Is your school running GCSE revision sessions this holiday?

It does seem to me that to some people teachers can never get it right. We are either lazy or go in unpaid during the holidays for selfish, data obsessed reasons. I and other staff in my school went/ are going in because a lot of our pupils live in noisy, high rise flats with little chance of a quiet study area. It might seem odd but I really care about the pupils succeeding for their own sakes as do most teachers in most schools. Even the buggers who waited until now to re read Mister Pip, one charmingly told me today that he wished he'd read it properly in Yr 10 because he really enjoyed it!

I did one day for exam prep or catchup with controlled assessment. We had about 5 students out of 10. ( small subject). Other departments did similar or more days where needed/ appropriate. We were paid at the study support rate and it was entirely voluntary.

On the day I was in, we also had several lots of year 6's in, starting transition activities, with other members of staff.

Several other members of staff, including the Head are away on school trips.

Our catchment area is one of the most deprived areas in the country. Our school has just gone from outstanding to special measures in one inspection despite no change in management or results.

So, do we qualify as a 'sink' school or one where the staff do 'give a stuff'?

No, although the school premises is used by a private company running revision courses these have not been pushed at ds. He has been set a combination of past papers and essays for the holidays, as well as revision, with some of his teachers offering input by email.

My school is in a semi rural area with a significant minority of students arriving on coaches.

We are running an Easter School next week - one of the teachers is running round the area in a minibus to pick up all the students who would otherwise not be able to get in.

Oh, and it's largely about the grades for the data. BUT, for individual teachers, giving up a couple of days of their holidays is about giving their students the best chance. Cos we like em, and want em to do well for THEIR sakes.

I've been in this week because my GCSE Performing Arts class have their practical exam 2 weeks after Easter. Because of bank holidays I will only see them 3 times before the exam. Other teachers in my school have a lot more time before their exams. I am doing this for the benefit of my students, and at their request.

There may well be an element of "getting OFSTED off their backs" - it takes a very brave teacher these days to justify a student missing their levels of progress with "he/she got what he/she deserved" Unfortunately, that's the reality. Until parents stop placing the blame for underachievement at the schools' doors, and until league tables stop measuring schools on exam results, it's not going to change.

And our bus service (nearest stop three miles away) is about to be cut in 1/2.

Also why do the students need so much help this near the exams?

Shouldn't they have a pretty good idea what's expected of them by now?

I just wonder how much of this is for the pupils benefit and how much is simply to get Ofsted off their backs.

DD1 has brilliant Maths, Art, Drama and Music teachers all of whom have been putting in loads of extra time. Music because composition is hard and outside many of the pupils comfort zone.

But maths, art and drama have mostly been chasing lazy arses who deserve to get bad grades.

Science have also had (are having) lots of revision sessions. There's are for two distinct reasons.

Firstly we lose some of our best scientists to grammar school doing triple science in two GCSE slots is a big ask for some pupils.

Secondly some of double science haven't a clue, never have had a clue and never will have.

My dyslexic DD was made to do double as the HoD thought doing she wouldn't have coped with triple (she would have). She has been unpaid TA for many of her science sets since Y7. They are still hopeless.

when ds1 was doing his GCSEs about 5 years ago, one of the teachers spent every day of the half term before the exams, delivering lunchtime revision sessions in the local pub garden, it was a brilliant success and the novel approach meant he took far more in than he would have done if he had trekked up to school.

Oh, and Nocomet, times have moved on. As a child, I lived in a village that had 6 buses per day, to one destination only. My parents still live there and the bus service has improved considerably. Comparing what happens now to what happened 30 years ago is plain silly.

Breath taking arrogance? As a teacher who has been in school helping students on three days this week I take exception to that.

Well most people live in towns and cities, or at least in reach of a public bus route to one where the schools are likely to be, plus why would it be 'at the drop of a text'? This year's timetable has been up on the school website for weeks, with a bit of planning and/or lift sharing it's hardly likely to be impossible for the majority of students to take advantage of it if they want to.

I'm 46 and neither my run of the mill, but still got people to Oxbridge, Welsh comp or DHs grammar would have run classes out of school hours.

Both rural areas where not all families owned one car, let alone two.

I can just imagine the phone calls to the HT had he suggested our parents did a 24 mile round trip to collect us from a revision class.

Or that DHs DF who lived in a village that had a once a week pensions and shopping bus, on Thursdays.

Yes it's brilliant that teachers are prepared to give up their free time, but there is a breath taking arrogance from the school management in thinking all parents can be available to get DCs to and from school at the drop of a text.

I went to a 'sink' school, never had any revision classes at all. Talking to a lot of colleagues in their forties that went to grammars and good schools almost all their schools ran revision sessions in the holidays so I don't think it was that unusual even back then in decent schools.
I'm glad to say my DSs' school runs sessions over Easter and I will be encouraging them to take advantage of them in their pre-GCSE years.

Also it's possible the "sink" school (vile way to describe it) has done a lot of revision sessions in term time.

For the DDs school to run stuff in the holidays would be very unfair on the poorest and most distant rural pupils.

At least 1/2 the DCs rely on contract bus services.
Local public transport is very patchy, very expensive and very slow. My DDs can't get into school at all without walking/cycling 3 miles (and finding somewhere safe for their bike), then getting a once an hour bus.

I might of cycled the whole trip, but I lived on a bike as a teen and my roads were better and quieter. Here they are very narrow or main roads with 40 tonne lorries)

My guess is many less well off DCs simply don't have the bus fare or a non working parent, with a car and petrol money to ferry them in and out of school in the holidays).

1200 pupils I think - not sure how many pupils are doing Highers as each class is a different size, but obviously nowhere near as many so the classes will be smaller and there are not as many. I agree that 5 teachers from one department running 4 classes a day seems excessive - I presume that's the same across the school?

The school is very big, btw.

SirChen, out of 10 colleagues in my dept 5 are in every day, running 4 classes a day.
They are not masterclasses, they are revision classes of stuff that should have been done during lesson time. Or supervising children doing work for their controlled assessments because they would not do it otherwise.
I have given mine 3 lessons during term time (as specified on the sow) and who has chosen not to do it can't be helped.

My sister teaches science and is in every Easter, she's been in three days this week doing revision classes.

My maths department has three teachers in.

So no, SirChenjin, not every school runs things the same way. Is your school quite small? One teacher would not be enough to cover the amount of students who need to come in in my school.

But surely every single one of your colleagues won't be teaching every day throughout the holidays? One maths masterclass shared between a team of 5/6 teachers (or however many maths teachers you have) = 1 masterclass every 5/6 years if the teachers chooses to run them. That still leaves a heck of a lot of holidays across the years - unless of course your school runs many, many masterclasses across every holiday, with every teacher participating?

At the school I teach at there are revisison classes going on every day this week. My hod has about 45 mins to see me about something I need help with because I've never done it before.

I would not give up my holidays to this extent. I go in one day.

During term time the kids mess around in lessons and pay zero attention for me to then see them in the holidays to "catch up"? Nope.
Maybe I'm not in the right frame of mind for teaching nowadways, but then I am leaving the profession soon.

My dd is at a high achieving grammar school and has one revision class in the holidays. For 1 hour. Because the teacher was ill before the holidays. They got an exam and revision timetable and are expected to get on with it.

Honestly, term time has always been teaching for me, holidays are a time to get all the stuff done that never gets done otherwise, not for teaching.
I can't wait for the colleagues to tell me how little time they had to relax during the holidays. It's all wrong.

No, thank God!
DD needs some down time and some sleep! She's had Music, Drama and Art deadlines right up to the end of term. With hours and hours after school. Then a school trip to Europe.

Revision starts in earnest on Saturday (she's getting cold and wet tomorrow) and she really needs that week with no chasing in and out of school to get clear in her head what she doesn't and doesn't know.

Because of being at the very top of set 2 maths and off the top of double science (long story). What she needs to revise (things her dyslexic brain can't remember or spell) is not what the majority of her science class couldn't understand!

We don't get paid extra either. Its all for PM purposes which I'll probably fail anyway as a few pupils think the 5 hours I'm offering is going to make up for nearly two years of not much work on their part and so consequently FFT targets won't be achieved. I've already been running an hour after school every week since January for year 11 revision... Best attendance at that was 6 out of 25 pupils (averaged around 3). Still... what can you do?

Wordfactory I teach in a grammar, there are lots of sessions going on... The pressure to get A/A* in all subjects regardless of pupil effort is immense.

Martorana - I have a similar syndrome but it's more of a phrase blindness than a word blindness. Whenever I see phrases like cream rises to the top, especially in relation to the mumsnetter's own DC, I feel quite weak and can no longer read any more of the thread.