Great news! Maryam and Danyal both got A*s in their Accounting iGCSE’s, but it was close. Edexcel iGCSE Accounting is flipping hard, as Isabelle realised mid way during the course. The A* ground boundary is 90% and the papers are not easy. Maryam and Danyal managed 93% and 94% respectively – it’s by far the closest they’ve got to not getting A*s in all their iGCSE’s to date.
I can’t find stats on percentage of A*s for Accounting iGCSE, but A* rates do vary wildly between subjects. 6.5% of all GCSE’s are A*s, but it’s 40% for Latin, 3% for Business Studies, less than 1% for Engineering, and if memory serves me right, low for Accounting. I assumed that the disparity is because of the type of schools that do each subject – for example only the posh public schools do Latin, but I now think that is only part of the story – the other part is that some subjects, such as the Accounting, are simply much harder than others. So avoid them. It leaves us in a bit of a dilemma for Sabeen as Accounting is the only useful subject our dynamic duo have studied in their GCSEs so far.
So Maryam has got the 5 A*s that we wanted her to get and her GCSE’s are now history. Danyal still has 2 to go. Sabeen is about the start the journey.
A quick update on the A-levels – Maryam and Danyal are doing shockingly well with their physics. Bear in mind that it’s meant to be a 2 year course – they started work 6 weeks ago and are getting B’s in past papers in 40% of the assessment. We’ve covered the material in the other 60% too, but have’t done any past papers on them yet, so they are perhaps 4 weeks away from getting B’s in their past papers over the entire syllabus. 10 weeks to be getting B’s in past papers in an A-level?! I find that incredible – but it has all been about leveraging the power of intensity – they’ve been studying physics for around 3 hours per day, after all.
However, the Physics A-level seems to be an outlier – Maryam has been working for her Biology A-level for 6 months now and she’s not nearly ready for the exam. Physics is all about understanding principles and so if the child is fairly intelligent, has a strong foundation in maths, and is taught well (ahem, that’s me!), they can pick things up very fast.
The Wonder Years 