Y10- 2025/2026

DD is off to Spain tomorrow with school. No looking forward to the 4am drop off or the 2am pick up on Wednesday

@AnnieAverage which art is she interested in? A few are more modern and others a bit more renaissance, if you will. I love V&A as it mixes art with History, and if she likes Classics that might be a good choice. I bet there would be something American in there to help her with visualising the History of a time too? DD has swerved American History but we did the Vietnam war for my GCSE's and that was pretty horrific so possibly not as dull.

We're in need of a break I think. She seems to have done test after test for the last 2 weeks.

Off to the Science show at ExCel tomorrow so up in London later for the night. Anyone else on here going? I was hoping it would give her career ideas as she was into STEM when I booked it a while back, but now she's moved on to Psychology and Politics it seems. I can't keep up!

Tate Modern perhaps? But you can probably fit a couple in if you are just doing galleries, or one and shopping or a museum. If she like Classical history the British museum.

Well here we are almost half a term of y10 completed!
Dd has radically changed her view of some subjects based on luck with teachers - good luck for Spanish and chemistry and bad luck for maths.

She told me today she wished her school offered Classical Civilisation instead of History because American history is pretty dull (agree!).

Art is living up to its terrifying reputation - workload is immense and dd is definitely in a love/hate relationship with the subject but half term is the cut-off to dump-and-switch options and she had decided to stick it out. It seems to have the best community of all the subjects - a lot of lunchtimes are being spent sketching and rummaging on the art supplies cupboard!

I never thought she’d be interested in art, it’s a total surprise. I’m planning a Christmas visit to London as she has never been to an art museum or gallery. Where shall I take her?!

Parent's chat this evening, thankfully they have worked out how to do it online, which is so much better, 5 minutes each, if you need longer you make an appointment, means everyone can speak to the teachers they need to. Last one was pointless, well not quite, but when you get a family talking to maths or english for 20+ minutes you end up missing your slots. This is much better.

I am not expecting to need more than 5 minutes, he seems ok. Came home yesterday "I got 31 out of 31 in the physics test" - excellent that's good going into parent's chat. Yeah it should be fine.

Ours wants to do Law at uni, he has a plan he wants to become a KC, he was intent on doing a maths degree first and then studying for law afterwards. "how many years do you need funding for higher education?" (early retirement age disappears over the horizon) - but he's slowly shifting to wanting to do law "I think at LSE" (early retirement still absent presumed missing), so he has wanted to do further maths, physics and chemistry for a'level but piped up this weekend and said that he might do further maths, physics and politics. Who knows?

He knows the 6th form he wants to go to, it has a mock up "court room" which he clearly wants to get his hands on! And at that moment all he is concerned about is drama "it will help with being in court" plus it's fun. He's quite good to be fair, confidence he does not lack.

But we have spoken to his teachers for a while, he is one of those students that you or the school never need to contact each other about apart from to sign permission slips to do out of hours "team sport fixtures".

But you never know he might need some more directed parental nagging. Will see later on.

Following on from my last post, DC has had some good and realistic work experience ideas so I'm pleased about that. One is to see if he can do it at Capel Manor, where potentially he might go to study an animal care course if GCSEs are not so great, so that would work on a few levels. Plus he can get there easily from my parent's house, so could stay with them while he's doing it.

My daughter has started on her adhd meds, she had first review today and they need to be increased but they seemed happy.

she also got accepted for work experience at her old primary - she used AI to help her write the email! It was only her second email she sent which was great, I was expecting more of a struggle to get a place.

At the moment DD wants to do a T-Level in Animal Care... but I'm worried she's selling herself short as she only needs 4s in Maths and English and a Pass/Merit in Btec Animal Care for that... but she's predicted 6s/7s in everything except English. But we'll see... after all top grades in T Level are supposed to be equivalent to top grades in A level.

@LetItGoToRuin I think dd has had much more homework - every subject every week and a few tests, although 3 new teachers so suspect that's also to help them guage what they need to go over etc.

So far she wants to do A'Levels in History, Computer Science, Politics and English but she has also mentioned Psychology and Philosophy...so who knows. Tbf a couple of years ago it was more STEM based so I will wait a bit longer. Makes finding somewhere to do A' Levels hard though as many places don't do such a varied selection.

Nice to hear lots of updates! DD seems to be ticking along happily so far. Surprisingly, homework hasn’t ramped up at all yet – unless she is supposed to be doing general revision/consolidation which she’s not mentioned🤔

It’s nice that their timetable is now just their GCSE subjects (and PE and personal development) although DD has a few double lessons – the day with double English and double maths is a low point, though there is always a break/lunch splitting her double lessons. Friday morning is ‘languages’ morning for her too, with either double French and Spanish, or double Spanish and French. She was a bit worried last week when they had two speaking tests back to back on the same topics!

Has anyone noticed a jump in the difficulty of any subjects? DD has really noticed it in music where they’ve gone from quite general lessons (to be accessible to the non-musicians) to higher level stuff (as they all had to be at least at grade 4 on an instrument to be accepted to do music.) She’s enjoying it so far, but it did take her by surprise!

It seems they don’t do proper work experience at DD’s school – in Y10 they have a ‘virtual work experience day’ which sounds like a cop-out to me, but we’ll see…

On the subject of 6th form, at present DD thinks she’ll want to stay at her current school, but I am keen for her to see a few more options. It’s quite normal here for people to move schools for 6th form (grammar area) but DH thinks it’s weird to consider it, because it wasn’t the thing where he grew up... We’ll see. Such decisions feel like a long way off, but the time will fly.

Do your DCs know what subjects they want to study post-16? DD is very keen on languages, but there is that feeling that languages are something AI does pretty well… DD is an all-rounder so we’re encouraging her to keep her options option…

Mine doesn't want to stay at the same school so we'll be looking around. The colleges here mostly don't do A Levels so will see what Btecs they have and check out other schools for A Levels. Not doing any in person visits this year though, think we need another year of narrowing down ideas.

We're in an 11-16 area which is totally new for me as i just stayed at school for A levels, as did all my friends. We went to the local 6th form college open evening last week and DD really enjoyed looking round (it's actually where DH went 35 years ago) She was impressed with A level Drama, Classical Civilization, English Lang and Lit and liked History, French and RS so a few decisions to be made over the next two years. Her favourite part was not looking at Maths, Science or sport and knowing she'll never have to do them again!

We are also in an 11-16 school and most kids go onto the nearby 6th form..
DD knows she wants fo peruse dance so will do a BTEC advanced in dance as well as 2 ALevels but not sure in what subjects yet

@TickingAlongNicely we're in an 11-16 area. It's not clear what path DC1 will want to take, so we've not looked at open days yet. She may take A-Levels, for which there are three colleges sixth form colleges she's likely to consider (based on DC1's experience), although one is rubbish for music which she would definitely take. However I think it's slightly more likely she will want to do a vocational course in catering, and it's a different set of colleges that offer these courses.

We've got through the first four weeks at school with no detentions or notifications home, so it's an improvement on Y9 so far .

I think my year 10 DS will probably stay at his school sixth form, but my eldest has just started at sixth form college. We went to an open day there in the spring of his year 10 - it was helpful in terms of starting to think about what he wanted to do, and then revisiting in autumn of year 11 to confirm he definitely wanted to go there.

@TheLivelyViper DD may have got the years slightly wrong but that was the gist of it - the GCSE is with AQA but not sure if they do a different one for A' Level. This was just from a chat in their lesson so nothing shown to parents about it yet. I think it would age a few of us!

What specification does the school do? If you do knoe. Just out of interest as it must be new, as I don't think any of the main three (AQA, Edexcel,OCR) do that but could be mistaken.

Plus 20 years even for a history death study is quite short. They have to do around 200 - 300 years across the whole A-level (rough Gove/Ofquel guidelines). So NEA has to cover 100 years give or take, breath study around 100 as well, and depth studies vary around 30-40 years so that seems a little too short.

It seems like a good and useful topic to do though, really examines the extent and pace of change.

Not in any specific 11-16 area but dd will move schools for college we think. I do think they should have a taster hour for subjects not commonly taught at GCSE in advance, as I think several subjects would interest her that aren't on her radar.

Depressingly this weekend she told me their History dept teaches "The rise of technology 1980-2000" for A' Level History. I said at least I should be able to help her with the homework... 😳

Is anyone else in a 11-16 area... and are you thinking about colleges yet? Open Days are starting and I was wandering if its worth having a look this year in preparation. They go through college courses with them in Yr9 to make sure they don't drop subjects they will need for potential courses, but don't look at the individual colleges in the same way.

Thank you starting this thread!

DD’s school doesn’t do work experience in Year 10 any more so we don’t have that stress. It only happens in Year 12.

DD’s already feeling the pressure to do well. We went to a “Parent Partnership” evening this week where the head really stressed how performance at GCSE shapes your future life. I actually don’t buy that too much but he was convincing so DD is now stressed despite being in Set 1 for everything.

@TickingAlongNicely DD is doing triple science. She says it's a fairly even mix of boys and girls. I think there are a few classes doing TS though, so it's probably easier to balance out the groups.

We have a Yr10 evening coming up for parents. Unless things have changed since last year, DD said they usually do work experience towards the end of Yr10. Hopefully they'll tell us a bit more soon.

DS has work experience in the first half of spring term and they were supposed to get it sorted out last term. I think a lot of people haven’t done it yet as there is a lot of messaging about it at the moment.

We have to sort work experience but no dates or actual mention from school yet, I just know because of friends with older dc.
I'm going to book dc1 into my work as a back-up but encourage her to think about what she'd like to do and organise herself.