I have copied and pasted a recent thread from the HE GCSE group…bloomi’ good advice! Home Ed Mum’s r the best!
FIRST THE QUESTION and then the answers, all names have been removed:
We’ve been playing with the idea of embarking on GCSEs for a little while
now. It seems to take some time for parent and child to get their head
around the process and procedures. Our son would like to work on his own
for most subjects with the input of an “expert” as and when needed. Our
exam centre runs quite a variety of boards, which gives us a good choice of
syllabi. So here are a few questions for those of you with experience…
How much time would you leave yourself to prepare, if prep is done largely
autonomously without a tutor or even parent? How does the suggested
contact time (seems to be between 120-180hours) compare to how much time a
child needs to prepare for themselves at home?
Would you buy and work from the textbook, doing the section tests and then
move onto passed papers? This I guess is the traditional path, but not the
quick one.
Or would you work from past papers backwards, dealing with any question
that proved to be hard?Would you then go back to the appropriate textbook
or would you search wider on the internet?
Do you try past papers from different syllabi in order to decide on the
most appropriate one?
Any ideas on “how you did it” would be much appreciated. Of course, every
child/family is different, but sometimes it’s a case of gathering ideas
from a variety of pools…
Two points spring to mind, one is that, for the most part you will probably need to do IGCSEs since GCSEs (except for Maths, law psychology soiology RE) have controlled assessment which has to be run by the exam centre. Sometimes a centre will allow you to go in and sit with their students.
Most importantly, there is exam technique and it is possible to know all the material and still flunk because you weren’t writing what the examiner wanted to see, yes it is very much hoop jumping.
1c
Re: Preparing for GCSEs
them over 2 years at age 15 and 16. We studied just with textbooks and then
moved on to past papers. The children worked independently, coming to me
when stuck and if needed we looked it up on line. Some topics eg Physics
IGCSE they had never studied formally before so they were starting form
scratch. They spent on average an hour a day on each topic – this meant all
was done by lunch time and they still had time to do non academic things in
the afternoon/evening. We started in August and aimed to finish textbooks
by end of February so that there was plenty of time to revise. This worked
for DS1 and DS2 ans we are following the same pattern for DD1 this year.
You can get revision books for some of the Edexcel IGCSE topics. If your
son already has knowledge of some topics and doesn’t want to work right the
way through textbooks you could try looking at revision books and past
papers to see if that covers enough for him. You would need to make sure
that you weren’t missing out some areas of the spec though as obviously the
revision guide is just a summary.
All the best
How long – depends on how quickly your son learns/remembers. And the essay subjects especially, you have to learn to do the hoop-jumping! And how many subjects/how much time for each.
to pass exams, you need to know the content of the text book To learn about the subject, you need input from many sources!
most pick a syllabus because their centre doesn’t have much choice! If you have a choice, i would look at specs and past papers, but not work through them. In general, EDEXCEL have books aimed specifically at their subject, CIE don’t
We did what you call the Traditional route – worked for us – 10 A*
then move on to past papers only when you’re already confident about the
topics. Reasons for this are:
1. There are only a finite number of past papers for each specification,
as they keep changing them. Once you’ve used them up, you’ll not have
anything left for the hugely useful mock exam sessions during your
revision period.
2. Past papers are usually a good guide to the style of future exams but
don’t rely on them to predict content. Some topics do come up on a regular
basis, but the syllabus always contains more topics than can be examined in
one paper.
3. Could be quite demotivating to start with the final paper.
What we have done is looked at the syllabuses, chosen one,, bought the
standard textbook, son has worked through books on his own for some topics,
with groups/tutors for languages and English, asking for help when
necessary. If he isn’t sure about something, I help him look for a book
which might approach it in a different way, or a website with a different
explanation – BBC Bitesize works well for us. If your kids like multimedia
stuff, there are tutorials and demonstrations on YouTube for *everything*
you could possibly need! If he’s working on his own and finds it easy,
rather than doing every question in the exercises he will do every other
one. The ‘Review’ exercises at the end of every chapter are saved for the
revision period. Once the book is finished, he goes back and does as many
of those ‘Review' exercises as he needs to feel confident on each topic,
then we start on past papers. We have usually allowed a month for
revision/past papers before each exam.
We mainly have used Edexcel and their textbooks are usually good – and,
crucially,, they make answers available to home educators for free if
they’re not already in the books,, whereas some other boards don’t.
However, in one topic (IGCSE Maths A) the Edexcel textbook didn’t suit us
so we switched to another one.
In terms of time to prepare – depends on the subject and child. If he’s
motivated, I’d just start him on the book and see how fast he goes. My
oldest took GCSE maths when he was 12, did it in one year spending up to an
hour a day on it, rising to a bit more in the final month. He started
working through IGCSE Physics and it went a lot faster than he expected so
he covered the whole course in about 4 months, doing about an hour maybe 3
or 4 times a week. DS2 is 13 and hasn’t taken any exams yet, largely
because we realised there was no hurry and haven’t got round to it – we are
currently trying to decide if he should go in for any this summer, when
he’ll be 14, as he wants to but I am concerned it will be rushing the rest
of the material. Anyway…
We found it helps both DS1 and DS2 to have a target – I say they should aim
to finish a whole exercise (which is usually neatly designed to cover one
school lesson’s worth of theory) in a session. This seems to work well.
Without this target it was no easier, and sessions just dawdled without
DS1 feeling he was achieving anything. The oldest two are very
self-motivated so I don’t force them to do any of this, but they do usually
find they work best with a timer as well. I have four younger children and
DS3 (11) is a very different person so we will have to look for a whole new
approach with him. It’s the beauty of home-ed that, even when aiming for
exams, you can tailor the whole approach to the individual – yes, they all
have to cover the same material, but beyond that there are a wealth of
resources to help you approach it in different ways.
You’ll find lots of info on starting to do exams, how to prepare, how to
enter, what books are recommended by other home educators etc,, on the HE
Exams wiki. The wiki is the ‘distilled wisdom’ of this group – a permanent
reference for the questions which come up regularly. You can find it at
http://www.home-education-exams.org.uk .
Best wishes,
Sutton Home Education Forum 