So, What is My Role as a Parent?

Your role will be dependent on your child’s strengths and weaknesses, but also your own. I am not talking about strengths and weaknesses in school subject areas.

With my own children, I know I need to take different approaches and focus on different things depending on their ability and skill sets. Sometimes right from birth you can pick up clues on their strengths.

Let me give you an example;

One of my son’s seemed more independent from birth. He was contented being left in his cot, didn’t seem to need me fussing over him much. As he grew up, this became more apparent. To this day, he does not like me fussing around him. He would much rather I left him to sort things out, give him space and allow him the distance and to trust him to organise things himself. If anything, my involvement can be more unsettling rather than do good.

With regards to my other son, right from birth he was never happier than being smothered and cuddled. To this day, he loves me to fuss around him and help organise and support him. He would rather I sit beside him just watching what he is doing, rather than be in another room doing something else.

Knowing these factors, guides me as a parent as to which approach to take. One son has greater strengths in being self-sufficient, the other son has strengths in receiving and taking advice and support. So whatever way, I am going to support, I have to bear these factors in mind.

As a parent, your role could involve communicating between school and child.

You may be worried that your child doesn’t seem to be taking much initiative or struggling in an area, but the school are possibly seeing a different side of this.

You can ask the school questions that your child may not be comfortable asking.

I was very grateful when a teacher at my son’s school was able to identify an aspect in my son’s essay answers that he was not mastering. In his Religious Studies practice tests, he was scoring low grades because he was not using evidence and explaining his reasoning. In questions that required 12 marks, my son was getting between 3 to 4 marks. Just by working on this one aspect, he was able to get between 9 to 10 marks consistently on these types of questions. I believe this made a significant impact on his exam and the grade. I think this probably improved his grade by 2 or 3 levels higher in the final exam.

I am not suggesting that it is the parent’s role to resolve this but communicating with the school to find this out, allowed me to support my son myself or I could have sorted out other support, possibly a tutor, friend or family member who is more skilled in this.

The role of the parent partnering with the school and keeping lines of communication open can help to move things forward in the right direction.

Some parents may be thinking, ‘My child needs to learn to communicate with his school and find these things out himself, rather than me doing it for them.’

This is a great way to encourage independence and ownership, but when it comes to the GCSE year, research has shown the more support the child receives from home the better grades they will achieve. The GCSE year is not a year to allow your child to ‘fall’, that can happen at other times in their life.

We know, once you have completed that GCSE year, it is very difficult to access tutoring and lessons for re-takes, if you don’t get the grades you need.

Let’s help and support our children to get those ‘tickets’. I like to use the word ‘tickets’ to describe the situation. You need GCSE certificates or ‘tickets’ to get you to the next level whether that be for A-levels, BTec or employment. Without those ‘tickets’ it can make things very difficult to access the next level.

I meet young adults who end up working in jobs they dislike with much lower incomes because they do not have their GCSE Maths ‘ticket’ to help move them on to their chosen profession like nursing or the police force. Instead their earning potential is capped unless they get their Maths GCSE ticket.

If your child is in their GCSE year and you think they could do with extra support in Maths and English, we offer GCSE exam preparation course on Saturdays and through the Easter holidays and May half term.

This is a bespoke course to your child’s needs. They work through past exam papers and if there is a specific question, they are struggling with the teacher identifies any gaps in their knowledge, then once that concept has been taught, they teach how to get the answer to that specific question. The student can take notes and then works through other similar questions to practice and reinforce that new understanding. The course also offers advice and great tips on exam techniques.

So, remember to attend those parent evenings and keep lines of communication open, so you know what things can be put in place to support your child. It could make a difference of a pass or fail.

Email:info@gradebusters.co.uk