Year 12 - first half term DONE.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

new thread so we don't get lost. Well done to all our dc whether doing btech (or breach as autocorrect prefers to call it) or a levels. 1/6 of the way through this year. (blimey)

Kitten - it's smoked salmon and champagne for us on Xmas eve and since we have been living in China we go out for Xmas lunch to our favourite lunch and the owner always makes us a chocolate yule log.
We usually go away before Xmas, but now dcs are older I though it would be fine to be away over the Xmas holiday too, but dd is not impressed. Still better than last year when we flew back from Australia on Xmas day - one of my super cheap deals! We did have xmas day on the 26th though and we bought lots of Xmas cake, selection boxes and mincemeat in Australia so not too bad really.
Have not had Xmas in the UK since 1998 -so all pretty stress free for us really :)

The year you was last here was the year dd was born shang
Dd is excited for Christmas usual makeup and iPhone, can't buy headphones till January

it sounds really nice Shanghai :) an entirely ignorant question: how much if at all is christmas celebrated or noticed in china?

Not an ignorant question at all!
I live in the East of China so all major hotels have Xmas decorations up and my dd sings in the school choir and they perform at several hotels in the city every year. Shopping malls are also decorated (to a standard that would match any major city in the UK) and I can buy Xmas decs at my local shop. Younger Chinese (say around 25) are keen to celebrate western holidays and Valentine's day has also become quite a big event as has Halloween. Xmas is Santa, sleighs and trees, not the religious side, although there are a couple of churches in my city, but to attend some churches you need to have a foreign passport.
I imagine the west of China is very different though - Xinjiang province is mainly muslim as are some areas in the east and of course there is Tibetan Buddhism too.
I enjoy Xmas here as it is not hectic and when the Chinese are preparing for CNY - and that really is manic - we just get out of the country for some sunshine - no last minute shopping, visiting relatives and packed train journeys for us!

That's really interesting :) it would be natural for them to pick up on the santa side rather than the religious side. Is there a legal reason why some churches require foreign passports?

Do they do gifts for Cny?

I'd love to go over for a holiday. It would be really interesting.

Gifts for CNY are usually cash in red envelopes - hongbao. People also take boxes of fruit, cooking oil and new clothes when they are visiting people. I give my cleaning lady cash and when she goes back to her home town her relatives would expect cash and gifts.
As foreigners we are not allowed to hand out religious material or preach to the local population - therefore you need to be a foreigner to attend the church service.
How this works with the two Chinese churches I know of or the YMCA - I have no idea. The amity foundation also operates in my city and works with the women's Union which is a government organisation to support very low income families.
It is a fascinating country for a holiday and high speed trains make it easy to get around, especially between Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, xi'an etc.

We have DDs first sixth form parent consultation this week, and we won't see their monitoring report till we actually turn up. One (important for us because she will be continuing it to A level) subject has also said that the teachers are too busy to see all parents, and so will only see the 'cause for concern' parents. It is only a month since the cause for concern meetings though! The rest of us haven't had anything, not even the two lots of info (settling and predictions) we were promised at the new parents meeting.

Can anyone tell me if this is at all common? I can't quite get my head round the lack of an opportunity to see the report first and decide from there if we have any concerns. The school deciding all by themselves if we are deemed important enough to talk to, feels completely arse about tit.

that's a bit odd mint, you can't possibly know if you should be concerned or not!

At dds we had the report last week, then the tutors see every parent and there are meetings with spec teachers for any cause of concern.

Oh I see shanghai, confusing for any home grown Christians. I bet how much to put in the hongbao is a bit of a minefield too!
We are attempting to save up for somewhere like china when dd goes off to uni.

We had a written report just after half term. All the email info letters etc are sent to dd and bypass parents completely. So compared to last year when we were inundated with GCSE info, am feeling slightly redundant.
I don't know if your dds sixth form have the same system mint but all dds results and predictions etc are on a secure parents portal that you have to log into via the sixth form website to see the data. The only problem is that all the login info etc was sent to dd so took me a while to work out it was there!

We have a written report every end of term and grades every half term, I tend to take reports with a pinch of salt.
Dd is excited for the week to be ending on Friday!

We didn't have any information in advance of parent's evening, if I'd had the choice I'd have stayed home rather than hear the usual "fine, fine" but I didn't want to appear to be disinterested. On the plus side this is the only parent's evening I've ever been to that ran to time. It appeared to be effortless and I'm left wondering why it is that every other one I've been to has been a circus.

Well, it wasn't so bad getting the report at the consultation. I got there 10 minutes early so we had a chance to read it and have a think. It was pretty much as always - even with only four subjects, some teachers clearly thinking about the actual pupil and writing something useful, others a couple of words clearly cut and pasted 50 times. The one thing that really made us laugh was that as in every parent consultation since YR, they'd like her to speak out more in class. That boat has long ago sailed, I'm afraid!

One major flaw in their process though led to a few dropped jaws and I imagine some well justified fury was when the Y11s who were handing out the reports as parents signed in gave out a wrong report which had been opened and read before anyone realised! Cue frantic teenager running through the school trying to find and retrieve said report!

The verbal feedback from the teachers we did see was actually useful, and constructive. DD seems to be doing very well. She's maintaining great grades, and she has finally "found her people" which after more school moves that we'd have liked, means a huge amount.

That's great Mint :) I'm so glad she is thriving there.

"The one thing that really made us laugh was that as in every parent consultation since YR, they'd like her to speak out more in class"

minthins - every single teacher DS has had since Yr 7 has said the same thing about him. He isn't one of the loudest and doesn't particularly like attention - you'd think after 5 years at the the same school and many of the same teachers throughout they would know that by now?

Thank you OYBBK.

Mint that's lovely that your dd is so happy and settled.

As far as I know we won't have any kind of report/parents eve until February, which feels a long way off still to have no feedback at all.

Dd seems happy with how it's all going so I suppose We just have to trust her judgement for now, and hope that if there was any kind of problem then school would let us know.

One more week to go. Just a weekend of pantomime performances for DD to get through first. This week has been a tough slog so far with late rehearsals every night. I'll be very happy on Sunday evening when we can finally relax!

DS was telling me that the piece of writing they were analysing in English this week was a thread from Mumsnet. He was able to tell the class what AIBU stood for (and thankfully not shop me by following up with HOW he knew that)

oh no knitting!!! what has the world come to when mn becomes a thing to analyse?

My first thought was "oh no, please don't let me be on that thread" but when he said it was AIBU I knew I was safe. I'm tempted to have a name change anyway.

My concern about college is that they would be happy with whatever work he turned in and they wouldn't stretch him because they wouldn't know that he was capable of more. Past experience shows that DS doesn't stretch himself without good reason and will do the minimum necessary to get the result he wants. His targets are (as expected) based on GCSE results and he's working at or beyond that level across the board. I have seen him do homework twice since September, whatever he is doing he's fitting into his free periods/study time. Everyone is happy so I should be too (except that I really would like to see him do some work)

Sorry I've been a bit quiet. DS1 hasn't really taken to either of the two new subjects he changed to at half term. He is doing very little work and not attending many lessons. Just had a meeting with the head of sixth form about whether it's feasible for him to continue in January.

Second - sorry to hear that. What did the head of sixth form suggest? Would your ds have more time to catch up over the Xmas holiday or will stacks of homework be set?

TheSecond, I'm really sorry, that must be difficult - to not know what is going to happen next. If he could wave a magic wand and do absolutely anything, what would he want to do?

Oh TheSecond, what a shame for your DS. I'm the same as Kitten in wondering what he wants to do in an ideal world? If he knows?

MN being studied at A Level, blimey!

I am sorry to hear that TheSecond. I wish I had some words of wisdom for you but I don't, only questions. Is it the A level choices that have been wrong for him or A levels in general? It can be so difficult sometimes to get to the bottom of what the problem actually is - you see the symptoms but not the root cause - especially if they shut down and go to monosyllables. I hope that the sixth form head had some constructive suggestions about what he could do in the longer term rather than just looking at what he's struggling with now.