Y13 Summer term: Finishing Lessons, Starting Exams and leaving Sixth Form

[catslife]

So our dcs are now on the last term of sixth form, finishing off lessons and starting their exams.
How did that happen - doesn't seem that long ago since they started Y12.
This is the thread where we support each other as our dcs revise and start their exams, finish off coursework, leave sixth form and make plans for what to do with the rest of their lives. This may involve going to uni or other alternatives.
Every Y13 parent is welcome to join in whether new to these threads or if you have been with us for a while - the more the merrier.

I have just looked on the AQA history website and it says nothing about not being able to improve work and resubmit, whereas it is very clear on the geography one, so maybe the guideleines have changed as geography is a new syllabus. It still doesn't seem to be a level playing field.

I just found this on the AQA history website:

"When checking drafts of a student’s work, you must not comment or provide suggestions on how they could improve it. However, you can ask questions about the way they are approaching their work and you can highlight the requirements of the marking criteria."

So, it appears that history students can submit more than one draft, and I will have to stop getting my knickers in a twist.

Fantasy forgot to say it is UNISTATS not WhatUni which does the comparisons. You tag a course, then tag another course and then press compare, and further down there is a button for entry tariffs/requirements in the last two years (marks that people entered with) It is really quite interesting, English with History BA (I am just using that as a "humanities example" at Goldsmiths had 60 percent entrants at a tariff below 130, although obviously there were some higher. Entrants ranging from 90 tariff points upwards and at least 30 percent in the middle range (I am not a statisician) It would be fun to make a bar chart from it or plot the entrants. Each course would show different range of entrants coming in with lower higher/grades - smaller higher range would probably be expected in sciences I suppose.

Yes Lornica, I think my dd has quite a few chats about her coursework with her teacher shall we say?

We had the opposite experience. The history teachers stuck to the guidelines and offered very little help but the English Lit teachers were much more helpful. This resulted in a low B for History course work and a high A for English.

The history she just kept being told it was not great but not given any guidance on improving it.

This obviously means that students around the country still doing course work are not starting out at an equal level going into exams. It all depends on how the teachers interpret the guidelines.

Not a lot of revision happening here today. Dh was in bed this morning following a night shift while the rest of us went out, he was woken by the dog going crazy, barking and throwing himself at the bedroom door, went downstairs and found the kitchen on fire.
The fire brigade have said it's an electrical fault. The smoke alarms went off as he was leaving the house.
All animals were unharmed and the fire brigade were amazing so all will be well. We just have to wait for the insurance to swing into action. They are sending someone later in the week.
It's been a bit of a day though.

"This obviously means that students around the country still doing course work are not starting out at an equal level going into exams. It all depends on how the teachers interpret the guidelines"

I agree wholeheartedly with this ^^
Schools shouldn't be allowed to publish their external exam results, then perhaps they wouldn't be under pressure to "manipulate" the outcomes by using tactics like this.

So the potential Oxford student at DD's school has been able to resubmit his Englsih lit and history until he acheived the As that he needed, and the geography students get one shot at it. And what is even more galling is that not all schools are playing by the rules.

Stamps foot "It's not fair"

OMG Littledrummergirl

What a day! I hope you manage to get everything sorted.

Littledrummergirl That's an extra sausage for the wonder dog then. There's no point dwelling on what could have happened, let's focus on the positive that everyone is fine, you get something back from the premiums that you've been paying for decades and it's takeaway for dinner for a few nights.

Does the house smell or is the damage contained to the kitchen?

My DD is an Oxford applicant and hasn't been any chance to improve either her geography or her English NEAs. This a huge 6th form college with 1500 students in each year group. Do you think schools face different pressures? All teachers have to sign the cover sheet saying that they haven't given any additional help or they are subject to malpractice and I do know a teacher who has been sacked for this....

Oh goodness Littledrummergirl. I hope that relatively speaking you are all OK. A horrid thing to happen.

How scary little, good luck with the insurance, is the kitchen damaged badly?

nettles
Dd mentioned it to her head of sixth he told her not to listen to stats but to firm goldsmiths as unis want money, he can be rather cynical at times

Hopefully dd should be hitting the firm button tonight!

loni
I wholeheartedly agree with you, it’s not fair that some teachers push boundaries

Dds eye is slowly getting worse and worse she’s resorting to a bath and rhubarb gin, does taste extremely nice, although I’m not sure she’s supposed to drink on her acne tablets but, given the stress she’s under I think a little gin won’t harm her

Oh no Fantasy. I hope she will be OK. We have had scares with DD's eye as well. Eyesight is so precious.

Drummer I've been cleaning behind the fridge today in fear of the fluff catching, I've been spooked ever since Grenfell, may I ask which electrical appliance was the cause?

That is so frightening - I am so glad it stopped at the kitchen and the dog was safe. Dogs are brilliant smoke detectors, my mother's house was once on fire and the only reason anyone noticed was because next door's dog started barking, they were all sound sound asleep and didn't smell the smoke themselves. This was before they installed smoke detectors. Our smoke detectors last went off in the middle of an icy cold night when we left the heating on and the dust rose up and "contaminated" the smoke sensor - it was good to know how sensitive they were but difficult to switch them off again!!!!

Good students will do well with the coursework regardless, and it is only 20 percent of the exam. If your exam papers don't show your knowledge no amount of supervision is going to pull up your marks to an A or A*. It is more likely that your coursework is going to bring your mark down, and in most cases this is what has happened to the children of my friends. Oxbridge candidates losing their places and all. The majority of schools will not have the resources to individually tweak candidates' coursework upwards and certainly cannot get an C student up to an A unless they are intrinsically an A student who has misunderstood the specification.

Quite frankly I feel very angry about the coursework ds did for English. It was terrible, he had no idea what he was doing and completely misunderstood, and whatever teaching he got afterwards to move it from an U to an E I do not regard as anything other than the teaching he should have received BEFORE he even embarked on it..

She wears glasses anyways the distance is blurry so it’s a weak lense but the eye that had the abscess and has it again has been effected imo. Her eyesight in that eye has got worse, possibly strain?
nettle
I share your anger and frustration with English because it’s a similar story here with dd

In other news, dd has pressed the firm button and it’s done! Now to focus on getting the grades

Thanks all. I agree there's no point in being negative, at the end of the day the kitchen can and will be fixed.
At the moment it is a black mess, the ceiling is coming down, the flat roof above probably needs redoing and pretty much every electrical appliance is black, wet or melted. The dining room door contained it brilliantly though so it didn't spread but there is some smoke damage in there.
The fire brigade think it was either the toaster or The socket.
The house smells awful!
To top it all we called the bank this afternoon to get new bank cards for dh as his were melted to his wallet and the bank has cancelled mine. We were trying to buy a kettle, cleaning equipment, (ours was in the kitchen)and a bone or five in Tesco when we discovered this.
Thankfully ds1 was able to buy dinner!

I spent the afternoon googling kitchens.

Tomorrow the dc can get back to it. Ds1 is all science subjects so no coursework, that sounds incredibly stressful.

that is good to hear about the fire door excellence of the dining room door - I really need to do something about my kitchen door, it is old and warped and not really fire resistant for 30 mins at present (I have pyrogard glass though in the insert above which is something though, I recently put that it in, had been meaning to for ages). When we had this kitchen put in (moved it from somewhere else in the house) the electrician put in an additional safety feature which was a RCD (is that what is called??) which means the slightest malfunction in the sockets and the whole thing trips and circuit is broken. Within two weeks of him putting it in, the boiler switch was faulty and tripped it, it was amazing how safe we felt after that. That was before we nearly set alight to the cupboards with the toaster which jammed, didn't pop up, and then the heat melting the light under the cupboards (plastic strip lights) which billowed out black smoke. Luckily only for 2 mins which was enough to set off all the fire alarms and I think I'd left the room. I now go round the house switching off all the appliances and at one point we charged all the phones in our bedroom for fear they would overheat.

Littledrummer your brilliant dog though! One thought of getting her master to safety, I do love dogs. Have a large or from me though, what trauma and now all the hassle of insurance and repairs, not what you need.

Fantasy how scary and awful for DD, I'm deaf and the thought of anything happening to my eyes terrifies me completely.

Plodding along here, DS pressed the metaphorical button a while back without telling me and now I'm terrified because I so want him to get his first choice but I think he's going to get quite a low grade for his photography A level (brilliant photographer, typical ASD inability to write about why he took each picture or any other fluff around that which is where you get the marks, also woe some at completing his coursework). More invested in DS3 this week who has been wound into a ball of angst by the upcoming SATS tests which aren't supposed to be like that in Wales but school have had them miss football practice and music so they can do paper after paper, he's cried until his head hurts and his eyes are red sore messes for the last few days and he doesn't even know why. Absolutely ridiculous IMHO.

Anyway, I'm reading all your posts but I'm not very good at responding to threads like these, my brain can't keep up! I'm nodding along and feeling all the traumas and trials our lovely DCs are going through. Last push!

RCDs are brilliant nettles, keep the system from overloading and shorting out. My ancient house relies on them. Which is good because the kitchen door is about 150 years old and would make a very poor fire break.

I too am sick of coursework as neither have been submitted. Dd freely admits that it is taking time from her revision schedule. Quietly despairing.

I had kitchen envy today, mine is a 1980's production (with 1990s sink, 1990s oven and hob) and very different from the light and lovely thing I was in today. Much as I liked the soft close doors and bamboo countertop I'd rather have a new bath, shower and a sink that's hung properly so it drains. It's need vs want.

There are a few kitchen threads in the property/maintenance section LittleDrummer

It's strange though, I still have the remains of an old kitchen in the form of a utility room (twas a tiny kitchen!) and it was the height of fashion back in 2004, white gloss Ikea doors with sleek thin chrome handles...now it is just looks well, a bit dirty and foolish/above its station..(possibly because I haven't scrubbed it) but I just think...why did I ever think my family would go with a white gloss kitchen? Now my kitchen is cream gloss Howden's with curvy perforated handles, more cottagey and tranquil, butI'm sure in 10 years I will think it equally dated.

There's nothing like a kitchen to show your age!! I'm veering back to those nice painted distressed kitchens that suit wrinklies..

There was an amazing bamboo worktop on sale in Wickes a few years ago...maybe it was formica but it looked...EXOTIC.

MrSlant hope it went better with the photography than you think - how frustrating. But I bet he will shine through. A relief when they press the button. 2nd letter of the Alphabet is going to be a brilliant place to take photos too, if he wants to continue that (I think you said he was doing something sports related there?)
Silly school making them so upset over the SATS, or silly government hope you can persuade him that only school is judged by it not HIM.