24th March 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
It is a relatively rare request for us to provide tuition for advanced students, students who are looking to take qualifications early, but it does happen, and it’s not always an easy situation to manage. The dilemma we face is whether the student is actually ready and able to take a qualification early, added to the question of whether it’s actually beneficial for a student to take a GCSE or an A Level early, even if they’re able to.
We’re no strangers to pushy parents, and it’s virtually impossible to judge whether a parent’s request to intensively tutor their child to take a qualification early is because the child is actually ready and able to do that. Often, after our tutor has had the first lesson with the student, they report that the student is a high achiever, but is probably not at the level required to comfortably achieve the highest grade in the exam.
So, is it a good idea for a student to take an exam if he/she is not virtually guaranteed of the top grade? Obviously it’s very impressive for, say, a 12 year-old to get an A in GCSE Maths, but should we be concerned that the 12 year-old didn’t get an A*? The assumption is that if the same student waited until he/she was 16, and took the exam at the same time as his/her peers, then the result would almost certainly be an A*.
We have to consider the benefits of achieving a qualification early. There are some exceptional students who start university aged 15 or 16, giving them 2-3 years’ head start in the academic world. However, this is extremely rare, and what often happens with students who have taken advanced exams is that they simply wait until aged 18 to take other A-levels, and apply to university. This does seem to make a lot of sense, because university is about much more than academia, it’s also about young people learning to live away from their family, and look after them self.
In most cases we would advise that students wait until they are 16 to take their GCSEs and until 18 to take their A Levels. The risk of not doing as well as they would if they were to wait, the small benefit taking an exam early gives, just seems to make no sense. However, we would never suggest that students shouldn’t be pushed, and encouraged to learn more quickly than the status quo.