If you have a child doing GCSEs or A levels, in hindsight, what you have done differently from Year 7 onwards?

I am a secondary teacher. DC2 starts secondary this week. DC1 is at uni now. The advice on this thread is really good, especially about keeping up interests outside of school like sport, music or drama. Additionally I would add:

Help your child to understand that it is not a competition to add as many possible “friends” from Y7 to their social media accounts. As pp said, check your child’s phone regularly until they are quite a bit older. I wouldn’t allow Insta and DC won’t be joining whole year group or whole form group WhatsApp groups - they are a recipe for disaster. Leave mobile downstairs at bedtime and generally keep talking about online safety.

Encourage your child to read for 30 minutes every day.

Do homework on the night it is set and have a window for homework time at the weekend if Friday is considered a night off.

Get DC to pack their school bag the night before. Do packed lunch the night before too.

For Sixth Form: nothing is a dress rehearsal. For each hour in the classroom students should be spending an additional hour on homework / revision. Suggest to DC that they pencil in the subject they will work on in their independent study periods on their timetable, divided equally across their courses. Once DC is hopefully settled into Sixth Form routines, start the conversation and research about next destinations - uni, school leavers schemes, apprenticeships etc.

Great thread, thank you! I also have my eldest starting Year 7 and felt really confident helping him all through primary school but know it's not long before he's smarter than me! And life as a teenager is very different now, so I don't feel as confident about knowing how to protect and guide him as I would like to.

I'm a secondary (science) teacher. A lot of what has been said on this thread is excellent. I'd add or repeat:

For y7: have a cupboard or box where all school stuff lives at home so they can easily find books and other things they need. Include in here a glue stick and scissors, encourage them to stick in anything loose in the correct place in the book (sometimes they don't in lessons as they are trying to pack away quickly as they think they will get to go to break quicker). Try to be positive about all their subjects when speaking about them at home. Even if they say they find a subject hard encourage them to persevere, it teaches good life skills for later. If a teacher rings you about a behaviour issue try and present a united front with the school. You should not need to contact your child on their mobile phone during the day, if it is absolutely essential to contact your child go via the school office (I've had children who try and take phonecalls/texts from a parent in lesson because a relative is in hospital, this is unfair on the child as it leads to them being distressed and there is nothing they can actually do at that point in time), but even just general chit chat texts encourage students to check their phone when they shouldn't.

Someone asked about y12: buy them ring binders and those divider things, encourage them to use them. We do folder checks at school, it's amazing how many y12 think a wallet full of paper is a filing system. If school recommend that an option subject isn't right for your child don't push to have them do it anyway, particularly if they didn't get the entry requirements.

Agreed @Redcrayons being a consistent steady, learner has undoubtedly been an advantage for exams this year. Somewhat unfair for those who had got their heads down and would have done better in the final exam but as you say teachers have no way to evidence this.

To do homework as they get it and not the night before the 'due date' which might be two weeks away.
To get in the habit of making notes and revision cards early on.
When subject options come up, beware of or not choosing a subject based on your like or dislike for a teacher as the teachers can change.

Following this year, I'd say you need to drum into them that they need to tackle every piece of work as if it was the most important thing they'd ever done. So they literally need to put 100% of effort into everything

This x 100. One of mine missed a grade because he only started to knuckle down after Feb mocks. They can’t asses on ‘was going to’.

Also have lots of protractors and rulers, unless you fancy a trip to Tesco at 10pm on a random Tuesday night.

I'd have just chilled, tbh - and that's in fact what I'm doing now! I stressed about DD's exams, revision, grades, feeling like GCSEs were the be-all and end-all. But she got decent enough grades and got into college easily, so GCSEs now feel like "so what?" She only needed a 4 or 5 to get into college, so it really didn't matter if she got a 6 or a 7... DS is going into Y8 and I am FAR more chilled now. I know he'll pass his GCSEs and whether he wantd to get good grades or not is up to him and whether he's prepared to work for it.

Of course, this is only because I have kids who are likely to pass their GCSEs relatively easily and our local college is easy to get into. YMMV! :)

Yes, we learnt from the first child the hard way about social media. The next one isnt allowed Whatsapp or Insta.

And another thing - monitor those phones! With social media there is no respite from the day to day life at school and bullying via phone is extremely common. We were always having conversations about what was going on online and keeping safe when using the internet.

I would say encouraging my DCs to get involved with extra curricular sports and music/drama has had the biggest positive effect. It's given both my DCs a different set of friends to mix with which has really helped when the inevitable friendship issues hit halfway through Year 7 and in Year 9.

Instil independence and taking responsibility for their own work. They should be responsible for packing bags, making sure stuff has gone in the wash, making packed lunches, taking responsibility for finances etc. If you run around after them then they will a) never learn and b) take you for granted and before you know it they are heading to university without some of the real skills they will need.

Make sure they know how to cook, do the washing, do the ironing, use the hoover and clean a bathroom / kitchen properly. Chores should be a regular part of their life. The balance between school / work, chores and having fun needs to be learned. It’s then a really nice feeling (and appreciated) when they are exempted from chores at key exam times.

I always say to my kids that my job is to make them into the best possible grown ups that they can be. Unfortunately that includes all the rubbish that goes with it!!

Place marking.

Oh and if they need a school tie keep a spare one stashed away somewhere.

I always kept a ‘stationery drawer’, containing all the basics: pencils, pens (red, blue & black) rulers, rubbers, spare maths sets, 360 degree protractors, graph paper etc etc. I always buy exam pencil cases (transparent). DS has adhd so I couldn’t rely on him remembering what he needed at the right time but it’s always reassuring knowing that when he asks in a panic for a 360 degree protractor on exam morning, I’ve got one in my stash. I also made sure no one else but me had access to said drawer!

I wouldn’t do much differently, and to be fair, (to myself and DH) the one thing we would have done differently was out of our hands - we tried our best but circumstances (jobs, health issues etc) were against us.

We moved away from one part of the U.K. to another last year and I do wish we’d been able to do it sooner. DS was in a crap school where he was before and he was very unhappy. The “education” was woeful, the pastoral care worse. I firmly believe that life is too short to be unhappy at school. Moving wasn’t possible for us until last year, but if we could have moved sooner we would have done. I’ve told my kids now - even here where they have access to amazing schools - that if they are unhappy we will work together to find a solution. We won’t bail at the first hurdle, but neither will I force them to stick it out in a school they are miserable in.

DS just going into year 12. I would say like PP don't let DCs ease into things, take year 10 easy, let mocks be just a taster. Things need to be a bit more serious. Everything needs to count. Treat mocks as the real thing study, study, revise,revise. Hopefully they will get to exams all will go well and they will have a fantastic 10 week summer at the end of the 2 years GCSE/A-Levels...but just always have 2020 in mind!

All the stationary advice is good. If they have text books as well as ex books, a plastic zip file per subject is useful to keep the things together....then they just have to grab the appropriate plastic file and not look for the ex book, some handouts and a textbook which might have got separated.

When choosing GCSE options, consider if they have a leaning towards a certain area......so if they live humanities and are offered triple science which takes up an option, maybe consider turning it down and just doing the double....so they can take more humanities at GCSE, which will mean being able to do 2 or 3 humanities at A Level, as the GCSE is often a prerequisite. This only really works if you know you've got a scientist or a linguist etc.

Keep copies of the timetable and all the equips and books needed for each day in several places at home. Take a photo of it on your own phone and theirs too.

Help them learn to use their homework planner to note in detail what is required and deadlines and strongly encourage/force them to fill it in, including noting down NONE SET for any subjects that don't set.

If you have queries to take up with a subject teacher, copy the Head of Year of appropriate deputy in too. Realise lots of schools are not great at replies, but pursue queries and don't let issues slide.

Actually it's a good idea to have a complete set of stationery at home, so that their school set can just stay in the pencil case/bag and they don't run the risk of leaving all their pens at home.

Agree with @Jamdemic about bulk-buying rulers and protractors (and glue-sticks for that matter). I have no idea where they all disappear to, but the morning of the Maths exam is not the time to realise that you have no protractors in the house.

We had a plastic storage box for all school books and folders. It really helped having everything in one place and if I was tidying up anything school related went in there. Saved many hours of 'where's my...?'
Year 7 I spent quite a lot of time scaffolding how to tackle homework/prioritise tasks etc and from year 8 onwards was pretty hands off. Dd year 13 is completely independent, always gets her work done and handed in on time.
Social media was a necessity for makung friends and sharing homework but I loaded it onto my phone too so could supervise for a while how she was using it/what others were up to. I gradually looked at it less and deleted when I knew she was ok on her own. She still shares with me stuff that's going on and it really helped understanding how teenagers tick.

My DS starts A levels next week, he did amazing in GCSE’s - 9x9’s and 2x8’s. So I don’t really have anything I wish I’d done differently as he’s been fortunate to go to a good school which has helped. He’s the kind of kid who just gets on with it. I stressed a lot when he started secondary, as he used to be a bit absent minded (forgot his school bag on day 1), wish I hadn’t have worried so much as he settled in fast. And soon learnt which books to pack! I have a DD starting year 8, it’s been harder for her as she’s very shy and introverted

And for those with swimming DC - unless your DC is going to represent their country, do not bother with morning training once they start their GCSE year. It really isn't worth being tired at school unless their swimming career outshines their academic career. Do not believe the hype.

Great idea for a thread!

Buy bulk packs of protactors, small rulers, pens, HB pencils etc. off Amazon. They (or the urchin sitting next to them) break them and lose them all the time.
Get a cheap guillotine (about £10) to help with cutting paper neatly. I wasted far too much time trying and failing to neatly cut up paper.
Stick post-it notes on their lunch box if there is anything they need to hand in or they need to ask a teacher something.

Anyone got any for sixth form in particular?

All electronic here too. But there are still plenty of instances where the DC like to print out the worksheets and write on them or print out their own notes to put in revision folders.

And plenty of ink is required for making a montage of the gazillion photos they have taken of their new friends :)