Y11 2025/26… come and join

I’m really leaving DD to it too, she sounds very similar to @36and3DD. She’s incredibly motivated and hardworking and has her eye on the goal and that has been all the way through really and I know we are very fortunate.

She is going to a lot of Art sessions at lunch as the content is enormous so she’s constantly ploughing through that. She went to History last week, they have a session a week. She had Mocks in November, now teachers are saying they are going to be doing mocks again in the next few weeks, no fixed timetable and in class as opposed to the more formal Autumn ones.

She looks a bit tired, she eats and sleeps well but you just can’t get away from the pressure and I think the expectation is weighing heavy on her.

She’s had offers from 2 of the 3 sixth forms she applied to, the last offer is due just before the Easter holidays.

Our school sent out a timetables with available study classes 4 hrs for English and 2 hours for most other classes they ate doing a day for art. States you have to log in on Google and book which ever study sessions your going to attend. Limited spaces.

Do you pick specific subjects for the Easter course if it's a private one? I am still waiting as I think our school runs an Easter support course but I don't have the details yet.

DS also had December mocks, he had the pep talk from us about 10 days ago and seems to have done ok since in getting on with it!

To be honest, I’m leaving Dd to it so I couldn’t tell you how many hours she’s working. She’s always been good at knuckling down; I’ve never had to nag to do homework etc. Second round of mocks start next week and I know she’s working for them. School are still setting homework / mini quizzes / practise questions etc which is obviously all contributing to revision anyway. She attends, by choice, 2-3 lunch time clinics and has a tutor every fortnight. Then will attend a four day, intensive revision course over Easter.

My DD had saturday AM off with dress shopping and did homework for the rest of the day (an essay for the one option not in mock and her coursework to finalise for drama).
Today she did some revision, then 2 mock papers and studied the questions she got wrong. This was for her paper 3 math mock tomorrow.
It all felt a little more relaxed than usual, she's not worried about Maths and it's the last mock.

Mine has finally started to get into gear. Hard to tell exactly how much is being done but defo more than before

Yes our mocks were early dec so have had lots of downtime over Christmas and Jan and starting again a little bit since Feb

My dc has had a much needed weekend completely off, following 2 weeks of mocks and 14ish hours per week revision since xmas. They’ll start building up again from tomorrow, but gradually. Just the set homework and school based revision sessions this week, then starting to build in more. It’s a marathon not a sprint, as far as I’m concerned.

DD has done nothing and won't be doing any till Easter hols. Waiting on Science results but was on track for everything else.

DS is doing 1.5hrs every school night and 2hrs each weekend day. He also has 3hrs of intervention sessions after school during the week. In my mind it isn't quite enough but then I probably went over the top when I did mine and his November mock results had him on track. We will wait to see what he gets from the Feb mocks to see if I need to come down hard on doing more revision or if he's got it about right.

Mine has only done art as final exam is tomorrow and she has to hand in her portfolio. She's probably done about 12 hours though and is still at it. it'll be quite a relief for it to be over but then she has an English mock on Friday which she's done no revision for so far.

How much revision have your children done this weekend.
my son has done 1 hour maths, 2 hours history, 40 min science and 1 hour french. This includes Friday night, Saturday and Sunday.
it was a struggle to get him to do that. Not that motivated yet

We had the dress sorted months ago currently being stored by dress place, DD has not sorted shoes so hadn't booked in for alterations have a friend who might be able to help if I am stuck 🤞
It's an Aline with an underskirt was £450 but DD will do own hair, make
up, got lovely jewellery for sweet 16th to wear and don't care about a flashy entrance so just shoes and nails which she already offered to pay for.

I think all in for dress and alterations were looking at circa £475. Crazy money even before ticket (75), shoes, nails etc. But then I get it, it’s a rite of passage and they’ve worked hard.

Your DD would have been fine in our shop. That's something I honestly didn't think about when booking but i would now recommend to other parents to enquire about the sizing of samples when booking. It's expensive and the experience is the reason most go.

Sizing is an issue for us. Dd is tiny skinny. There were only a handful of size 0 dresses (they had American sizing in the shop so a UK 4) for her to try and even then she was being clipped and pulled in everywhere, we have loads of alterations to do to get it to fit tightly. So I get it with the inclusion factor, I’d say 90% of the dresses were size 6 (American) so UK 10.

DS managed to survive Macbeth, having moaned about it furiously yesterday evening, and was even quite chatty afterwards. He quite cheerfully asked if he could have Thursday off school to study for his FSMQ Additional Maths mock on Friday. Apparently he hasn't done anything for it at all, but it's ok because he'll just watch some videos on YouTube! 🤦‍♀️ £70 at Amazon later and he's got revision books arriving tomorrow. Absolutely no to the day off though.

We went too as I got a cancellation appointment at the local shop. I couldnt see us getting a dress as DD hated things "tooshiny", "too embellished", "spaghetti straps", 'slits"... the list went on. We were given 6 disks to put on dresses but ended up trying 9 on as the lady kept bringing them to us. On of them as really simple, nearly the same as one i got her for new years eve for 27€, but cost £295! Nothing about the dress justified the price at all. There was a full dress with a pretty corset and massive bow on the back costing nearly £600! In the end she found one she loved and was comfortable to wear, with the corset/basque and A line that she wanted. One of the cheapest ones in the store - still a lot of money but with all the stress of the exams, i felt it was right to do this and let her get excited with the dress shopping. It will need about 30cm chopped off the bottom as all the dresses are SO long. Most of them were lace up back so had some leeway with sizing but all bar a couple were xxs so it didnt feel inclusive. I felt a little sad for a girl there who was nervously joking about having to go to the gym, she looked beautiful.
They also did only one of each style per school and offered to sell us the sample for 10% off. It had a pulled thread so we didnt.

Yep! We were allowed to try 5. Dd binned off three within 20mins and then we had a fun 40mins of her taking on and off the final two. £330 later and we were out (still need to pay alterations on top 🤦🏻‍♀️). I’m glad it was all done and dusted in an hour though. I couldn’t be dealing with multiple shops each weekend. It was absolutely heaving with y11 girls though!

Edited to add: they only sell one of each style to each school to avoid clashes!

We had an hour too and I thought there was no chance, DD is so fussy however she was charging through them and decided really quickly!

Also just to add that they can fill out really quickly at this age - DS1 was that 6ft2 26-28 waist kid - 12 months later he’s 30-32 !

@eurotravel dd was telling me her friend got a gorgeous prom dress from Oxfam online.
I work in a comp in a deprived area, and while the girls always look amazing at prom, the thought of the collective spend makes me feel a bit icky.

@NotDarkGothicMama and @Littletreefrog look at Next - they do all sorts of sizes - 28 waist up ( which you could get altered / alter yourself just with a tuck )

We’re off to the prom dress shop today. You only get an hour in there and I know dd won’t commit to anything in that time!!