Year 10 - 2023/2024 Support Thread

@icanbewhatiwant 8 is amazing - our DD1's school actually wouldn't give anyone a 9 in year 10. At all. But I do understand children who don't get that sometimes low percentages can give high grades. DD2 (despite being otherwise reasonably clever) cannot fathom that sometimes 60 per cent can be better than 80 per cent depending on the level of the paper sat. Well done to him though.

@WriterOfWrongs FFS - though if it is a helpful learning, DD1 (who got a 7 in maths which was absolutely the top she could really have expected) was told there would be questions she wouldn't be able to do and to just ignore them - they were for only the very top students - which she wasn't. So it may be useful to be faced with choices to make about questions to do.

@NotDonna I think it was the 35 out of 50 he was more disappointed with. But that was still an 8.

Oh heck @icanbewhatiwant an 8 is flipping amazing! Even more so in yr10!

Im also echoing your FFS @WriterOfWrongs it won’t be a reflection of their abilities whatsoever.

@QueenMabby thanks, it is isn't it.

So on speaking to DS after he got home yesterday, it turns out the reason why he and all of his year found their maths mock paper really, really difficult yesterday is because… it included questions on topics they haven’t been taught yet

So they were being examined on parts of the syllabus they’re scheduled to learn in Yr11. Apparently the issue is because it’s a Trust-set paper, not individualised to the various Academys. But it left DS and his peers feeling upset and demoralised.

I mean, FFS.

A lot of teachers have been at our secondary school a long time. Quite a few taught ds1 who is now 23.

Ds just arrived home from school annoyed he's done "very badly" in his biology test. He said the whole class did badly. I said that's ok if you all did badly. He then said he only got an 8. Surely that's excellent. I wish he wasn't so determined to get 9's in everything.

Sounds like she's done really well @NotDonna - and comments like that suggest teachers are happy with her attitude too if they think grades will rise. I do get what you mean about teachers leaving, so frustrating. We are in London where teachers seldom stay as it is just too expensive to live. The benefit is that the teachers are very young and keen (though I feel like an old bat a parents evening) but they don't stick around. DD2's new school in rural somerset is a different story - lots stay forever, but I shouldn't imagine there are too many employers! Fingers crossed for some new excellent science teachers from September for her.

DD has received most of her results now and 5/6 but lots of positive comments to her saying they should go up a grade if she continues as she is. So she’s not too disappointed. We’d both be very happy with 6/7’s as that’s all she needs for her preferred A levels.
She vastly improved chemistry due to a fab new teacher this year. Annoyingly she told me this morning that he’s leaving in July. 😩😩 They usually have the same teachers from yr10 into yr11 but obviously not for chemistry or physics as both leaving. Teachers seem to last a couple of years at the school and I don’t understand why. Behaviour is very good and I assume slt are supportive but still they go! It’s not a cheap area to live so maybe that’s it. Such a shame.

@WriterOfWrongs - Oh poor love... this stuff is so tough. You are right, they have a year though.

English back today here. Much ecstasy over literature, where she dropped one single mark (so a 9), and happy enough with a 7 in language. Just history to go, which she is worried about. Wish they'd done all the results at once as I can't stand her emotional ups and downs from afar.

I’m also fecked off at “embroidery sport”. And If they’re going to be misogynistic, they could at least have come up with something wittier 🙄

@minisnowballs sorry to hear about your DD’s maths exam, poor thing. I wouldn’t take it as a sign she’ll get nervous in the real thing, but as a blip, and she’s got a whole year to course correct.

DS said his first mock, Maths, today was absolutely horrible and that he wanted to cry. So I may be having to take my own advice on this

@NotDonna embroidery sports - that is rude misogynistic crap if I ever heard it! My DD1 does aerial dance - silks - most of the boys she knows would struggle to muster half the strength she has to do that, and I think cheer is probably even more like that.

@QueenMabby oh no! Fingers crossed it goes Ok and she can relax after ...terrible timing though.

DD2 is FAR too relaxed about her g6 singing next Monday. Doesn't know the time, who the accompanist is, whether they have the official books not photocopies, has only done one session on the aural. I'm terrified for her- but have to just let her get on with it since she's so far away. She says her singing teacher is back today though (been away a couple of weeks) so hopefully finally have some answers.

Cant recall who asked but our school only do one set of mocks for GCSE (and A level actually). The former are now before Xmas. Thank heavens! Previously it was half before Xmas and half after, but the same subjects, so had to revise everything before xmas and again during. So paper 1 for all subjects before xmas and paper 2 for all subjects after Xmas. So I’m pleased these will all be in November despite it being a tadge early.
@DataColour according to a bunch of dads on another table as DD collected awards for dance & cheer at the school Sports Awards recently, my DD is doing ‘embroidery’ sports! So there we go. Not proper sports - embroidery sport. Their comment really pissed me off! She’s a gymnast & dancer and has been cheerleading (a flyer) for the past few years but you can’t do cheer for gcse PE so she’s starting trampoline alongside her gymnastics & dance - Tbf trampolining goes quite well with her skill set but they’ve not done any as the hall is always being used for team sports or exams, and when the trampoline is dragged out they spend most of their time watching each other. But at least school will film that. She’s got some footage from gymnastic and dance comps this year and there will be a few more comps in autumn, so should be ok. Hopefully good enough embroidery! 🙄 I know that if they saw her fly (and her team mates) they’d be pretty amazed but, whatever!

Welcome back @WriterOfWrongs - how lovely that they're going together though. I'm sure if he has been revising one night won't matter.

We've now got the rollercoaster of getting results back here. DD2 has COMPLETELY messed up maths. She has no idea how - she's top set, usually does extremely well, teacher is baffled by her result - think it might be a 5 or 6. Such things shake her sense of self completely and I got a tearful lunchtime call.

She can be very unpredictable and appears to have no memory of what happened during the paper - I'm wondering if it was some form of extreme panic, which doesn't bode well for the exams themselves. We've asked for a copy of the paper so she can go through it with her maths teacher grandmother, which might at least yield some answers as it really is a weird result.

On the other hand 9 for music, 9 for drama. She'd have said she was better at maths than drama. So strange.

Hello all, I was on here some months ago (and on the Yr 9 thread, albeit under a different name). I took a break from MN but am back.

I need to read back through all your posts but I see others have been or are doing mocks. DS’s school started three weeks (!) of GCSE mocks today; the mocks started today but he doesn’t have one until tomorrow.

A little while ago I bought DS and his 19 yo sister tickets to see Doja Cat, and they’re going tonight… the night before his first mock. Not entirely a great mothering decision but his sister has just finished her A levels after a very difficult few years, DS has asked me, and they wanted to go together. He has been revising though.

A special 👋 to @QueenMabby who I’m also on the Yr 13 thread with!

That PE teacher sounds awful @DataColour
I find deciding how much to get involved so difficult with school,ultimately they are still children and need us to advocate for them but also I do worry about the ramifications of doing so in terms of their treatment.
Good luck in making some progress with it all.

Ds has a full timetable of mocks starting next week. 2 on most days. Then more mon-weds of the following week. The week after that is work experience. So a busy few weeks here.

@DataColour PE teacher sounds horrible - what a shame. DD2 is awful at PE (obviously not doing the GCSE) but the teachers are so kind to her. There is NO need for humiliation... that sort of stuff scars them for life.

DD1 had two lots of mocks, and endless other tests. Does seem light - though definitely more like it was in my day, and I guess we did OK with it. With lots of papers in class it might be ok, but leaves the teachers with less evidence if anything goes wrong and they can't sit the real thing I suppose.

@NotDonna Not really got anywhere yet. Despite email to PE teacher, no reply. But he has told DS in person that he doesn't know the criteria for cycling and for DS to look up the exam board for it....ridiculous. I don't want to inflame matters as this teacher is a bit of a bully anyway and in year 9 humiliated DS in front of everyone when he didn't want to take part in rugby as he had a grade 6 piano exam the next day. He doesn't help the PE teacher reputation! DS will have him till end of year 11 and DD will also be entering year 10 next year, but fingers crossed she will have the female teacher.
Anyway, DS is doing road cycling. DH can film him easily as he's a keen cyclist and they've already done some filming and looking at videos that got top marks posted on youtube and DS is more than capable of that. DS and DH are going on a few cycling trips over the summer, so the plan is to get it all done.
What's your DDs sports?

@icanbewhatiwant thanks for that info. DD is thinking of doing table tennis for her group sport. She has 2 strong individual sports, running and bouldering, but she is not a teams sport person, so struggling to think of what she could do. Luckily, her best friends is also going to do PE GCSE and dont' have a team sport, hence thinking of table tennis. We have a couple of parks nearby with outdoor table tennis, and when and if the weather ever gets better I'll take the girls for a try out.

I've just realised that our school is only doing one mock exam for year 11, end of Nov. Is this normal? I thought they'd have 2 mocks before the real thing. They didn't have end of year 10 mocks either. Seems unusual to me.

Ds2 did gcse pe. Those who didn't do sport out of school were taken to a place with climbing walls and were filmed there for one part, they also filmed them playing table tennis at school. Ds was on the school football team, again filmed by the pe teacher. So that might have all worked out well. But ds2 was 2020 exam year, the year they were all cancelled due to Covid. So I don't suppose the footage was ever viewed by examiners.