To ask what amount of independent study is reasonable for Year 11 students per week?

[jillowarriorqueen]

DD1 is in year 11. She attends the best performing state school in the local area. However, she has never seemed to get a lot of homework throughout KS3 and the first part of KS4, maybe a couple of hours a week max.

I have recently met with the Head of Curriculum and Learning and she has been pretty casual about the GCSE results, saying that they only need a bunch of 4s to qualify for their 6th form and that my DD will easily get that.

I agree, she will. But I don't want her to get a fist full of 4s and have to be restricted to applying to her current school sixth form. She is a bright kid, but has fallen into a toxic friendship group that is far from aspirational in terms of academics. She has spent much of her secondary education so far trying to intervene in child protection issues surrounding self harm and suicidal ideation in order to "save" a number of her troubled friends.

I want her to get away from her current school and have the chance to go where her dad teaches, which is much more academic and inspirational. I want her to be free of these friendships that are simply wearing her out and dragging her down. She has said she would like to go there too, but doesn't understand the sacrifices she will need to make in terms of time in order to get there ( It's one of the top grammar schools in the UK, and a state school to boot).

Given that she is in mostly top sets in year 11, I would expect her to be studying for 2 hours a night minimum, but this has met with tears and masses of resistance.

What do you think is a reasonable amount of independent study per week for a bright year 11 with a desire to get a fistful of 7s and 8s? AIBU asking for one hour a night or should I be helping her to aim for more time of independent study, given that school seems incapable of giving much homework. This is a separate matter that I need to take up with them, I know. But in the meantime, what do you think is acceptable study time?

Thanks in advance.

2 hours a night is a lot especially if she does extra curricular stuff. Would you like to be forced to do 2 hours of extra work every evening?

An hour a night at the moment and build it up nearer the exams. You don't want burn out. Give her one weekend day off per week too.

Rather than 'time per night' you could instead discuss where she needs to be.
e.g.

• All y10 work needs to have been transferred to revision notes / cards / mind maps.
• All y10 maths & science should be understood
• Something for MFL re vocab & grammar

Then when are mocks? Plan back from them in terms of revision notes & learning for them.

You say she is at the best performing state for her area. Is your area particularly dire? I'm surprised that any well performing state would be giving the impression they are happy with 4s for top sets.

Over on the 'Secondary education' board there is a y11 support thread you may like to join/follow www.mumsnet.com/Talk/secondary/3626184-Starting-Yr11-Gcses-2020-Support-Thread-Edited-at-OPs-request

I think 2 hours a night a lot at this point of the year. I have a year 11 and am not involved in his study as he does well so I just want him to continue what he’s doing. But if I were involved I’d be looking at getting him gradually ramp it up nearer the exams and really focus his revision and also a good couple of weeks concerted effort before mocks .

Teen that is a good plan but I’m just worried the two( making cards etc and using them )will overlap ie will run out of time. Our mocks are in Nov .

Should our priority be to get all the cards made and areas understood?

That would be my priority.

Making the cards / mind maps will be revision in itself.
I'm also sort of assuming that as top set she'll pretty much understand everything anyway.
What did she do you end y10 exams, and how well did she do then? If she revised for them then there won't be much stuff between y10 and Nov.

Say mocks are end Nov, then before half term make sure all the cards are made etc (so she'll have been through everything once).

Then just before half term, she makes a revision plan for up to mocks, of say 4hrs most days over half term & weekends and 90 mins after school 4 days a week.

December she drops back again. Xmas holidays makes notes for the new stuff from y11 and works a bit on any weak areas from the mocks (1 or 2 subjects only).

Then ramps up again for second mocks (presuming she has them).

I don't think expecting 2hrs solid from now until June is sustainable, so it needs to come with peaks and troughs.

That is really helpful. What would we do withoutMN. Would be helpful if schools sent simple advice out to parents like this.

My yr 11 DD does not get much homework either

She goes overs everything she learnt that day when she gets home from school, creating 5 or so revision cards for the subject. She will go to the extra revision classes but I don’t expect her to then do another 2 hours!

If it is art homework then that can take her many hours

Also you can use the revision guides to test yourself they have a lot of info in them

The thing is, different pupils can cope with different amounts. If you go to the y11 thread I linked to above you'll get more views.

My eldest did GCSEs under the old system, so fewer exams and quite a lot of CAs. My youngest is in y10, she struggles to do any homework after school at all as she finds the day so tiring.

You do need to remember that y11 is a marathon and they can't keep working at peak level for 9 months. You have to build in rest breaks, and they have to have down time.

But every hour they do now is an hour (or 45mins really) they won't need to do in April/May. My DD1 had cut down mocks with e.g. only selected papers for science. She certainly found revising for the papers she had done for mocks was far easier than the ones she was revising from scratch.

Should be around 12 hours a week to get higher grades. The top sixth forms expect 7s to access A level courses, sometimes 6s.
It would be a good idea to look at sixth form criteria with her.

If she’s in a group of kids who aren’t working and the school says she can stay with 4s (low passes) and she is not motivated then I would say it will be a real struggle to get her to work as hard as she probably will need to to access more competitive sixth form providers.

I think TeenPlusTwenties has it.

I teach English. 2 hours a night from now until the exams may lead to burnout. I’ve seen that happen more than it should.

After Xmas is where it should ramp up, but you’re right in that she should be the one motivating herself rather than being micro-managed. She’ll get far more from that approach in the long run.

I did GCSEs a long time ago when it was mainly exams, if she's that bright she doesn't need to do two hours a night additional work! I did little to no revision and got nothing lower than an A. Maybe your daughter is a C/4 grade student, forcing her to do two hours study a night after 8 hours at school is just going to make her resent you, it won't miraculously change her grades. They might improve a little, but not enough for the amount of work put in. Maybe her teacher knows this.

Oh, and I realise why you want her away from all of it, but she sounds like an exceptionally kind friend.

Our school recommends two hours per night. We surveyed post 16 students and found that those who say they studied significantly more than 2h each day didn't perform any better.

I should add that that includes homework time. So say an hour on homework then an hour revising something else.

Research suggests that 20-30 minutes chunks per subject is more efficient. So if she has just done maths and science homework, do 30 minutes apiece on say English and French.

We do a lift share and I do morning so get them when they are sleepy and don’t talk much so use the time to impart my cheesy bits of wisdom to amuse myself.

Slogans for this year are : how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time (ie pace yourself but keep at it ) and Don’t be Boris (have a sensible, functional plan and don’t be a twat). Marathon not a sprint is a good way of looking at it in my book.

Wow. My DS did his homework, tassomai every night (20 mins) and then revised from Easter. He got 9s, 8s and 6s in essay subjects (just diagnosed with dyslexia last month)
I work in a high achieving school and I see on a daily basis very stressed kids who i feel work too hard. Their results are fantastic, but they suffer from very poor mental health as a result.
Kids do not need very high results they need enough to get to the next stage.
Concentrate on those subjects she's falling behind on and aim for the top scores in those subjects she wants to continue studying and a minimum of a 4 in English & maths.
2 hours a night is fine in the run up to the exams but not all year

WhyBirdStop GCSEs from a long time ago are nothing like GCSEs nowadays. They aren't modular, have no coursework / CAs and have much more content.

My dd goes to the sort of school you want yours to go to next year (I.e. state grammar, ultra-selective).

She is in sixth form now, but in her GCSE year routinely did 2.5-3 hours studying every evening. Normally her homework would take 2 hours, and then she’d spend an extra hour on personal revision.

She got eight 9s and two 8s.

2 hours a night - including homework? DS gets home at the back of 5 so adding another 3-3.5 hours into the day seems a lot (not like in my day!).

Is that the norm? His weekend are pretty packed too with sports and he has school on Saturday anyway.

My ds has just started at 6th form college ( his school doesn’t have a 6th form ) and I would say it’s not all about the hours spent but spending the hours properly.

He has a friend who said they revised and studied for 3 hours a night in the final few months of year 11. He massively under achieved in his grades and is having to re-sit. Turns out he wasn’t actually revising for those 3 hours as would get distracted on Xbox/phone etc.

What worked for us was getting ds a new desk and chair which he chose and then set up a study area in his room. We then had all of his revision guides and bought a coloured folder for each subject and decided which were his strongest and weakest subjects.

From that I helped him devise a “timetable”
of revision. Ds has Aspergers and needs some support with organisation etc but he was really happy with his plan.

We used apps/YouTube too which were massively helpful and aimed for 3 hours a day broken up with time for meals/gym/Xbox etc and then changed again after mocks when it was obvious what he was struggling with.

He did very well in his exams and is now one week into A levels and said how hard they are compared to GCSE.
The 3 A levels he is doing were his strongest subjects at GCSE and he achieved grade 9/9/7 in them but definitely believes that starting revision early helped, rather than cramming at the last minute.

She needs to want to study and get good grades; the amount of study per subject will depend on how well she's doing in each one. Your DD is the one who needs to set the schedule, if she won't work then she just won't do well; if she isn't interested in GCSE results then does she care about university / future career that could help with motivation? My DM used to say I had to take one evening and one weekend day off, to properly rest and relax, which I think really helped with focus on the other days as well as not feeling guilty during non-study time. I didn't like doing much on the other weekend day either TBH so I did probably 3-5 hours on the 4 week nights and just an hour at the weekend for any official homework that couldn't wait, usually straight after school on Friday or late at night on Sunday. Some subjects probably got 30 minutes per week at most and others 3-4 hours, they each got what I needed to put in. Funnily enough that's how I still prefer to work now; binge work a load of hours then lots of days off.

I was head of year 11 last year. 1-2 hours per school night and 2 hours per weekend is enough. She needs a life outside of school. Away from her toxic friends but doing something other than working.

Also, get her the CGP revision guides for all of her subjects, they are packed full of activities and questions. Set up a revision plan that works like this:
15-20 minutes revising maths
5/10 minute break
15 minutes on English
5/10 minute break
10-15 minutes on science

Change the subjects each night so she does different things each night. Reduce revision time if she has homework.

Your approach is wrong, in my opinion. The "hours per night" setup is ridiculous and counterproductive because it's just too slow and gentle for it to be memorable. The key to revision is repetition - going at 2 hours per night means that DD won't get through all the content at least twice - once for relearning and once for remembering. Bear in mind that there is still more content to come!

My DS just finished his GCSEs with eight grade 8s (A) and two grade 9s (A*) having followed the following method:

1 month before the first exam of a set of mock exams, he would begin revision:
On a weekday, from 6PM - 12AM with a one hour break for dinner.
On a weekend, from 11AM - 12AM with a one hour break for lunch and another hour for dinner.

He did that for any mock exams. For his GCSEs, he did the same thing except the 1 month became 2.5 months (i.e. he started revising for his actual exams on March 1st and his first exam was on May 13th).

During his exam period, his revision schedule was more 8PM - 3AM as slept as soon as he came home. This was excellent for morning exams because he'd have revised the content just 5 hours before the exam.

This is an extremely intense schedule, but it worked really well because it creates an adrenaline rush that you can't get in 2 hours. I think he got satisfaction from getting so much done in the 47 hours of revision he did per week.

I hope you found this helpful - and if not, I hope you manage to find something that works for your DD.

Best of luck to your DD!