Year 12 - 2024/25 - Support, Discussion and Looking After Each Other

Your DC should know. If they don't know they should ask!

Sorry for silly questions but how do you know what ALevel board your kids are sitting?

If it helps @PinkChaires, LSE just say GCSEs "mainly" grade 7 or higher. UCL, Oxbridge, Durham all want LNAT and don't specify GCSE grades, and the others don't seem to specify GCSE requirements beyond grade 6+ in a humanities subject.

DS' school require students to have 5 GCSEs grade 8 or above for their "Oxbridge+" track but I think that's the school rather than the universities who are specifying this. Might be worth checking with your daughter's school/college?

@bluefineliner thank you for your kind words. That sounds like a really tough thing to be working through for your daughter. The plan to work on it over the summer seems a good option. My dd seems to be happier in herself right now but not being particularly productive work wise. I’m managing not to nag 😊😉🙈🙄

Ive been trying to convince her that gcses dont matter in the long run ( most definitely not after getting into uni) but its not going through.

Is anyone elses dc still not gotten over gcse scores? She was disappointed- but unsure what she was expecting really because she only started revising properly a month before. Now shes stressing that none of the top unis would want her for law. I think they are perfectly fine ( 9 x 2 , 7 x5 , 6 x2) but she was disappointed that there was no 8s.

@Teadrinker81 it is such a worry having to sit back and 'advise' in these situations isn't it. I really understand your concerns about your DD being used to being successful and learning to find things much harder. I don't really have any advice but hear you, my DD had had a meltdown this half term over her EPQ.

I saw it coming a while ago, she is a perfectionist, with no research experience who chose a difficult topic to find research on and which is now no longer related to what she wants to do a degree in. So all this combined with her stressing about not spending enough time on her A levels (preparing for mocks and predicted UCAS grades). She has spent a lot of time on the EPQ but it is too big a subject at the moment and she isn't getting enough guidance from school on how to tackle it unfortunately.

She wants to change the topic but will have to start from scratch and it was supposed to be mostly done by end of March. We have told her to leave it for now and discuss with school next week with a view to doing it over the summer holidays in her own time (which other students have done previously apparently). She just wants to give it up and do the 3 A levels but school insist they do them or a 4th A level so too late for any changes there.

Urgh, I actually sympathise with her though as I did a degree a few years ago and hated my dissertation in the 3rd year with a passion!

She'll get through it eventually but we've had tears and tantrums this week 🙄.

Thanks you for posting those, I shall forward to him now and have a thorough look myself. Really appreciate it.

I think it's helped him to narrow down what he does / doesn't want to do a bit as he's done some specific and some more broad..

https://www.smallpeicetrust.org.uk/momentum-events

https://www.bath.ac.uk/campaigns/step-into-bath/

https://www.etrust.org.uk/residential-insight-into-university

https://www.etrust.org.uk/programmes-age-16

My son has done a cyber first course at Royal Holloway, EDT Bronze (online) and is just finishing up EDT Gold (with school) and has a couple of things coming up in half term / summer through local universities. The Bath one I linked above - worth looking to see if any other unis close to you do similar as a lot of them do.

@Techno56 he's looking at Chemical Engineering so if you could share any links that would be great, I don't mind paying for courses. Did your DC find it helpful?

Dd definitely is finding maths difficult and not enjoying much of it. She has always been one to be motivated by competition and has I think got through so far by feeling proud of the bits she is doing okay in, she found mechanics more accessible than pure for example, she is finding there are lots that others can do that she’s really struggling with but also things she can do that most of the class find difficult. She’s resigned herself to aiming for a C, which I think is still a challenge (her minimum expected grade is B) but is hoping for an A in economics to balance that, I think this has helped her take a bit of pressure off.

it is really hard, and a real shock when you’ve always been good at something to suddenly struggle with it! I think support in readjusting expectations and celebrating any small successes has helped dd. She did consider dropping maths at the start, her teacher was very much saying if you’re finding this hard it’s best to do something else. At this point we talked about doing hard things and the advantage of staying the course (she has more options at university with maths a level).

I do think you’ve hit the nail on the head that this is her struggle. I would focus on being her cheerleader and supporting her when it’s hard, because it is, but isn’t lots of life!

@Teadrinker81 It’s so hard, isn’t it, especially when they get into a doom spiral with confidence and motivation going down the plughole together, and then somehow it is all your fault.

In your situation I think I might adopt the “good cop” role, since you’ve ensured that everything is in place to help her. So let her teachers and tutor chivvy her along, leaving your role as focusing on the positive. Does the tutor give you regular feedback? (They should). Then you can say - “Oh I hear you did really well on the statistics homework! Well done, that’s a great achievement”. (Or - she finished all her tasks before the deadline, or whatever good news story you can think of).

Even if you get a grumpy shrug, it will mean a lot to her that you are noticing and acknowledging her progress and her effort, and by showing confidence in her you will be helping her regain confidence in herself.

We went through a very difficult period with DD’s maths in Y10, but with a lot of support she turned it around in time for her GCSEs. I know A Level is a different kettle of fish, and hope you find a strategy that helps DD to feel better about it.

What is his area of interest? My son has done some supra curricular stuff that doesn't restrict who can attend by disadvantage criteria
Some online, some we paid a small amount for residential/day sessions. Specific to engineering though..

Hi all, have been quite a while off this chat but thought I’d come and see how everyone is getting on. DS is doing Maths, Physics and Chemistry, he seems to be doing well in Chemistry and Physics and has sat a couple of the ‘challenges’ for those subjects. Maths is OK but not brilliant. I am finding it very hard to motivate him into looking at uni courses or anything related to UCAS other than we are doing an Oxford open day this half term which I’m hoping might make him get a little inspired.

He is also learning to drive and has been since September. He has a test booked for April - earliest we could get from his birthday! - so I’m slightly dreading him not passing it. Our area has a less than 50% pass rate and a six month waiting list for test dates. 😬

has anyone had any luck getting work experience in the field they want to study? We haven’t been able to find anything but it seems you need to have done it as part of the ‘super curricular’ stuff. We’ve looked at the courses run by unis but they are prioritised for those children coming from more difficult backgrounds than DS’s which I totally understand but if we have no connections in the industry and we can’t get on a course I really don’t know what he can do to get any experience. He also had no luck in finding a part time job so all a bit rubbish.

At a loss with dd.
She has always been ‘easy’ to parent in regard to school work. She was self motivated and hard working during gcse and got really great grades. I don’t think I’ve ever had to remind her to do homework or revise.
She is loving 2 of her a levels and receiving extremely positive feedback from her teachers- got a grades in both essays recently. However, she is hating maths and not doing very well. I’m not sure if she’s failing because she hates it or hates it because she’s failing. She’s never really experienced this before.
Extra help is in place at college and we have provided a tutor. She says all the ‘right’ things- that she’s going to revise every day over the half term and is determined to improve. (She would have to change all 3 a levels if she resits year 12). I just asked her how the maths work has gone today and she’s blanking me! I know she hates it but she’ll hate failing more.
part of me acknowledges that this is her struggle and she will have to do it her way but geez it’s hard! Any words of wisdom?

@Wehaditsogood yes - thanks for those too. The Pearson one needs to be read quite carefully because exam codes beginning with an 8 are AS Levels and those beginning with a 9 are A Levels.

Thank you for this. The OCR and Edexcel provisional timetables are out, too.

https://www.ocr.org.uk/administration/general-qualifications/preparation/key-dates-and-timetables/

https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/support/support-topics/exams/exam-timetables/provisional-timetables.html

@Muchtoomuchtodo there’s very low uptake for AS levels in England these days, though I know they continue to be significant in Wales and Northern Ireland.

Added: what subject would he be applying to Oxford for, if you don’t mind saying?

Are we the only ones doing AS levels this summer? Way less papers to sit than last summer but still very important in terms of predicted grades.

Mocks were the first week back after Christmas and ds came away with all A grades so he’s on track currently. We get a full school report this Thursday so that’ll be interesting. We do need to look at open days, he’s going to a UCAS discovery day with school in April. He’s thinking of applying to Oxford and school / Seren foundation are being very helpful with that.

Another full week before half term here!

@Techno56 No experience but maybe YouTube would be worth a look?

Thank goodness for half term. Not that I am getting any time off work for good behaviour!

In case anyone can bear to look, provisional exam timetables for summer 2026 have been published. DD gets going right at the start on 11 May with Economics (day 1, morning) and if the current timetable is confirmed, will finish on 15 June. A-Level results day will be 13 August 2026.

https://cdn.sanity.io/files/p28bar15/green/7ffc0eb771e92f7fd0355f8342a27cb240eb1ad1.pdf

Does anyone have any recommendations of where to look to learn how to use a graphing calculator? Jay thought his teachers would know - they don't! So it's being wasted currently..

DS has had two full Maths mocks so far (one to go) sitting in with the year 13s - he is taking the real thing this summer. I think they went reasonably well but I think they were a bit of a wake up call so hopefully knocked back some of the over confidence and will encourage some proper revision.

Half term here next week as well, but in prep for exams there is a maths session that he has to attend on Monday. I'm getting GCSE flash backs.

Sixth form goes by really quickly and he has no idea what he wants to do as a next step.

Yep dd is. Has a mock the week after next and so far paper 1 seems to be less difficult than gcse maths. She hates estimation questions though!

We aren't on HT until next week, but DS is off to Iceland on a geography field trip at 3am (yes indeed 3am) on Thursday and they are out all day at the Amazon warehouse on Wednesday so he only has 2 school days left.
He's ready for a break, as am I.
Have good hols everyone

Super glad for half term here, sitting in a bombshell of a house, I teach so I have a week of, much needed.

dd had a disaster yesterday, left her bag with course notes and graphic calculator at the train station. Bless her she was helping her friend with her art folder, friend has one hand so needs a little help, and completely forgot her bag. Cue phone call in tears, I don’t know what to do! Turns out you can’t phone stations anymore, how daft is that! Anyway after much running around and travelling back to Winchester she did locate bag, apparently she also ‘failed’ psychology test, I’m like sweetheart you’ve identified knowledge gaps, it’ll be fine!

She has now got a second job! Is tutoring a friend’s dd for gcse maths. They’re both super shy anxious types and we weren’t sure they’d be able to talk to each other but actually did and are both happy which is great.

DD taking a year before university, but wondering if it’s worth applying and deferring while we’ve got college resources to help with the process. No idea what she wants to do, well she thinks she wants to go to London, but I think she should look at other places!