

 

[DaveCinzano]

I have no great advice to offer, only the observation that from all of your posts about your daughter you clearly care for her immensely and always do your best to support her, that she is a bright and funny and smart young woman with a range of interests and skills, and a fast-developing sense of who she is in the world. It always sounds like love and respect are important values in your home.

I think all of this is likely to have much more lasting - and positive - impact on her life than whatever happens with the GCSEs, however stressful they seem, both for you and for her, right now.

Good luck!

 

[SpookyFrank]

e2a: I've ranted about all this shit elsewhere and don't want to derail the thread.

 

[SpookyFrank]

My daughter is a good kid and pretty bright across the board. All the teachers seem to agree that she is a model student in terms of behaviour, diligence and work in school.
Her history teacher uses her work book as an example of how other students should be working and generally where course work still exists I am told it is of excellent quality.

However when it comes to the mock exams she has performed terribly in every subject except art. I do quite a lot of revision with her at home especially in history and science, where she really knows her stuff well . . . but she just crumbles in exams.
Externally I don't see her being actually nervous about taking the mocks, but something is not working, (she seems to be leaving huge blank spaces or just writing bursts of gobbledegook for instance).

I have tried to address this each time after every mock but the results have not changed. I know there is no magical solution, but does anyone have any experience or advice in this area?

What happened to coursework in schools?

Also, mock exams should be used as formative assessment by schools and not just as a data-harvesting exercise. If your daughter is known to be a good student but has clearly not done well in her mock exams, the school should have picked that up and done something about it.

 

[friedaweed]

From personal experience I'd be mindful if she's anxious about it all in pursuing a solution focused approach to this. If its stressing her out, take a break from it for a while. I went through this with both of mine and actually doing less achieved more with the lad.

With my daughter (first born) trying to force the issue made it worse. She always underperformed in exams, including subjects that she was in the gifted and talented streams for. She flunked her A's, had to re-sit her final year and had all sorts of mental health problems from the pressure that kids are under at that age.

She's just Aced a masters in Criminology and is 3 months into a full time well paid job in the civil service now.

It sounds like you're doing everything you can already.

The anxiety driven underperformance of exams is more of an indication of their mental wellbeing and how that competitive environment affects them sociologically and not an indication of their level of intelligence. All kids are bright and intelligent some just don't jump through that hoop so easily.

Take the pressure off her by not making it a massive issue for a wee while. Keep exploring her curiosities in the subject areas and focus on more experiential learning opportunities so she embeds her knowledge better for recall later in the exam.

It's a tricky time for her and you but she's also experiencing a whole load of other awakenings at that age all of which bring stress. Exams are not the be all and end all.

Best of luck mate.

 

[kabbes]

The problem you're going to face, AS, is the same one every person faces with a loved one every time that loved one is very anxious and/or obsessive about something that kind of does matter but not as much as they think it does. Or something that is kind of true but not in the way or to the degree they fear. Basically, you have two contradictory messages you need to give: (1) This is how to approach and pass an exam, please do it properly; but (2) Relax; exams don't matter as much as you're being told they do, and there are a zillion more chances to do things in life.

Both messages are important, because (1) is practical and, all else being equal, it is better to have good grades than bad grades. But (2) really matters for the sake of not creating the kind of neurosis that persists through life, and also because stressed people won't do well at (1) anyway.

In all honesty, I would find it difficult guessing what the balance is between (1) and (2) for you personally without observing how you interact with your daughter in relation to this subject. There is a risk that you get advised on doing (1) and this makes things worse rather than better. But there is also the risk of the opposite.

So maybe the first thing is some hard-core self-reflection. Looking at the situation from the outside, do you think your daughter's struggle is because (1) she doesn't know/doesn't care how to approach an exam? Or (2) because so much attention and focus is being given to GCSEs that this causes her to freeze or otherwise underperform? [Or (3) something else entirely?]

 

[geminisnake]

I used to get stressed about exams, to the extent my head literally went empty when the paper was in front of me. Would it be worth her trying something like Kalms? Even if they only helped on a psychological level. I prefer modular grading, exams are awful for a lot of people

 

[kabbes]

Exams aren’t there to help students. They’re not there to help schools. They’re not there to develop kids or work out who needs more help or even to best discriminate those who are “smart” (whatever that means).

No. Exams are there to make students normalise the idea that in everything they do, they are observed, ranked and recorded. They’re there to make students normalise the idea that they exist in a scale of “good”, ie deserving, to “bad”, ie undeserving. They’re there to make students believe that if they “fail” in life, that’s their fault and they deserve it.

Once you understand all that, you realise that exams work perfectly.

 

[friedaweed]

Exams aren’t there to help students. They’re not there to help schools. They’re not there to develop kids or work out who needs more help or even to best discriminate those who are “smart” (whatever that means).

No. Exams are there to make students normalise the idea that in everything they do, they are observed, ranked and recorded. They’re there to make students normalise the idea that they exist in a scale of “good”, ie deserving, to “bad”, ie undeserving. They’re there to make students believe that if they “fail” in life, that’s their fault and they deserve it.

Once you understand all that, you realise that exams work perfectly.

Not that easy to get your head around it in those terms when your 15 though is it?

 

[kabbes]

Not that easy to get your head around it in those terms when your 15 though is it?

No, that’s not my message for 15 year olds. It’s my message for their parents.

 

[friedaweed]

No, that’s not my message for 15 year olds. It’s my message for their parents.

So with that in mind what should the parent say to the anxious 15 yr old about their pending undertaking and associated performance in those exams they have to take?

 

[Elpenor]

No, that’s not my message for 15 year olds. It’s my message for their parents.

My mum must have found my exams more stressful than I did as she managed to get sectioned during both my GCSEs and A levels. Would have been good for her if she’d known that

 

[kabbes]

So with that in mind what should the parent say to the anxious 15 yr old about their pending undertaking and associated performance in those exams they have to take?

I’ve already discussed that earlier in the thread.

 

[friedaweed]

I’ve already discussed that earlier in the thread.

I wasn't being funny I was engaging with you in the here and now. I agree with your sentiment to some degree I was just hoping for a bit more of an explanation of your view on how parents deal with that quandary which I think would help the op more.

 

[kabbes]

I wasn't being funny I was engaging with you in the here and now. I agree with your sentiment to some degree I was just hoping for a bit more of an explanation of your view on how parents deal with that quandary which I think would help to op more.

Well, like I said, I think it depends on what else is going on. How has the child constructed their understanding of what education is, what schooling is, what exams are, what their place in society is, how society is structured? How are they responding to those things? Are they understanding the school material and struggling with the exam? Are they struggling with the material itself? Etc.

Then, largely the same questions of the parent.

 

[friedaweed]

How has the child constructed their understanding of what education is, what schooling is, what exams are, what their place in society is, how society is structured? How are they responding to those things? Are they understanding the school material and struggling with the exam? Are they struggling with the material itself? Etc.

Have you met many 15 tear olds mucker? None of that is in their daily considerations when they open their eyes each morning.

 

[kabbes]

Have you met many 15 tear olds mucker? None of that is in their daily considerations when they open their eyes each morning.

Of course it is. Just because they don’t have it in conscious attention, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s how they build their world, same as everyone else.

 

[contadino]

A lot about schooling is setup to reinforce the idea that exams are the culmination of education, and it follows that the pressure builds accordingly. Big exams are usually the end of one phase and, if successful, the acceptance to the next level. Rejection means being excluded from your social circle.

As others have alluded to, if I was the OP, I guess I'd try to discuss how the daughter felt about their current social situation and try to put her at ease with the prospects on the horizon.

 

[friedaweed]

Of course it is. Just because they don’t have it in conscious attention, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It’s how they build their world, same as everyone else.

From a personal and professionaPOV I think you're asking a lot from them there chief. There's an informed reasoning that suggests that that age is the worst time to put them though those sorts of tests. For me this actually sits a lot better with your analogy of what the parents should think but we continue to ask our kids to play the game and get wrapped up in it.

 

[kabbes]

I haven’t said what I would ask the child. I said that my view of how the parents might deal with it depends on those questions. The answers to those questions doesn’t come from just asking the child. My point is that there isn’t just a nice simple ready-made solution.

FWIW, though, I would probably hope to impart this message: although the world tries its best to make children think that exam grades and qualifications matter, they don’t. What DOES matter is the knowledge and understanding that education can give you. That knowledge plus some other stuff, like interpersonal and organisational skills, will get you a long way. The knowledge without the exam grade is worth a thousand times more than the exam grade without the knowledge. Therefore, ultimately, don’t worry about exams but do care about knowledge.

Sadly, our system creates a lot of children that have this message exactly the wrong way round.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Very much so, and the pressure put on the kids is unconscionable IMO.

The way the curriculum is set up with regard to GCSE's also actively inhibits learning; the kids get taught GCSE-level stuff starting in year 7 and then obviously they struggle with it, they assume they're rubbish at whatever subject it is and they give up.

To a large extent all learning seems to finish early and the children are simply learning how to parrot the correct responses to get ticks on what they know will be in exams. This is really obvious in science. (we are doing test papers now) more than half of our study time isn't anything to do with science, it's about how to answer questions for marks. Working through problems logically and showing you can problem solve does not exist. It's remembering the correct descriptive word that will be marked on the paper.

It's really depressing.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

I used to get stressed about exams, to the extent my head literally went empty when the paper was in front of me. Would it be worth her trying something like Kalms? Even if they only helped on a psychological level. I prefer modular grading, exams are awful for a lot of people

What are Kalms?

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

The school should offer alternative arrangements. Last year we had some kids who had to be in a room by themselves, with just a member of staff to invigilate.

I've 'briefly' looked into this. I talked to my daughter about it and we don't think it would help. It's not the room or exam conditions. It's the exam itself and the time constraint. The way she talks about it makes me think it's the same issue I have / had with such things. Luckily for me I lived in an age of larger coursework and multiple choice exams.
. . . also it seems the kids have to be tested to sit the test this way. Just seems like more to (perhaps unnecessarily) worry about.

 

[weepiper]

My Patrick really struggles with this too. As discussed elsewhere he's waiting for an ADOS assessment from CAMHS to see if he is as suspected (by me and his guidance teacher) autistic and/or ADHD. He withdrew from one exam last year and failed another because of his anxiety/freezing up/inability to put things down on paper in the time limit. He's resitting the one he withdrew from this year (Higher Maths) but is now also thinking of withdrawing from another one (RMPS) because it's an essay based exam and he finds essays tooth grindingly impossible. It's really a shame because he likes the subject, he enjoys the discussions they have in class about things and his knowledge is good when he talks to me about it but he just cannot deal with the formal structure of an essay question. I find it quite frustrating because I can't get him to understand that the basic structure is the same every time (I mean how to write an introduction/points/evaluation/conclusion) and that seems obvious to me but it's like running up against a brick wall for him. He gets to sit exams in a small side room with a few others which he prefers but as you say it's no good if his brain just gets totally stuck and he can't get the words out.

 

[SpookyFrank]

To a large extent all learning seems to finish early and the children are simply learning how to parrot the correct responses to get ticks on what they know will be in exams. This is really obvious in science. (we are doing test papers now) more than half of our study time isn't anything to do with science, it's about how to answer questions for marks. Working through problems logically and showing you can problem solve does not exist. It's remembering the correct descriptive word that will be marked on the paper.

It's really depressing.

The good news is that it's not hard to just sort of memorise how to do things. Apart from a few bits of maths that have to be rote-learned, science is actually not that bad. I'd agre that the lack of problem-solving stuff is a huge issue, but good teachers will still build it into their lessons even if it's not going to be on the exam.

Far worse is English literature, where they basically tell you the questions ahead of time and you memorise the answers, and the right quotes from the book because you don't get given a copy in the exam. It all has less than nothing to do with using the English language.

E2a: I say it's not hard to memorise science content. It clearly is hard for a lot of kids. The amount of new vocabluary for one thing; I think there's more new words in year 7 science than year 7 French. And there doesn't need to be, much of it is unrelated to actual understanding. I currently teach in an SEN school and although we don't do GCSEs, the basic content is largely the same. I just simplify the language and do as much as possible with discussion instead of writing.

 

[SpookyFrank]

I've 'briefly' looked into this. I talked to my daughter about it and we don't think it would help. It's not the room or exam conditions. It's the exam itself and the time constraint. The way she talks about it makes me think it's the same issue I have / had with such things. Luckily for me I lived in an age of larger coursework and multiple choice exams.
. . . also it seems the kids have to be tested to sit the test this way. Just seems like more to (perhaps unnecessarily) worry about.

Extra time may also be available but there might have to a diagnosis of dyslsxia, adhd or something else off a ticksheet of the right kind of issues to get that.

It is absolutely something the school should be talking to you about though.

 

[Red Cat]

I've 'briefly' looked into this. I talked to my daughter about it and we don't think it would help. It's not the room or exam conditions. It's the exam itself and the time constraint. The way she talks about it makes me think it's the same issue I have / had with such things. Luckily for me I lived in an age of larger coursework and multiple choice exams.
. . . also it seems the kids have to be tested to sit the test this way. Just seems like more to (perhaps unnecessarily) worry about.

Alternative arrangements usually requires evidence of SEN, surely.

Unfortunately the ed.system has no answers for these children, often autistic, who freeze or get stuck and can't move on, because it is all about exams. All the advice above is helpful to aid her break down the questions, pattern recognition, technique, so that its all as familiar as possible.

 

[Aladdin]

The teachers need to be giving practice questions as homework too.
The more timed practice she gets in exam questions the more she will adjust and become comfortable doing them.
Would suggest redoing a few papers includjng the mocks one question at a time and gradually building to trying 5 questions or however many are required.
Timing is ecerything.
Also having a page for quick notes t jot down in prep for answering.