Corona Cohort: Statements Scripted, Grades Predicted

[Monkey2001]

This is a thread for supporting all young people post GCSEs 2020, regardless of their educational setting. It is respectfully requested that all are supportive and helpful to each other. If you want to start a debate, e.g state vs private, please don't within this thread. Please also be sensitive when responding to threads about grades.

Some of us have been here since first thread back in yr10, some will be new. Everyone has been friendly and helpful in the past. Everyone is welcome. It is hoped this will continue.

From OrangeCinnamonCocktail:

Our DS/DD may go down various paths (such as employment, apprenticeships, higher ed) We have decided for anyone interested they will most likely find us within the Further Ed board.

Previous thread - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/further_education/4339233-Thread-19-Corona-Cohort-Enrolling-on-Year-13-hopefully-NOT-unlucky-for-some?pg=1

I think loads at my schools aren't bothering. They probably do the LFTs as routine but not PCR.

I flagged a girl who was coughing all the time last week : the HOY decreed she was fine after sitting in a lesson for 10 minutes and declaring she didn't cough! She was then off on Friday... and now the girl who sits next to her has Covid...

@crazycrofter if wants to do psychotherapy the best route in my opinion would be psychology then clinical or counselling psychology postgraduate. So many different types of psychotherapy and many foundation courses covered in postgrad course eg Exeter does CAT in clinical. Much more employable.

@singingstones is it day 8 too? That's good if it is.

[quote icanbewhatiwant]@singingstones is it day 8 too? That's good if it is. [/quote]
Yes, I think I got that from the govt website. I had no idea what the rules are and the school said "ask the NHS" so had a bit of a scramble to work out what I should be doing with DS.

As I say, it worked out fine for us, but I agree it seems very odd, and if the rules were that close contacts should isolate, then DD might not have picked it up in the first place.

This coming week is exam week for my DD. She missed the actual assessment week due to covid so now she has to catch up. The predictions for everyone come out in October. I think that would be quite late for anyone who is trying the meet the Oct deadline.

I feel people in the household should isolate or pcr every other day. It's a bit silly letting them go to school/work.

Problem is the time it takes to get PCRs, there's no paid time off work for self-isolation unless you are positive yourself. DD did a PCR last week, did a postal one so she didn't have to miss any school (she was having it for close contact not symptoms) and it took 4 days. If she had tested positive DH and I would have had to carry on going to work. Although at my workplace we have agreed that if anyone has a household positive we will revert back to social distancing and masks, which we have stopped now.

Now no one has any petrol no one will bother going to get tested/get vaccines....

It's like being in some very slow moving dystopian novel.

I got petrol tonight at a huge supermarket petrol station, it was quite an experience

@Piggywaspushed yes the fuel thing is completely bonkers. Everywhere local sold out today. I have plenty but not enough to get to Sussex next weekend. I'm hoping the panic will have ended by then.

I have enough til maybe Wednesday . I have to go out of my way to get petrol so that'll use petrol up just getting to a pump!

I managed to fill up late on Friday night as I happened to be passing a petrol station to pick up ds. I felt a bit guilty as we had half a tank left but I had a lot of driving to do over the weekend.

I had enough to have lasted today and tomorrow but I was in a town where its much cheaper than at home today and I normally fill up there (go there every Sun for football). It was crazy but luckily most of the cars were queueing from the opposite direction so we got in quite quickly.

It will probably get me to Bournemouth and back next Sat but that's all, I drive a lot.

@whatsnext2 thanks, we’ve gone round and round in circles with her on this, but she’s not academic despite being able, she’s a people person and she really doesn’t fancy an academic degree. I also think the professional training after a psychology degree is really competitive. She thinks she’d want to do OT in a mental health setting then train to be a high intensity therapist.

Did a 100 mile round trip today for DS sport. We checked all garages as we went past as passenger needs petrol tomorrow. Only 1 garage completely closed with cones. Only 1 garage had queue back on to the road (not long). Passed at least 5 where looked like normal level of activity. I think the madness is now a lull as they can't buy more until they've used a fair bit.

The petrol thing is nuts, this says it all. We are glad we have an electric car!

@Piggywaspushed

I think loads at my schools aren't bothering. They probably do the LFTs as routine but not PCR.

I flagged a girl who was coughing all the time last week : the HOY decreed she was fine after sitting in a lesson for 10 minutes and declaring she didn't cough! She was then off on Friday... and now the girl who sits next to her has Covid...

😮

@Monkey2001 🤣😂

If this fuel thing does continue all week I'll take DH's car. It's bigger than mine and currently on 600 miles till empty. Brighton is about 160. I'd rather take my own smaller car though. Our local shell garage has sold out 3 times in 2 days. BP is out, the gulf one is limiting people to £20 but it means they aren't running out. I'm sure it'll calm down.

I think this weekend has been a bit of a turning point for DS, he's been going along with the uni stuff fairly happily but a bit passively with me doing a lot of nudging, he engaged better with the WInchester Open Day yesterday than he has at others (his social skills are a bit hampered by his autism to be fair). Today he has finally set up his UCAS account, is busily saving favourites and reading the courser info on the websites properly, has drafted his PS and has finally more or less decided he's going for history rather than countryside studies. On the basis that he really likes both but history is likely to be less restricting in terms of careers afterwards. Although he is still hankering a bit after the Royal Agricultural Uni. We'll see.

Good news @EssentiallyDisorganised, glad he’s on board!

Wow @EssentiallyDisorganised, that’s a massive change in one day. We are still going round and round a bit. Got a little bit further with courses. She read the course descriptions. Now have 5, 3 are Liberal Arts, one is Cambridge Foundation and 1 is History with a year abroad. They are all asking for a lot and even with contextual offers, she may struggle. We really could do with finding an insurance offer, particularly as Clearing may be more limited next year.
Trying to write a personal statement that works for all 5 is fairly challenging. It’s all quite new and a bit overwhelming for her, but I’m definitely noticing that she would happily sit back and let me do all the work. I suggested she read a couple of things today, and she was tired and she wasn’t processing well today and what they said was all crap. I did eventually suggest , gently that if she found reading that difficult, she might be better suited to an apprenticeship, or a less academic course. She was outraged! Of course she can read and understand this stuff, just not today. Her teacher wants to see her personal statement tomorrow, and I am away this week, so time is not her friend on this.

I tried to interest her in Open Days at the beginning of the summer, and got stonewalled. Now she really wants to see these places and is really upset that the Open days are full.
Today has tested my patience, but I breathed, and had a sudden , clear recollection of myself at 18, completely clueless, and we didn’t fall out, which is the main thing.

@Zebracat sounds like you are handling things very well. What is the range of grades? Courses at the less competitive universities are always in Clearing. Do any of the courses she likes have a foundation year option for insurance? I assume she has all the contextual points going, but foundation years have lower grade requirements and can make the transition to university easier. A friend of ours accepted a course with foundation year and before he started they suggested he should just join the normal cohort, which he did. So if any of the ones she like offer a foundation, she could apply for that and upgrade if appropriate.

Zebra - that's been our sticking point too, a personal statement to cover diverse courses. at the Winchester Open Day we went to the PS drop-in clinic and the woman there said the best way to deal with that is to go through the course descriptions looking for the key skills and knowledge required eg critical thinking, teamworking, interest in current affairs, and find some common ground that way, she suggested tabulating it all in a grid. Then picknout examples from your studies/hobbies/interests which support these. So even if it is shelf stacking in Tesco, which I thought might not be relevant to a degree, if you can show that you had to have strong teamworking skills that's good.

We also spoke to someone about foundation years, he said if you are really set on somewhere as your first choice and it offers a foundation option, use the main degree as your firm but also apply for the foundation and hold it as your insurance, then you are in either way.

Extensive reading is the one aspect that's still putting DS off history too.