Year 11 2023-24

@Waspie I also thought the school would tell us gave up 2 wks ago and typed up my own sheet coloured to make it look nice and highlighted the days he had more than one exam then printed 1 for me and 1 for DS 😂

Well done that child!!!! :)

Oh aren't you people wonderful!? Thank you. I didn't realise the timetables would be published already. I dumbly assumed the school would tell us when they knew.

I've just cobbled together DS' timetable and it's positively relaxed compared to the mocks. Only three days with 2 exams in one day, and none with 3. Phew. The first full week is pretty full though - 7 exams.

We have a holiday booked for 1st July too. Looking forward to it already!

@Tebheag - that's great! Well done to him 😊 Yes, three in one day due to a language, so today was biology, mandarin then maths and Thursday is Chemistry, mandarin then maths.

Yes the 3 exams in one day (10th of May) are because of the German MFL exam but it's not too horrible as the German one is 1h 45 in total. These are all AQA higher tier papers. The foundation ones are a bit shorter.

Biology 1 - 1hour 45 min
German 1 Listening - 45 min
German 3 Reading - 1 hour

I've just checked DS's timetable, he has 26 exams. Art is on 18/19 April and then the main ones start on 10th May (biology) and finish on 14th June with geography and physics. It looks like a long slog when you see them all written down. DS did well in his mocks other than Biology but after parents evening I understand why and he should (in theory) do OK in the real thing.

@gingercat02 snap DS has the same start and finish dates subjects. Also got Geography on the 14th of June.

@gingercat02 I'm trying to stay positive and not panic. My DD is motivated to study but not too organised and she is fine with me sorting out her revision timetable. Also needs occasional 'get off the phone' nudges... Luckily I work from home a lot and I'm happy to oblige😀

We booked holidays early July, as DD wants to go to prom and to the leavers assembly, both are on the last Friday in June.

@Waspie he had a very chilled weekend thank you. He actually texted this morning from school as got his English language result as was so happy he got a G7 in paper 2. Not meant to get them till March before they break up for Easter but guessing teachers want to go through them in class!
Ouch 3 in one day is that language? They the same to DS.
His school also doing the same in P1 November P2 Feb.

14 June lol. Wishful thinking there were only 4 days!

@anoukis I think the exam timetable scares me more than DS!

Little bugger told me last night, "we should have been revising sooner, Mum."
FFS, I believe I have been saying that for 2 blooming years. Anyway, we are where we are.

Biology was fine today, and they did Maths and English Lang revision in class (no afternoon one today), so he's upstairs doing Geography

We start with Biology on 10 May and finish with Physics on 14 May. I'm booking a holiday for the weekend after the contingency day 🏖🍸🍹💤

We're also in the middle of mocks. it's the 3rd round of mocks for us! Summer of year 10, November yr 11 (mostly paper 1 subjects) and Feb yr 11 (mostly paper 2 subjects, except Maths, MFL, and English Lit - all papers).

Three more mock exams this week: English Lit 2, Maths 3, and History 2.

@Waspie exam timetables are available on AQA, Edexcel, OCR websites etc.

@gingercat02 we also have the timetable on the fridge. My DD says it's scary - there's about 24 of them 😁including the 10-hour supervised final art exam which is at end of April. And English and German speaking exams which should happen early May - those are non-exam assessments with their teachers.

First exam day for DD is 10th of May - she has Biology paper 1 in the morning and two German exams (listening and reading) in the afternoon. Apart from that there is only one double exam day on the 11th of June (Chemistry 2 and History 3). Rest of the exams are one each day, about 4 per week.

Last exam for DD is 18th of June, which is Additional Maths FSMQ (optional exam).

@Waspie btw

We are mid mocks too. History yesterday was horrific, apparently, but everything seems OK otherwise.
We shall see when the results arrive!
The GCSE dates are on our school website and have been for ages. I have them printed and on the wall in the kitchen 🤣

Hope your son had a relaxed weekend @Tebheag. Will his school start feedback on their mocks in classes this week? DS always finds the feedback sessions very helpful.

DS's school is the same @Techno56 - paper 1's in November and paper 2's in Feb/March. Apart from maths and MFLs where they do all three papers both times.

Day 3 of mocks here. DS one yesterday morning (Eng Lit) which he said went "okay". He has three today. Apparently the school are trying to mimic what could happen in the actual GCSE timetable. So three today, two tomorrow, three Thursday, two Friday and a final one next Monday morning. Hopefully the actual exam timetable won't be quite as compressed as this.

DS had last mock today. Going to have weekend to chill then he wants to start studying again. He wasn't too happy with the last maths paper today hopefully he did OK.

Ah, we’re in Wales so English lit and maths are completely done already.

They did a set for all subjects end of November, and in English and sciences these were only paper 1.

Now they are doing paper 2 for English and sciences plus another full set of maths at the same time.

I would quite like it to be over with sooner but he will benefit from the extra revision time.

I'd rather they'd done paper 2 in the last set and it lasted a bit longer, but they hadn't covered the content fully at that point so I guess that's why it's this way.

@Techno56 how many rounds of mocks do your school do? We only have 1 set which have been this week and I’m glad about that, I’m not sure what the advantage of lots of testing and less teaching / learning is.

Our next round of mocks has been pushed back a week (were meant to start Monday) I'm not sure if we are relieved or annoyed 😅

Yes I think they are so used to Brits ( including us!) not attempting Spanish they were thrilled when DS spoke in Spanish! He was having conversations with shopkeepers about how he should teach us Spanish!

@AmyandPhilipfan your words are spot on in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter if he doesn’t, I say the same thing there are always pathways, choices and this is just a stepping stone in lifelong learning 😊

My son is in the middle of his first week of a two week mocks timetable. He's not stressed about it at all. He was given a load of revision books from school but is not a fan of reading and finds it hard to take things in just from reading a book so I've got him some 'ten minutes tests' type of books for English, maths and science and am encouraging him to work through them.

As my mum pointed out to me, he's found school hard every day of his life with so much of the work beyond him. It's amazing really that he can sit in front of an exam, not knowing what to write for most of it, but not dissolve into tears or start panicking. He just does what he can.

The college course he wants to do can start from Level 1 for which he needs nothing. So while I'm hoping for his self confidence that he can scrape a 4 in the odd subject, in the grand scheme of things it really doesn't matter if he doesn't.

We had 2 days of mocks pre HT (Maths 1, Eng Lit, Business and Spanish)

I took the week off to supervise/help, so revision has been slow but steady. Until last night, I came home from pilates to find DS sobbing and DH calming down in our bedroom.
Full on maths meltdown.
Everyone took a step back, and all was OK.

He's gone out with his mates today to chill for a bit.

I'm a bit concerned as he has an extra maths paper next week to decide if he's doing Foundation or Higher.

He's already doing Foundation Spanish and combined Science, so Maths as well would limit him to a 5 in 4 out of 9 subjects

Good luck to everyone for their mocks!

DS starts his today with his MFL listening exam. About 10 mins before it started his English teacher gave him a detention for not handing in his homework yesterday. He is now in a strop saying he did hand it in and has wound himself up about it just before walking into the hall. Wonderful timing 🙄

DS' language GCSE is mandarin. The teachers at the school took a load of students to Chinatown just before Christmas and they got to practice their mandarin in the shops and restaurants. As pp have said - getting the opportunity to use their language skills on native speakers (and have them understand) is such a confidence boost.

We did similar in Lanzarote with DD1. It tended to confuse the people trying to get you into restaurants when she replied in good quality Spanish.