Many parents actually enjoy the relative peace and tranquillity now that the children are back at school, particularly when they are working at home.

It’s not only those who work in a school or college who will understand what I mean by optimism in the air at the beginning of a new academic year, parents do too. As a parent, I usually make the point of going with my son and daughter to school on the first day of the autumn term. I often find an excuse to drive them into school on the first day instead of getting them to take the bus!

I do not always admit to it in the staff room, but I’m one of those teachers who actually look forward to the beginning of the new academic year in September. When you see the young people at the start of Term 1, you realise that half of the Y10 students – particularly the boys – are now taller than the average male teacher, as they’ve grown over the summer. This is the result of the refrigerator constantly getting emptied and the croissant you as the parent left on the kitchen worktop disappearing in nanoseconds. But they not only grow physically, they grow psychologically and emotionally too.

The thing that I like most about the autumn term is the optimism in the air. Parents and teachers begin the process of looking into what can be done to help the young person do better than they did in the previous year.  In many cases, they are usually successful in getting the teenager to buy into the plans they have for him or her, at least at the start of the year anyway. For us parents, it is a struggle to get teenagers to adopt a routine and do their schoolwork in the way we recommend. I do not know of any perfect situation where the teenager is completely on board with what the parents think is the best way. In fact, it would be worrying to have a teenager who is completely obedient, as this is not usually a healthy position. The reality is that some teenagers are more compliant than others. They must be allowed to do some thinking of their own, disagree with us on occasions, and even to make mistakes. All these are a necessary part of the growing up process, and within reason it has to be that way.

If you would permit me to share my own experience in the last couple of months with you. In August/early September, I organised what is called summer enhancement for GCSE and A-level, and the sessions were taught by young people I call Scholars. They are university students from Imperial College in London. These sessions were free, so parents did not have to pay, but the undergraduate tutors that taught them were paid at least the going rate for tuition by professional teachers, even though they aren’t. The whole experience taught me so many things that I cannot begin to list, as they are vast. Two, however, are:

a. Fingers are not equal, and we will be deceiving ourselves to even try to pretend they are

b. Nurture plays a bigger part in success than nature.

It is vital that I explain each of these points. The first point in particular needs explaining, otherwise one may sound too elitist, out of touch and perhaps abhorrent…

I will do this in the second part of this blogpost, which will be in a couple of days. Watch this space!

The post The September Spark: How to Improve Academic Performance Through Nurture appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

For me, yesterday was one of those days when events turned out differently than I had planned. I won’t say it is a wasted day necessarily, but I had to invest my time differently from the way I had anticipated, as I decided to go to a university open day with my seventeen-year old son. I had discussed the open day with him the previous evening and he assured me that it was all fine, that he could go with his friends from school. I accepted that decision, as I do not want to be too pushy about asking if I should come with him. In the end, my last minute decision to go with him was something that he appreciated.

I suppose one of the prices we have to pay as a parent is the vulnerability to getting our plans disrupted. I’m not just talking about the teenager eating the last chocolate éclair that I was looking forward to demolishing in my late evening raid!

One of the popular phrases these days when speaking about young people is “follow your passion” and this is often applied to subject choices at GCSE, A-level and all the way to university degree courses. I must say that I agree with that phrase to some extent, but largely, when I hear it, it makes me a little nervous and I’ll explain. Before I explain my scepticism about the notion of following your passion, I must say that I do not think anyone can call themselves successful if they are doing something they hate passionately or have near interest or zero enthusiasm for. No matter how much money or fame they may have doing that thing, doing anything just for the money or just to please other people is the ultimate definition of failure, as life is so short.

Now, let me explain why I think following your passion can sometimes be dangerous and may lead to profound unhappiness later down the line. If you follow your passion and you are not successful in what you do. As for the word success, each person has their own definition of what success means for them. But earning a lot of money or being in the very top bracket of people in your field of work or whatever you do should not be the only thing that constitutes success.

In the week or two leading to the visit to the university open day we attended yesterday, my son had been wrestling with the issue of which degree course he should apply for at university. He has always been leaning on the side of studying something relating to physical sciences and that largely reflects    his subject choice of Physics, Maths and Further Maths. His fourth subject has changed twice since he started A-level last September. He started with History, changed to Economics and he’s now back to History. Three days ago, he was seriously considering going to university to study Economics and he came to me late in the evening to tell me about his decision. Now, while I personally like Economics very much and consider it to be one of the more useful of degree courses, and, depending on the young person’s talent and position and other factors, it may be a good idea to study Economics as a first degree, I am likely to discourage some students from  doing so. Let’s put professional courses such as Law, Medicine and Engineering aside for a moment. I would recommend Maths, Physics, Chemistry and History before Economics as a first degree. After studying any of these seven subjects courses I just listed here, as being above Economics, and even others that I have not mentioned here. One can still go on to do a postgraduate degree in Economics or Business or Management. Yes, even without having studied Economics or business at any level ever before. I must also quickly point out that I also would not usually recommend Law as a first degree, as I am of the view that one is better off studying something else before Law, as it is the university where one obtains the first degree that matters more than the actual degree course, for most courses anyway.

Getting back to where I started, after the open day at Imperial College yesterday, my son is now less sceptical about a Physics degree than he was before going. He was relieved to learn that most people do not go straight from a university degree to get a job in what they have studied. The conversation for the last six or so months has revolved around him not knowing what he wants to do in life, for which I constantly reassure him that it is perfectly normal at this age. The key thing is to develop your talent well and try to study something that gives you more options, especially when you do not know what you want to do. The good thing is that he has a list of about three or four professions that we all know that he is decidedly unsuited to – Medicine, Engineering, Computer Science and Accountancy. The problem is that he likes Economics, Physics and History – in that order – at the moment! The reason why that is a problems is that if you are applying to a competitive university, Physics is on one side, and Economics/History on the other. These are at two opposite ends, and writing a good personal statement that will persuade the admission officer of a good university will be tricky.

Just to conclude on the notion of following your passion, what I say to young people is that it’s good to follow your passion as you are extremely unlikely to succeed in doing something you utterly dislike. However, before you go for your passion, also try to think about   where you want to be in say 10 years’  time. Not only in terms of the job you want to be doing but where you want to be living and perhaps what money you’d like to be earning. No, money is not everything; however, it is more dignifying to earn a decent wage and have more options in life. The other point, which I believe applies to most people, is that not many are so passionate about one particular thing for a long time. For my son, his passion has fluctuated between Maths, History, Politics, Physics and Economics in the last few years. We all go through phases, and what we are passionate about today may not be what we are passionate about tomorrow or in a few years’ time.

Links to related blog posts are below :

The post The Great Debate: Choosing a University Degree: Passion vs Career Prospects appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

I will start by just summarising or perhaps simplifying what in my humble opinion, matter most in terms of university admission and the bigger picture in the life of the soon-to-become-a-fully-grown-adult – the eighteen year old young person.

For a teenager in the UK, you need not be Einstein to get into a university. You do not even have to do A-level, as any Level 3 course will do, as there are so many universities offering so many courses, and the admission criteria can be rather lenient. However, not all degrees lead to what would be considered a graduate-standard job, as there are many graduates doing the so-called McJob! I’m speaking about flipping burgers at McDonalds or stacking shelves at Tesco. Taking a philosophical approach, and for someone who values knowledge, I think all types of university education have value – irrespective of which university or which degree. I see no reason why one should not just acquire knowledge for the sake of acquiring knowledge and for curiosity. I went to a graduation ceremony recently, and although it is from a university usually ranks very near the bottom of the UK rank table, it is nevertheless a joy to see all these proud and jubilant people, as they walk with pride and shaking the hand of the university vice chancellor. In fact, some of them were dancing as they approach the provost.

However, philosophy and ideas in themselves do not pay bills and not everyone puts ideas above pragmatism of everyday life. So many young people work extremely hard to get into a top university and this is not to mention the emotional, physical and financial sacrifice by their parents. Some may want to argue that there is no link between the university a person attends and their career prospects or live opportunities. I profoundly disagree and I have insurmountable evidence to back up my argument. There is a link to a BBC webpage below which shows the link between degrees and lifetime earnings. 

Many will say money is not everything, and I agree. One of my favourite words is “Choice” and what attending certain universities, or perhaps studying certain degrees does, is that it gives you more options. As I said earlier, every degree has a value or to be more accurate “perceived value.” Talking about perception, the question to ask is who decides which degree is worth how much? There is something called the market place, and there is no question that people with a degree from certain universities or with certain degrees, are perceived by the marketplace to be more valuable. I’m not here to ague about the merit or to go into the right and wrong of this discussion, but to merely highlight what is out there. Having knowledge and awareness on likely outcomes of the important decision of choosing university degree courses will allow the young person to make decisions when making critical choice, with wider ramifications for their future.

In conclusion, I will say that it is the university that one attends that matters more than the actual degree, with the exception of medicine. I do not completely agree that this exception applies to Computer Science or Engineering.

What I’d say to the young person is: have a goal; believe in yourself and do what it takes to get you to where you want to be. One thing I’d like to add to this is to try and have fun along the way, as the journey is also quite important. A key aspect of our purpose as parents is to help guide our children and do all we can to assist them in the decisions they make.

We parents are just a catalyst, as it will always be up the young person to do what is needed to be successful. Success is the more scientific aspect, one word that is perhaps more important than success is fulfilment, as success without fulfilment is not what we yearn for in life.

Link to BBC – Degrees and lifetime earning – https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-41693230

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Essential Life Skills for Teenagers:

Just like the teenagers, the parents are looking forward to this summer more than the previous ones, at least in the last couple or so years. This is particularly an eventful year, and the pandemic, this time around, is not at the top of the news agenda. There are so many other relatively major events –  the cost of living, heatwave, war in Easter Europe, disruption to flying abroad and a change of prime minister. One of these  – the rising cost of living due inflation – is of a particular concern to parents, as it makes it more challenging to replenish food and drink in the fridge. We parents can decide to skip a meal or two here and there but trying to get the teenager to do the same is a hard nut to crack!  This morning my daughter complained there we are not feeding her well in this house because we only have plain croissant and baguette and not pain au chocolat.

The sixteen and eighteen years old are the first to have done a proper exam in the last three years and they are so relieved it’s now all over, and they eagerly await the results. The main thing on everyone’s mind at present is how to make the best of the summer holiday. One thing I’ve always liked about the summer time is the anticipation of it. I always look forward to longer days at least, as I know that there is no guarantee of sunshine or warmer weather!

As a parent of two teenagers, discussion in my household about the summer has included all the usual – from my sixteen-year-old son getting a job over the summer to my daughter wanting to go to the gym, holiday plans and so on.

For the teenagers in particular there is so much they could do over the summer, and below is a list of some of the possible activities:

1. Learning a new skill or two
2. Cooking – like baking a cake or cooking pasta
3. Doing sport and exercise
4. Getting a paid job
5. Volunteering or charity work
6. Reading for pleasure
7. Catching up with the school-work to reinforce strengths or strengthening weaknesses
8. Going to a holiday camp
9. Spending time with a relative or new friend
10. Family holiday

This is just a short list and so much more can be added under each item in the above list. The link below is to one of my past blogposts with an extensive list of activities that teenagers could undertake over the summer.

I’ve always thought that I was reasonable cook until now. Although I can’t bake a cake to save my life, I can knock up a pasta sauce in about 22 minutes max.

Since my son finished his GCSE in June, he has been perfecting his cooking skills and has become a bit of an Italian food connoisseur. I get lectured every time about why the crust of a proper pizza must not be half a millimetre thicker than it should be and why cooking pasta sauce for less than three hours is a crime!

I dare no longer attempt to cook without following the correct procedure, with not only timing everything to perfection but using the precise ingredients.

Although I will never admit it to his face, his pasta source tastes rather yummy, and, unusually for me, I often help myself to a second helping when no one is looking. Whenever I’m about to get caught I’ll pretend I’m putting the sauce in a new saucepan to preserve space…

There are so many ways in which teenagers can spend the summer holidays and, as a parent, it is preferable that it isn’t one that costs too much money.

As for my fourteen-year-old daughter, what she wants to do is to spend a bit of time in the gym over the summer, and I’m likely to be going along with that, as it appears to be a little less expensive in comparison to other options that she might have chosen.

My son dreams of working at an Italian restaurant over the summer and he thinks his cooking skills and the love of Italian food make him qualify for that but I’m not entirely convinced that those two attributes are sufficient. He still hasn’t got round to finding a job yet but we’ll see how he gets on. The good thing is that the three and half hours he spends cooking pasta sauce is three and a half hours away from computer games and that’s got to be a good thing!

There are so many activities and skills that teenagers could spend their time learning over the summer and cooking is just one of them. Every week, throughout the summer, I’ll be writing about at least one of these skills. I’ll do my best to share a story or two with you about my own experience relating to each skill I write about.

The post Beyond the Classroom: Essential Life Skills for Teenagers appeared first on Excel in Key Subjects.

Competitive Advantage in University Admissions

Just in case you think the title of this blogpost is rather dramatic, here is a headline from The Times website: “The education arms race is out of control”. Actually, The Times is not the only newspaper that uses the phrase “arms race”, so does The Guardian, The Economist,   a report by UCL and many other news outlets.

Private tuition, or call it private lesson, is nothing new. In fact, it predates formal education, as it has been around since the time of the Ancient Greeks; we also learn that this was one of the main ways in which great composers such as Mozart made a living. Nowadays, whilst private lessons are how most young people learn musical instruments, private tuition is used extensively for those aspiring to gain admission to top universities. They use it at GCSE and A-level for core academic subjects such as Maths, English, the Sciences and others.

Going back to the article in The Times I mentioned earlier, here is a quote:

“For those who can’t or don’t want to pay for private schools, the premium on houses near the country’s top 100 state secondary schools is 42%. Tuition has taken off in Britain too, where the proportion of children who have had private tutors has increased from 18% in 2005 to 27% in 2019, according to the Sutton Trust”.

The Sutton Education Trust is an excellent organisation that carries out research and does tremendous work to address the education divide and its effect on social mobility in society. I have read this particular report, and also many of its other reports, in detail, and, whilst I completely agree with its findings, I’m of the view that the figure of 42% getting private tuition is a gross underestimation. Although the 42% figure is related to London and the South East of England, where there are a high number of families with high aspirations, if we dig deeper, the figure for those getting private tuition for at least one subject at GCSE or A-level will be closer to 80% of teenagers in certain demographics. We are not just speaking about affluent families alone, but also in high aspiration homes where parents are not necessarily earning much, but value education highly. One must also bear in mind that not all parents or teenagers give away the secret of their success!

I have spent the last 29 years in the English secondary education system, almost all of which has been in high achieving environments – mainly grammar schools, independent private schools and private tuition organisations.  Observation shows me that private tuition is the open secret which many parents have used to help push up their sons and daughters’ grades by a couple or so grade boundaries –giving them a competitive advantage in the process.

I’ve been using the phrase private tuition so far, but another could be extra tuition, as sometimes the out-of-school-timetable lessons are not paid for. For example, I help my own son and daughter with Maths and the science subjects sometimes. Although I am fascinated by History, Philosophy and almost all other subjects, neither am I equipped nor have the time to invest in learning so I can help them with those. The idea of asking an overstretched subject teacher at school to provide extra help for your child is quite unrealistic. Even if they do, it probably won’t be sufficient to make a real difference.

To be fair, many schools are organising extra classes at weekends and during school holidays. However, having spoken to many parents about this, I discovered that it is not always that effective. In fact, some parents and young people consider that it can be a waste of time.  There are all sorts of reasons why it is often not productive, not least the fact that, sadly, class disruption and all other sorts of time wasting still goes on in those extra lessons.

We hear of good schools, but often we are not told the full story behind the apparent success of those schools. Show me a successful school where teenagers achieve top GCSE and A-level results and I’ll show you a place where good parents congregate. Yes, there are some excellent schools with superb teachers out there. It’s just that there are too few of them. We all know the extent to which some parents go in order to find good schools for their children. The fact is that finding a good school is only the beginning. Most parents never just find a good school and then rest on their laurels. They keep a watchful eye, stepping in to support their teenagers throughout their secondary education in particular. Dinner table talk amongst parents often includes private tuition and discussions range from getting their teenagers to buy into the idea and how to find good tutors or private tuition centre to the king’s ransom they are having to fork out and whether it’s worth the investment…

Private tuition is often the game changer and I have witnessed many success stories; however, sadly, I’ve also seen it going wrong. It can be very powerful in helping a teenager to move up grade boundaries very rapidly, but can also have zero effect on the child’s performance or be even counterproductive.

I have put together a small, twelve-page A5 booklet to help guide parents who may be considering private tuition for their teenager. The booklet is called How to Choose an Effective Private Tutor for Your Child at GCSE & A-Level: A Smart Parent’s Guide. You can get a copy sent to you by visiting the webpage https://ExceliLearn.com/how-to-choose-effective-tutor/ – and completing a short form. It is free of charge.

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The fall in number of students taking A-level Maths comes at a time when industry, higher education institutions and employees are complaining about the lack of numerate people to employ. It was reported in The Guardian on 14^th August 2014 that A-level Maths had just overtaken English as the most popular A-level, which was very good news for the country. Sadly, the optimism has not lasted long, as this year, there has been a significant drop in the number of students taking up A-level Maths.

Why are fewer 16-year olds opting for A-level Maths?

There are two main reasons that are put forward for the drop in numbers: the perceived harder, new GCSE Maths and the decoupling of the AS from A-level.

The new GCSE Maths grading system

As for the more challenging GCSE Maths under the new grading system, the difficulty is caused by the increased content of the harder topics such as Algebra and Geometry – topics that are considered to be more challenging in comparison to those such as percentages and so on. It was reported that even brighter young people feel intimidated by the new Maths course as they find some of the new content too hard and feel they will only achieve a Grade 7, which is equivalent to an A grade under the old letter grading system. With the new system that has just been introduced, students will be awarded pass grades from Grade 1 to Grade 9 instead of Grade G to Grade A* under the old system. The new GCSE grading system comes into effect in Maths and English GCSE this summer, but, for most of the other subjects, it does not come in until next year – 2018.

Many supposedly bright young people who are likely to achieve Grade 7 at GCSE level feel that this is not sufficient to make them study A-level Maths. This is because Grade 7 is equivalent to a low ‘A’ under the old letter system. Grade 8 is equivalent to high A/ lower A* under the outgoing system and Grade 9 is equivalent to the top level of A*.As you will recall, the new number system was introduced in order to allow decision-makers to identify the most able students – sorting the men out from the boys or women from girls, some might say!

Changes in the A-level curriculum

The second reason that may well explain the reduction in the number of students applying to take A-level Maths is the decoupling of the AS from A-level. This means that the grade obtained where a student has sat the AS will not count towards the final A-level grade, as used to be the case. A related development which may also account for the reduction in the number of A-level applicants is the fact that many schools and colleges are no longer permitting sixteen-year-olds to take four A-level subjects in the first year; now they can only take three.

The changes to both the GCSE and A-level Maths are profound – particularly for A-level, where they are the biggest change for 17 years. In the next three blog posts, I will be exploring further all the key issues associated with these changes and the effect on young people and society as a whole. I will also offer suggestions as to what the young person should do if they are contemplating taking up A-level Maths. In my next blog post, I will explain in more detail the changes that are being brought to A-levels as a whole.

Part 2 – Read the next article in the series: The decoupling of AS from the full A-level means that it no longer counts towards A-level

Comparison of the letter grading to the number grading, a conversion of old to new https://excelinkeysubjects.com/yet-more-confusion-about-gcse-grade-9-1/

Latest article in the TES:

https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/exclusive-maths-disaster-schools-report-alarming-decline-post-16-take

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What I’ve discovered is that ‘nurture’ makes a greater impact on young people than ‘nature’. As I’m sure you know, there is a direct correlation between those who achieve highly and certain key aspects of their environment, such as the home situation, the school they attend and what they do on a day-to-day basis.

When it comes to academic achievement, I believe that there are key areas that have significant impact on achieving success and I put those into three broad categories as a means of presenting and explaining what is a rather complex issue and which has many aspects to it. The three areas that I believe make all the difference are: the Support System, action (behaviour) by the student and, finally, academic ability or potential. In this three–part article, I will not be able to go into each area in depth, but I will provide a brief explanation of each.

The Support System

This is the most extensive of the three areas and consists mainly of: the home environment, the school the child attends and any extra tuition support that may be provided. It should be noted that I’ve listed extra tuition support last, after home environment and the school/college. This is because, although extra tuition can have a huge impact on academic success in a given subject, it is less important than the first two. I have written more about aspects of the support system in the past and I will be writing more about it in the future, but I will not be going into too much detail here. What I will say, however, is that the parent can influence this in a significant way. Most parents who really care already do this – both consciously and subconsciously. This is just what we do – period.

Parents do it by finding a good school for their child, having conversations with the child, monitoring their progress, interacting and communicating with key people in their child’s education and, finally, perhaps, finding and paying for additional tuition support where necessary.

There is investment necessary in all these areas and the most impactful of all investments is not money, it is time. Although Excel in Key Subjects – our organisation – provides extra tuition support for which there is a fee payable, it is not the money or how much is paid in schools fees (where the child attends a fee-paying school) or for extra support that has the greatest impact. It is the time invested by the parents in ensuring they research, find the right school and are constantly monitoring, querying and supporting the child all the way that matter most. Finding the right school is only the start. After this has been done, parents then monitor progress, constantly interacting with the school, the teachers and the child. It’s really keeping that conversation going and taking action on key matters that bring success. Clearly, the better the school is, the less the parent may need to do in order to ensure a successful outcome or the more effective the action of the parent is in impacting the child’s success. Finding the right school and then just sitting back does not work. Time investment is where the real nurture comes in and it is less about the money. Most caring parents enjoy the nurturing aspect and we all wish we could spend a lot more time with our children.

The support system is the first of the three and I have explored this to some extent in this article. I will be looking into the other two areas in my next blog article in this series – the second being action and behaviour by the child with the third being the child’s natural academic ability.

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