Sixth form questions

[mmzz]

What is good info to find out when going to a sixth form open evening?

Teacher turnover for teaching A levels?
Expectation of cover lessons?
% who start the course, but for whatever reason don't sit the A level (thinking of St Olave's recent press coverage)?
Feasibility of starting an A level course, and realising its not for you, and then changing after a few weeks?

Is it acceptable to ask how many DC on average each year go to Russell Group universities, and how many, if any, go to Oxbridge? And also does the school have someone who can give information and advice to those considering Oxbridge? (Or is that all just too pushy - the equivalent of taking your 3 year old to a primary school open evening and asking what their G&T provision is like?)

I'd say just ask anything that could be relevant to your DC. My DD has just moved schools and one thing that shocked her was the class sizes, 1, 3 and 8. She can just about cope with the 3 and 8, but hates being the only one as she likes listening to others and the company.

Your DD has 1-1 teaching?

MMZZ - some of those things you migt find on the school's website.

For example, my DS's school shows university destinations. It also has a separate page detailing what subjects people are going on to to study.

It also shows how many take each subject and the split between A/A/B etc eg. 35 Economics students 18 A, 16 A and 1 B.
8 German 7 A* 1 A

and so on.

If going to a larger school/sixth form it would be worth asking what size classes the students are taught in. A local sixth form has a 1500 intake per year (yr 12 and yr 13). Sometimes lectures are delivered in groups of 100 (like at a uni). They still get decent grades though.

Also regarding UCAS/Oxbridge our school website has a section detailing the number of staff that deal with this. (We have approximately 40+ go to Oxbridge each year).

Most collages can give you retention figures but the reality is that it is complex. Retention figures can be artificially skewed. To be honest I don't think they are that valuable. Meet the careers team - see how you feel about their spiel.
Most parents ask about class sizes, what the pastoral provision is like; the contact time. More recently patents have been asking about safety on site (due to the risk of attack- we've been much much much more tight in security for the last 18 months) also it is worth asking for ALIS or ALPS for the subjects your son or daughter is interested in.

Parents not patents!

ALIS? ALPS? Contact time?
Security on site?? The parents are right - a school would be a very newsworthy, high casualty soft target that would put fear in the heart of every parent in the UK - but that's never occurred to me before now!

At DS's school the gates are open. All you'd have to do is turn up when there is a all-school assembly (dates and times available on the calendar which is linked on the homepage of the website).

We are an open site but we do have a permanent secure guard and cameras at all door entrances. All students and staff have to swipe in to get the doors to open and we all wear ID cards at all times.

Contact time varies- some schools have 5x 1 hour lessons per subject. Some have only 4. We have 4.5 hours per week per subject. So it's worth finding this out- especially if they are doing 3 or 4 A levels- how much teaching time are they actually receiving? ALPS and ALIS judge the department's results against other colleges so you can see how the students progress compared to other students with similar GCSEs in other establishments.

Check on the lesson time v home learning expectations, our grammar sixth form has 1 hour of lessons v 2 hours self learning - as its minimum expectation.

Only go for what you think is actually achievable - DD16 goes there, DD15 will not - she is less self motivated.

Is sixth form just a completely different experience - even years 12 and 13 at the same school you've been at since year 7?

I'd never heard of ALPS or ALIS before - will google them now.

Another one with teaching time being a big one for DS1 his chosen sixth form is 5 hours a week in class time per A level plus 2 hours short course his second choice was 3/4 hours per week per A level and 1 hour short course. It was also more of a case of them picking him for the first one. Whilst we asked lots of questions it was more of an interview of him.

I would add the following:

1. Can pupils take 4 subjects in Y12 and then drop one at the end of the year or are they limited to 3 subjects from the start of Y12?
2. Does the sixth form still enter pupils for AS exams or not?
3. I would find out about the sixth form "induction" process - do they allow taster sessions in new subjects before starting courses?
4. How flexible are they about A level options - one advantage about a larger sixth form is that there may be more possible subject combinations. How flexible would they be to students swapping subjects after GCSE results?
5. If a desired A level is oversubscribed - how do they decide which students get to take the course?
6. Do pupils have to take to take either A levels or BTECs or can they take a combination of both?

My dd is at a large sixth form and class sizes are no bigger than they would be in a school sixth form so don't recognise the scenario described by a PP.

Catslife - Only some of the lectures are delivered in groups of 100 - there are still classes with about 30 in and other tutor groups of 15 or so. I didn't mean to mislead anyone into thinking they were always taught in such large groups.

What is the school's approach to EPQ (especially if "only" allowed to do 3 A Level subjects in Year 12)?
If studying 3 subjects, is it easy to change to a different subject, and drop one, if wanted? Is there a deadline for doing this? If doing 4 subjects, what happens if DC wants to drop one?
How many free subjects do the students get per week? Do they have to stay on site during these, or can they go off site/home early if the end of the day?

I just looked up "EPQ" and got some idea of what it is from the AQa website. Its just a guess but is it mainly used to demonstrate subject interest for what the student wants to do at university? eg if you wanted to do economics (say), you might choose to do an EPQ on the history of customs unions?

Thanks for starting this thread, mmmz.

In light of recent MN threads, I'd be asking "How is failure assessed at end of yr12 that would be bad enough to prevent them from being allowed to continue on same course in yr13?"

This isn't a question for yr11 DD (who likes pushy schools), but I think I'd want to use that as a barometer of whether the school had an overall pushy or supportive ethos, relevant to younger DC.

I am in the very weird position that some of these questions seem very irrelevant to DD. If I say why, it will sound like hopeless bragging. High achievers support, time-tabling, Flexibility, AS2s, & over-subscription rules, I suppose are worth asking about. I will ask DD if she has a gut feeling about contact time.

As lljkk says, it's important to find out what grades are required at the end of Y12 in order to be eligible to continue to Y13.

If a 6th form college as opposed to a school:

• to what extent do you keep parents informed (reports, access to attendance, grades, parents evenings)
• what is the reality (or lack of it) with their pastoral care system
• what information / advice is there for pupils not wanting to go on to university

Pastoral care has been mentioned a few times and I'm trying to think what that means in practice.

So far, i've come up with:-

1. Bullying - surely every educational establishment at least pretends to deal with bullying?
2. Exam Stress - chatting to and reassuring students who feel they aren't coping with their studies
3. Other stress - isn't that the parents' job?
4. helping students integrate - it would be nice, but universities don't do it
5. Post A-level advice - good advice would be invaluable. Bad advice would be worse than none at all.

I'd want to know though if DS was skipping classes, not applying himself or at risk of getting chucked out at the end of Y12. Is it not a given that they would tell parents about this on a timely basis?

" Other stress - isn't that the parents' job?"

Not all students find it easy to speak to their parents about feeling really bad. I think of myself as very accessible (and dc confirm it), but when ds was having flashbacks about something that happened in our family to the point where he couldn't focus on his work we were the last people he felt he could open up to: it was too close and personal. The college should have a counsellor who can help to deal with anything that will affect college work.

With regards to pastoral care/ some sixth forms don't have tutor groups so it's simply down to how good each individual teacher is at getting in contact with parents. Some like ours do have tutor groups and the tutor is responsible for this as well as writing the tutee's reference and for initial parental contact. So I would prefer a sixth form WITH a tutor system.

"helping students integrate - it would be nice, but universities don't do it"

Universities are strong on pastoral support these days and any tutor worth their salt would be happy to speak to a student who feels unhappy or out of place. At my university, at least, every new student will be assigned a personal tutor who chats to them once a semester & makes sure they are ok, and who can also refer them on to the specially designed Pastoral Support Officer (every subject has one); if things get more serious we have access to trained counsellors.

We find it pays to put in the support early rather than wait until a student goes completely to pieces.

As for colleges and attendance etc what dc's colleges have done is to have a website where you can log in and see all the stats about your child: attendance, submission of essays, results. Up to you to check at regular intervals, but info is all there.

I would be interested in careers advice and liaison with businesses/universities etc, and not least career-orientated enrichment activities: do they get a chance to talk to people in various professions, do they get a chance to visit relevant workplaces, do they get help with work experience?

Do they still have cover lessons in the sixth form? eg at a school would they take A-level teachers out of Year 12 lessons to give extra support to year 11s ? Would they put NQTs in the sixth form? Or teachers who don't have a degree in that subject?

For other parents reading I would advise to not expect full information from secondary schools, the top three academic achieving sixth forms where I live did no sales pitch or leaflet drops at the secondary schools open evenings. so unless you already know or searched many of DS1 friends missed applications deadlines, some believe they were out of catchment or worse they did not even know that certain sixth form existed till it was too late.