Last term of Year 13. Gulp.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

Can you believe it?

last thread

All welcome no matter which path your dc have chosen.

"Last exam on 2 July and results are sent out by email at 5pm on 4 July."

How do they turn the marking around so quickly? Are there not many students taking these exams?

I hope exams are going well for you all, and Fantasy and Hope let's hope your DD did better than she thinks. She may be remembering all the negative stuff rather than the positive.

That was my DS1, raspberryripple, his offer from Warwick was either an A* in FM or a grade 1 in any STEP. He just missed out on a grade 1 which we found out at midnight on the night before results day, and so we were resigned to him going to his insurance. (Which was a perfectly lovely uni, Exeter, but as his insurance he wasn't guaranteed accommodation and it was really expensive compared to Warwick.)

Then on UCAS track at 7.30am ish he saw his place was confirmed at Warwick, so going in to get results was a bit anticlimactic, (but still brilliant) because we knew he must have got his A* in both maths and FM! Physics was the only one we needed confirmed.

STEP is really hard! One of DS1's super intelligent friends got some grade above a grade 1 for both STEP 2 and 3. An O maybe? Outstanding or something. She's exceptional, though.

Is it your DD, OYBBK that's doing STEP 2 & 3? She's also really talented, I believe? Good luck to her.

DS2 has no exams, lucky boy, but needs to finish his assignments for his BTEC in the next 3 weeks. It's not looking at all certain. What a waste of a year. Getting an unconditional offer is definitely a double edged sword.

I think maybe I'll try not to think about results day again

Hopefully it's not as bad as it seems Fantasy.

Lonicera - their written exams finish next week and then they have 3 orals in late June early July. They are assessed for those by their teacher and an external examiner. Results get fed straight into the system on the same day.

He is doing an unusual qualification (we are abroad) they only around 1500 kids take each year.

They have to do 11 subjects over 2 years.
7 of which they have final exams on. The other 4 they just have continual assessment over 12 months which count to the final mark.

no exams now for ds till Tuesday, but he has lessons in school tomorrow and Saturday.
worst exams for the ds2 are over by tomorrow evening (History and English Language)

weekend should be well balanced as long as I can get a good night's sleep tonight.

x post. It is my dd Ellen. Thanks!

It's an S beyond a 1, which is entering crazy territory. It's good to hear how it worked out for your ds :) Did he and you manage to sleep between the STEP result and track? How is Warwick?

It must be hard for the BTEC students to momentum at this point in the year. I hope he manages it.

It's so lovely to see old and new faces gathering on the thread :)

Physics tomorrow. Things are quite chilled after my outburst at the lasagna I was cooking

ellen
She’s home and said Shakespeare went fine but the second half didn’t
The worrying thing is that English has very high grade boundaries even for a C. But, the whole of Twitter and student room have said some of them didn’t even fit the texts the questions
For hamlet some schools textbooks didn’t even have the extract in.
It seems OCR this year have really messed up

Psychology here in the morning. First morning exam. DD has given up on driving and I have been taking and collecting her so she can do last minute revision and we can chat about stuff. I am waiting to find out what time she wants to leave.

Then we have a meeting with the horse owner to discuss a way forward.

DD hasn’t been sleeping very well. So, she has gone out for a walk tonight and booked a massage for tomorrow. Fingers crossed that will help her relax a little.

S for super duper? We did sleep badly but Warwick was always an aspirational choice for DS1. All his other offers were AAA so we thought may as well put it first and then his real choice as insurance.

He absolutely loved the first year. The second year has been harder, in the middle of exams now. Lots and lots of options and he has found he really doesn't like some of them. The maths is very different from A level. He's taken a few mathsy computing options and is doing much better than the computing students at them!

Warwick campus is great but 2nd year accommodation is either Coventry (cheap) or Leamington (far away but posher.) He's in Coventry and enjoying it. He'd like a girlfriend but hasn't found one this year.

I hope your DD aces her STEP exams. DS's friend (with the S grades) is loving Cambridge.

Doe anyone know what criteria schools use when they choose exam boards? DD's school uses mainly AQA with a few Edexcel subjects.

It seems like the Edexcel biology exam today wasn't as horrific as the AQA one.

That's my point from earlier about parity between exam boards. Do they level between different boards?

The school I work in chooses the board with the syllabus and exam format the teachers of that subject prefer. It's a grammar so all DC do triple science so no need for consistency between subjects. Physics do AQA and chemistry OCR.

OCR apparently is a hard exam board according to dds English teacher it’s one of the hardest for English
Seems strange why they’d choose a hard exam board

@hesmylobster . . Modern US History! I envy you. Bloody Angevin Kings here this weekend.

@marmite - yup DD totally agrees re the lack of critics for Cassio. She had one solitary quote up her sleeve! But was WAY happier with her exam today after yesterday's disaster. Nothing now until English Prose next Tues.

She's currently binge watching Friends with a cheeky G&T . . . .

DS1 is doing OCR English Lit.
He has found the comparative study (on dystopia) quite interesting but according to him, the texts his school chose for the pre-1900 paper were "the worst ones".

Fantasy - just went upthread and saw your post. Nightmare, I am so sorry

DD2 has physics tomorrow, chemistry on Tuesday then it's maths all the way.

Results day for DD1: she knew that she was into her firm choice by 7am then had to go in to school to get the actual grades.

Dont be surprised by their emotions on the day. DD1 was happy to be in but sad because her best friend was on holiday (not doing A levels) and DD felt she had nobody to celebrate with (parents dont count!). She did cheer up but it took a while. Probably a reaction to the worry leading up to results day.

Ellen I have a friend whose son is loving Warwick too, and doing by sounds of it similar STEMish subject. His entire flat have gone on to share house together (well two houses as there were quite a lot of them) so it was obviously a friendly place. He was an ingenue in many ways so it has been a lovely welcoming first year. (this is for the other Warwickers out there, possibly with Warwick as insurance choice)

Ursula DD wants to do Music at uni.

Nettles that sounds better that he had quotes to use.

Our next exam is Tuesday so DD is having a night off. DD2 has finished her end of year exams today so all quite chill here. We have been looking at amusing comments on twitter about the English paper, complete with Cassio and a major spelling mistake.

Thanks Ellen :) If dd goes to Warwick I may be pming you! She did like the idea of being able to choose some non maths modules. She chose her accomodation preferences this week.

Gnome that is a good point. There must be a massive element of well now what, combined with fear and sadness as well as excitement.

I can't keep up with so many different posters, but I'm glad so many of us are finding support here.

Just finished an hour and a half testing of physics for tomorrow... I generally had no idea if any of his answers were right as I didn't understand the majority of it! Also done 2.5 hours of public health with dd tonight, and have promised another hour before school tomorrow. I'm shattered let alone the poor kids!

Our exam board, just to add to the biology confusion, was WJEC although as he goes to a Welsh medium school their hands are tied a bit because I'm fairly sure it's the only one which produces papers in Welsh! Although for subjects like geography/PE where there might be technical words in Welsh that aren't common usage (because round here they do like to just put an 'o' on the end of English words sometimes and that's not always the classical Welsh standard ) they get the English version of the paper too to read before they fill in the Welsh one.

Persuaded DS1 to go online and book his accommodation which felt good. Until I had to pay the £300 deposit for him because he doesn't have that much money. Neither do I! Was great though, love google maps because now we know the approximate view from his bedroom window (V good, mountains, nice).

DS2 came home and made me sit down at the table with him so he could re-do some of today's GCSE maths questions from memory with a pen and paper. With much dramatic gusto and over the top eye brow movement. Please tell me someone else's child does this?

I think for many is the realisation that results day marks the end of school and the dispersal of friendship groups.

Something DD2 is noticing is how relaxed the students with unconditional offers are behaving. Feet well and truly off the gas.