Rory Edwards is a local parent, teacher of 28 years and a school governor. He offers us an insight into certain dilemmas parents might face throughout the school year.
If your child is doing GCSE or A-levels this summer, by the time you read this article, they will have already done some of their exams. I really hope it’s going well but there will be some that haven’t, so how do we as parents pick them up and get them ready for their next exam?
If they’re doing GCSEs, this may well be the next day, if they’re doing A-levels, it may be a few days or even a week before their next exam. Whichever it is, the constant thought of a bad ex-am may gnaw at them to the detriment of their next exam.
The reasons for not doing so well can be put into 3 broad categories. Firstly, they just know they didn’t answer enough questions or write strong enough answers. Secondly, it’s all in the mind and being the teenagers that they are, don’t want to jinx it. Thirdly, something has hap-pened either before or during the exam that has caused enough distraction to put a student off track. So as a parent what should we do?
Regarding the first 2 points, if you have a conversation with your child after an exam, ask them how much of the paper they did and reassure them that they will get some marks for what they have written. The old adage of getting marks just for putting your name on the paper has never been true so don’t say anything like that. In fact, other comments to avoid are “I’ve never used that subject after I left school”, “I was rubbish at that subject as well”, or “maybe you should have done some more revision”. Yes, I’ve had several students in tears after they told me what their parents said to them!!
If they talk, just listen and when they’ve finished, say that you are there for them and if you’re confident enough, you can even offer to help them revise for their next exam. One thing I’ve said to students in the past is “if you found it hard, just think how hard others found it.” How-ever, I make sure I only say this to pupils who I know this would work on, it’s not for every child. This has lifted the mood of students as they know that they are better than others in their class at school and therefore they will be better than other students in other schools.
My first point about something happening beforehand, like an illness, a relative being seriously ill or something like a fire alarm going off during an exam, will have some effect on students. When something like this happens, there is a process in schools called “Special Considera-tions”. This can only be done by the school and informs the exam boards that something has happened that may affect the performance of a student. The worst case of Special Considera-tions I have dealt with was when students came in to sit exams the day after one of their year group had died. Exam boards will be as sympathetic as possible and will take each case indi-vidually. However, they have to be fair to all students so I will finish by saying that this pro-cess will not give students a top grade just by applying for it and will only be applied for in cer-tain circumstances. Please don’t keep your child at home because they are slightly ill as the school is unlikely to apply for special considerations.