AIBU to consider booking a holiday for a week during the Easter school holidays when DD1 is studying for GCSE's?

[kslatts]

DD sits her GCSE's next spring, school have told the pupils they will be running revision classes during Easter holiday. We are considering the following 3 options.

1. Stay at home so DD can revise all through the Easter holiday and go to the extra revision classes if she wants or needs to.

2. Go away for one week of the two week holiday, but somewhere that DD will easily be able to continue revising but also have some time away from the books.

3. Go away for one week, leave revision at home to give DD a proper break from the revision.

We already have a holiday booked for next summer after the GCSE's are finished, so am not really bothered whether we go away at Easter it not, but I was thinking option 3 would be good to give dd a break for a week. Genuinely interested to hear what other people think.

Leave the holiday, honestly.

I am generally all in favour of a nice break, but that close to exams is a bit selfish I think (sorry.)

Yabu to have two holidays

Option 2 - a break will do her good v

The key is what does she want?

Personally I think I would wait for holidays until after the exams when she can relax properly

Was going to say what does she want to do? That should decide it, surely?

Don't do it. Be ready for years of never going away at Easter or may half term if you have more than one child.

I've got a year 11 child and I wouldn't consider it. He'll probably have a break,over the Easter weekend but that's about it. I would rather have the time at home, and if he is up to,date, the we could always go for day trips.

DS1 went on a week's army camp during his Easter break when doing GCSEs which DH and I actively encouraged.

We told him to go away, have fun, don't think about exams and come back refreshed and ready to knuckle down and be focused.

For us/him it worked but, that said, he's not one who had any struggles with school work. Even so, I think it can be a good thing to take a break.

We told him to go away, have fun, don't think about exams and come back refreshed

Did you ask him what he wanted to do or did you just tell him?

Thanks for the replies, dd currently thinks a break would be good but I think nearer the time might change her mind.

Rivercam - that sounds like a good option. Maybe we will plan to do a couple of days out if dd feels she is on track.

We were in exam hell last year both GCSE and A Levels, my DC did go away at Easter but only for a long weekend and that was to fit in a Uni visit. Having said that they had been away at February half term so didn't need another holiday!

It also depends on your DD, when DD1 did GCSEs we did do a week at Easter, her choice, but then she didn't need to start revision until late April.

I would forgo the Easter holiday, sadly. They need to be doing loads of revision at this stage.

We did a short break Good Friday to Easter Monday.
So no long flights or anything, and a clear break.
No missed revision sessions as they won't be running them then.
I think it was a good compromise.

NB If your DD is doing Drama and has her performance soon after the holidays do not go away for a whole week as her group will be disrupted from rehearsing/fine tuning.

Good Friday to Easter Monday could be an option.

A break from revision sounds like a good idea now

Come Easter time though, you would regret the disruption to a revision schedule. I would do a maximum of Fri-Mon, but don't expect even that not to mess things up.

I am taking dd1 away at Easter. Just for 4 days, we'll be busy for those 4days though so no revision will be done then. I think it will be good for her to have a break, but my DD is the type to put herself under unnecessary pressure. If she was a different type of child then i might think differently.

In my teacher role I see loads of families going on holiday during term time in year 11, so I can't get too worked up over a holiday during a holiday.

Thing is, this is GCSEs, she's not had to face exam stress like this before, so she and you have no idea what she'll be like at Easter. She might be a stressed out nightmare and the idea of going away when she's not to revise be an extra pressure she doesn't cope well with - or she'll be fine on the holiday, then the week after feel like she's got to work twice as hard...

If you have a holiday booked at the summer, there's no need to go away at a time that's so stressful for her, you might be better off using that holiday budget for a Christmas break or doing 2 holidays over the summer.

We did a weekend camping break with good friends.. We were supposed to go to France for a week but the closer the exams, the less happy dd was about going away.

Option 1

DS1 is doing 2 GCSE's this summer. One of them is German so we are going to Berlin for 4 days.

Next year we wouldn't even consider it. Sorry.

Option 1.

I revised my GCSEs all the night before. I did well considering. I found the idea of revising so much very dull and so I had fun and didn't stress until the night before. GCSEs are important don't get me wrong but ime they didn't need weeks of revision. A levels are a lot worse on the other hand!

corgio I think I can safely say that if my DD had not put in the 'weeks of revision' she would have come out with 3Cs at most, and the rest would have been fails.

I went on holiday just before my gcse and my dbro university finals. It was the worst holiday ever for my poor mum. Westher and accommodation was lousy too.

It depends what kind of dc your dd is. I was the type to stress and put lots of pressure on myself, so when in the Easter Holiday of Year 11 my parents arranged for my grandparents to take me to Wales for a few days, it really helped me recharge and refocus on my subject and I came out with an A, 4 B's and 5 C's in the end which was amazing considering I was an average child, on C/D border for most subjects.