Reasons to be Cheerful

Today, the news has been telling us that GCSE results are down for the first time ever.  English exams have been marked really harshly with the grade A boundary being raised by 10%.  Thankfully, neither of these statistics have been relevant to my daughter!  Ella has done amazingly well and got six A*s, two As and two Bs.  Her A*s are in both English Literature and Language, Maths, German, Geography and Chemistry.   Her results are even more remarkable because of the problems that she has endured this last year.  I hope her success proves to her just how brilliant she is.  We are so proud of her for so many reasons!

We officially have taken our house off the market having missed the window of opportunity for relocating.  With the new term about to start I am not going to give my children any unnecessary upheaval.  Freddy is due to start nursery, Kizzy is going into year 5 and Ella, with her fabulous grades, will be starting a new college to study her A'Levels.  Although I initially wanted to escape this place, things have changed.  Throughout the summer Ella's circle of friends have become closer and tighter and my house has become the place to be.  Last night we had seven 16 year olds sleep over, so they could go to collect their results together.  They are all good kids and it makes me so happy to see my daughter having fun with such a lovely bunch.  They have forbidden us to move!  I am happy to stay.

Ella and her friends with their results.

My amazing 16 year old daughter!

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I also heard some really sad news this week, as a lad who we knew very well has died while at V Festival.  He was one of my son Joe's best friends when they were growing up on the estate where we used to live.  He spent a lot of time at our house and was a real cheeky chappy.  He always made us smile with his antics.  It is so tragic that he has died aged just 22.  The coroner's report has proved inconclusive.  Although this obviously isn't a reason to be cheerful, it reminds us to hold our loved ones closer and be so grateful for each other.  RIP Timmy x

How To Help Teenagers With Revision and Exams

Revision, Exams and Staying Sane!

My daughter Ella is in revision mode for her GCSEs.  This involves lots of printed off A4 sheets, highlighter pens, folders and note making.  Across the country thousands of teenagers like her are embarking on their own preparations for the exams which are the culmination of their secondary school life.  Each will have their own approach to revision, and we as parents will need to keep calm and help them through this tricky time.

How as parents can we help our teens to prepare for these exams?

• Time management is key and it is important that our children dedicate time to each subject accordingly, thinking about their areas of strength and weakness.  Helping them to make a revision plan is a good way of overseeing just how much work they need to do and an opportunity to connect and communicate about the task ahead.  It allows them to share the load with you.  
• Sticking an exam timetable on the fridge makes sure you are all fully aware of what's coming up...plus crossing out the exams that have been done helps mark off the days until freedom! Very therapeutic and rewarding!
• Make sure that your child has a quiet place to revise and keep younger siblings away. Toddlers will love to have a go with a highlighter all over pages of diligently made exam notes, but it is not helpful! Unwanted distractions should be kept to a minimum.
• Ella regularly keeps a tab on her laptop connected to Facebook.  It allows her to keep in touch with her friends who are all in the same situation, and stops her feeling isolated in a sea of equations, quotes and facts.  As long is it doesn't become a major procrastination device and your teen can resist the urge to go off on a technological tangent, I think it can help minimize stress.  I personally won't be nagging her to carry out a social media blackout at this time...I know how much support it gives me!
• Make sure to supply an endless assortment of highlighters, post-it notes, notebooks and printer ink.   Constant supplies of drinks and healthy snacks will also be well received.  Bananas are great performance boosters!
• Don't let your teen work too hard.  Staying up all night cramming, energized by caffiene laden energy drinks does not help prepare for exams.  Regular breaks to watch a favourite TV show or just to take a breath of fresh air reward them for their efforts.
• Help out with a bit of testing!  Get involved and make it fun.  Quiz them on the periodic table or German vocabulary or reasons for population growth in the UK.  Facts are more likely to stick if they remember mum's feeble attempts at pronouncing conjugated German verbs over the dinner table. You never know, you could learn something that might stand you in good stead should you ever find yourself in a pub quiz!! 
• Keep calm and remember that it will all be over soon!

Good Luck Ella

Ella, like many teenagers, really doesn't like the actual examination process.  The soulless rows of desks and chairs, the silence and the humourless  invigilators do not make the best environment for her to perform with confidence, but with good preparation, good rest and lots of encouragement, I'm sure she will be OK.  I'll definitely not be putting her under any exam pressure, because being instrumental in an exam induced panic attack is not conducive to seeing your child achieve an A*.  I am also at this time reminded of great geniuses who did not achieve well within the confines of the education system: Richard Branson,  Lord Sugar, Einstein, Churchill and Walt Disney spring to mind!  As long as they achieve good enough results to go into the next phase of their desired future, then they have done a good job!!

Good luck to all GCSE students and their parents...here's hoping it is all as stress free as possible, and if times do get rough, just remind your teenager that Prom is just around the corner to reward them for all their efforts!!

Teenagers and Exams

At the moment, my 15 year old daughter Ella is taking some of her GCSE exams.  Today it's Biology and Geography SDME.  My eldest daughter Megan also has five of her final year exams at university taking place.  The whole concept of exams and education has been very much at the forefront of my mind.

When I was at school I was one of those people who loved exams.  I was not very engaged in class.  I didn't enjoy participating in lessons and preferred the challenge of being on my own with an exam paper.  No distractions, no having to listen to a teacher and no being held back by the less able students.  It was quite a selfish way to conduct myself.  I took very little part in classroom activities but totally rocked the exams.  I had strings of stress-free A's.

The format of O'Levels were very different to GCSE's.  We had a multi-choice paper, a short answer question paper and an essay paper.  It was very straightforward and tested your knowledge of the whole subject.  How times have changed!  GCSE papers seem very strange to me, filled with odd scenarios that require you to think outside of the box and decipher the question before applying any factual knowledge.  There is an emphasis on evidence and proof rather than just the facts.  It tests something very different and I'm not sure I get it!

Instead of highlighters and revision notes, which were my tools of choice, kids these days use Moodle, an online resource.  The temptation to flit between social media and revision is too great, and I defy any teen to be 100% committed to the uninspiring pages of exam questions when an MSN conversation beckons just a click away!  Procrastination is just too easy!

All that aside, I have found my attitude to the education system changing dramatically.  Ella is not as happy with exams as I was.  They cause her stress and make her feel sick.  She is an incredibly clever girl and the teachers quickly saddled her with predictions of achieving A*s.  This is course is great for the school helping them exceed their targets and make them look good in the league tables.  The teachers will be able to take credit for the results and prove their worth in a system that is now based so heavily on paperwork, evidencing added value and results.  Exam results are as much about the school as the kids who sit them.  Consequently there is enormous pressure on my daughter, and she has cracked under it.

She has told me how certain teachers have given her a hard time because she got a high B and not an A in a mock exam.  Seriously?? Is this the way to motivate a teenager?  She was made to feel like she wasn't good enough and underachieving.  When 48% of her peers will fail to even get the expected standard of 5 GCSE passes, why put pressure on someone who is doing perfectly well?  Can they not concentrate on the low achievers and help a few of them succeed?  Ella will do just fine, but not if she is made to feel worthless in the process.

I have come to realise that as long as you get a grade C or above in English and Maths and three other passes, no one really cares what GCSE grades you get.  Employers aren't interested in what you got at school when you were 15 or 16.  So whether you get an A or a B is irrelevant.  For me, my daughter's mental state, self esteem and confidence are far more important than whether she gets A*s on her exam certificates.

My eldest son performed OK at school.  He wasn't highly academic but achieved above average results.  School tried to pressure him into the university route which I felt from the start was not for him.  He went into college but clearly had no desire to pursue academia.  After failing his first year we stepped in and helped him find the confidence to leave education, in spite of the teachers trying to make him persevere.  He has gone on to excel in the workplace and is doing very well as a System's Analyst.  He didn't need A'Levels or a degree to get where he is.  It isn't always the right route.

Megan is a high achiever and walked away with 7 A*s and 5 As at GCSE.  She went on to get her A'Levels and is now in her final year at University.  She has however, come to the conclusion that she feels pigeon-holed by her degree and after she graduates plans to take a completely different direction.  I am proud of her for coming to this conclusion because ultimately it is her happiness that is the most important thing.  She hasn't wasted three years at university because she will have a good, well valued degree and has learned many life lessons.  But life as a number-cruncher does not excite her at 20 years of age.  She will have her whole life to work out what and who she wants to be. Number-crunching can wait!

There is too much pressure on our teens.  The options they take to decide which GCSEs they want to do is made out to be the most vital decision of their lives, when in reality you are just trying to find subjects that actually fit into the timetable.  Then you have to pick A'Levels.  Again there is so much pressure on kids to pick the right subjects.  I told Ella to pick what she enjoys.  Unless you have a specific career goal in mind, it really doesn't matter.  It's all UCAS points at the end of the day.  Generally, once you get to university you are told to forget everything you've learned up to that point.  And who really knows what they want to be when they grow up anyway.  Life will kick up all manner of opportunities and unexpected directions.  I'm one for embracing what comes along.

I have come to realise that the mental health of my children and their self-esteem is far more important than any exam results they get.  I want them to do their best, but not at any cost.  I hope they succeed in becoming what they want to be, I hope they will be hard working and take pride in their achievements.  But I also hope they know when enough is enough.  I don't want them crumbling in the face of unnecessary pressure, just to satisfy OFSTED or a teacher's targets.  I want them to enjoy their education.  I do not want them to dread it.  Life is about so much more than that.  I do not want their joie de vivre sucked out in the face of undue pressure to perform.

I am so proud of my children.  I don't need an A* to prove how great they are.

My Girls are Worth So Much More than their Exam Results!