Y9-2024/2025

Well it’s been a crappy year for us tbh. I have been asking for ND assessments since December of Y8 and behaviour has got steadily worse leading to several suspensions second half of this year.

We finally have a private ADHD assessment tomorrow and we are on the CAMHS wait list for ASD.

i have a new SEN contact and SLT contact who both seem to understand more about my daughter after a couple of days than the previous Senco / HOY in 18 months! So we are all hoping Y10 is a fresh start.

We have DS Y9 report now, looks good and he has turned a few more things from 'working towards' to on target, which is encouraging. Having a final meet of term with form teacher tomorrow morning - the school does a day off each term which is just teacher meetings. But seems a good note to finish the year on.

Thanks - DS did unexpectedly well in his French speaking, but ultimately DH asked DS if he wanted us to try to make a play to keep French, but DS said he thought it best not to. Still sounded a bit regretful but I really think it's for the best. I think the next battleground with DH will be agreeing on realistic expectations for DS's GCSEs in general.

I've asked him (though he failed last night) to discuss results with me first before talking to DS about them because he has previously upset me by lambasting DS for marks that I would say either good enough or actually very good. As it happens last night was OK and maybe DS just came and told him (I was in the office, DH wasn't). I think we need to see how he does in everything else before we decide to push French or not.

A rollercoaster indeed, @Echobelly !

I'm forever telling DH not to be so hung up on percentage scores in random school tests (even 'end of year' tests.) He always asks DD what she got, and if she says (eg) 70% he says 'That's an A' and I have to remind him that 70% on a very easy test might be a disappointing result, but might be an amazing score on a hard test. I tend to ask DD whether she feels it was a good result, based on teacher comments and how the rest of the class did in that particular test.

Best of luck with navigating this!

The French rollercoaster continues... having said they don't want him to carry on French, DS brought back his French listening and speaking exam results today - 41% and... 75% respectively, which puts the cat among the pigeons. He's never got 75% in a test on anything so DH (and DS) are back on the page of potentially pushing for a shot at the GCSE. Just as I'd relaxed that finally we'd be out of all this bloody aggro about French. I'm sort of hoping they just gave him a really easy spoken test just to put him at ease (after all it's one test they could do that as it's 1:1) and that's why he did so well.

Gah! If he does well in the other ones I guess we ought to ask for a meeting to discuss... if they they say 'Sorry, it's too late' then I think I might have to tell DH that I reckon if he hadn't created so much stress around French, then maybe DS wouldn't have been too anxious to write anything in all his other tests this year and might have got to do French GCSE.

@Lisamummy22girls That's good news that your daughter is now happy with business studies!

My daughter sorted her options, she is doing business studies and looking forward to it

we worried that history might be a bit much for her.. she is ASD and gets extremely over whelmed and lacks self confidence … she struggles with the essay writing in English so I think adding History to the mix is a bit much

That sounds tricky, @Echobelly – especially as you and DH aren’t on the same page with this one. (Obviously, you’re right, haha!) It sounds like the school are offering a sensible option at a sensible time (I bet they don’t mention it earlier in case lots of people stop trying in French to get put on the BTech which is clearly not their aim.) I hope he doesn’t get put off the BTech by peers or his dad – there seems to be a lot of positive comments about them on Mumsnet.

@PuttingDownRoots – that does seem early for their end of year report! Perhaps they stagger the timings across the school years so the teachers don’t have them all to do right at the end. DD had her ‘full’ report in March this year (before options were submitted) so we think she’ll just get a sheet of tick boxes in July.

Any movement on your DD’s options, @Lisamummy22girls

It’s all very quiet here. DD doesn’t even seem to have much homework – it’s all ‘look at where you lost marks in your exam papers’ which is useful, but boring!

Travel and Tourism - I think it'll be good for him because it's more coursework and gives him fewer exams. He's worried because he'll be in 'with all the badly behaved kids', which may be a fair concern. They only offer T&T to kids who won't make the grade for French, I don't think it's an option for kids who want to take it by choice (they do 'functional skills' for kids with marked learning difficulties). I'm wondering if he might get some choice over coursework topics, because if so he might, for example, be able to do some work on Japan, which he's fascinated by and I think would help him with other subjects.

I suppose it would have been better for school to have warned this may be coming earlier rather than the teacher pretending everything was fine, though in truth I don't think it would have made much difference. DH is immovable in his belief that DS just wasn't trying, I'm immovable in mine that he just can't do it because of the adhd,

What Btech?

Mine is doing 8 GCSEs and a BTech and they seem to encourage even the academic ones to chose a lighter subject. (Shes hopeful for Animal Care, and likely to get it)

School has just emailed to say they want DS to drop French and do a BTEC instead and I was utterly delighted.

Relief was a bit tempered when it turned out DS is reluctant because he's worried a BTEC with close off options for him - I wonder if he's heard snarky comments about them from other kids, but I did look into this and it doesn't sound like one BTEC won't harm his chances at uni at all and the school insists it won't.

DH is taking the view that DS has 6 weeks to wildly impress school, which isn't likely to happen and he has said as much - I think he just can't do French because of his ADHD, as some people with it have serious difficulties with languages.

Oh God I really hope they won't change their mind, I can't take the stress of DH trying to 'teach' DS French, honest to God I have seriously considered divorce for the first time in my life because of it.

That's hilarious @CouldNotStayAway, typical teenagers!

Weve recieved the end of year reports which seem early!

Good luck those waiting for options. Hope things work out. We did all that last year and got all first choices thankfully.

End of year exams here are in July. They start doing them in the hall from Y9 to get them used to it so they have to wait for the real exams to be over. It will be interesting to see how they go.

They seemed to be getting revision homework for about three weeks before DD’s exams, so it was a gentler build-up than your DS has had, @Echobelly!

At least your DS’s school has made a reasonable accommodation for his needs – I hope it works out for him.

DD prioritised revising for her options subjects (I hope she gets given these options, haha!) and resented the geography, history, computer science and art exams she had to take. She said some girls simply didn’t answer the last (4-mark) history question if they hadn’t chosen history, simply because they couldn’t be bothered 😮 I’m relieved DD is not that rebellious!

Yeah @LetItGoToRuin - I hoped they might be July but no, next week, and they only gave them all the revision notes last week (which is loads). They have at least let DS only sit subjects he's taking at GCSE so he has a bit less to do, as he is still having difficulty doing tests (totally froze up in first set this year, only froze on French and English last ). I think he's not going to do so well this time round between only having a week to revise and having been ill yesterday.

DD’s school hasn’t had any setting so far (grammar) but we’ve recently heard on the grapevine that the girls will be put into maths sets in Y10. The school really discourages competition between the girls, but I guess maths sets are inevitable. We don’t believe they set for anything else though. Everyone does triple science.

@Lisamummy22girls That is disappointing for your daughter! I’m sure it’s worth asking whether there’s any chance they can let her have her reserve option of history instead of business studies. Fingers crossed for her.

@Echobelly It seems mean having exams just after a school holiday as the DCs can’t fully relax during the holidays without feeling like they ought to be doing some work! I hope DS is feeling better today.

I did A-level English (admittedly, a long time ago!) and I’ve just had to look up hubris and hamartia!

DS is supposed to be revising for tests, but has been too unwell today. He's seldom ill but he's been in bed today, not even any screens, so that means he's feeling rubbish. He usually does bounce back quickly, but obviously no revision today.

Trying to help him with English and it's ridiculous what they ask for in Shakespeare at this stage. DS is bright but has ADHD and can barely get his head around the language, but rather than starting them off with just, say, getting them to show understanding of at least how characters are feeling etc the curriculum seems to demand they know all these tropes of tragedy like 'Hubris' and 'Hamartia', which is blantantly bloody leftover Michael Gove/Boris Johnson 'Let's teach 'em like a public school in the 1800s' nonsense 😡I mean, I am a philosophy/literature grad and can be cynical of trying to be 'down the kids' but this is totally unrelateable, plus it made some sense in a context where students were all studying Latin, Greek and Classical Civilisation but seems bizarre now.

The deadline for options was February but we haven't heard anything yet.

DD was invited to do triple science, so I'm guessing that she'll get that one. School also put her in the EBacc group, so she's bound to get Spanish as that was the language option.

DD thinks she'll hear after half term but that's just a guess.

We found out via letter on our parent app the allocated options and DD hasn’t got her first choices
she choose
French
Geog
PE and RE but the school have since decided they aren’t running RE, her first choice reserve was History but she hasn’t been allocated that so she has been allocated Business Studies

She is gutted and doesn’t understand why she can’t do both History and Geog when some friends are but I know it’s all about timetabling etc, just rough when we have to wait this week whilst we are on half term to see if there is any way she can take History

The only subject we know about so far is Science as they've just issued the invitations for Triple Science. I'm guessing that will mean a Set reshuffle once they know who has accepted the invitation.
(DD has. Her sister is confused why someone would voluntarily sign up for that much extra work but suspect if in two years she gets her invitation she will also do it!)