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Further education

You'll find discussions about A Levels and universities on our Further Education forum.

Original poster

Thread 27 Covid Cohort Snow or Like Spring? Let's Do This Thing!

999 replies

OrangeCinnamonCocktail · 21/01/2022 14:21

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.

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 found here

OP posts:
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11
JustHereWithMyPopcorn · 07/02/2022 18:11

[quote Monkey2001]@JustHereWithMyPopcorn I may have misremembered the grades, maybe Bath was AAA too, but she thought Oxford would be the least flexible and I think she was very shocked to get a B![/quote]
Ah OK, I was doing the mental gymnastics but failing to understand! Grin

I think my DS will be shocked if he gets lower than his predicted. He seems to think that they are gospel as opposed to a generous guess. I spend much of my time worrying about this scenario.

Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 18:27

[quote Fruitygal]@Piggywaspushed does DH know how much Uni itself costs?[/quote]
He does indeed!!

Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 18:31

I think with DH it would all seem a bit of a faff and expense to go up the night before (we can't take day off so would be leaving home at about 6pm) , get parking , stay in a hotel for an hour or so of useful content which he would find boring.

Yes if it was up to me, I'd go just me and DS , which I did do for Aberystwyth but that was at least very far away! 9.15 does seem very early. A few years back, we went to Hull and Lincoln in a day. They had sensibly put main content after lunch!

Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 18:32

I have just seen OCR advanced information Angry

Do not look sociologists!

Seeline · 07/02/2022 18:46

@icanbewhatiwant UEA is still DD s favourite at the moment. The lack of supermarkets does worry me slightly. She needs gluten free food, and the smaller outlets rarely have it. With limited storage it will be difficult to bulk buy, especially frozen stuff.

Monkey2001 · 07/02/2022 18:58

[quote Seeline]@icanbewhatiwant UEA is still DD s favourite at the moment. The lack of supermarkets does worry me slightly. She needs gluten free food, and the smaller outlets rarely have it. With limited storage it will be difficult to bulk buy, especially frozen stuff.[/quote]
But maybe she will be happy shopping on line?

Zandathepanda · 07/02/2022 19:00

Piggy Dd says it’s a one-sentence wonder with her OCR subject as well. Which is a vague ‘point in the general direction’ of one question. Unfortunately you need to know all the content for the other questions.

icanbewhatiwant · 07/02/2022 19:02

@Seeline a lot of students have online deliveries. But Ds refused to spend the minimum £40 I know some students club together and share an online shop too. I don't know how well stocked the campus shop is, but it's expensive. There is also a Tesco express and a small co op quite close, but they are quite limited as to what they sell. It says online Waitrose is the nearest big supermarket, I think Aldi is 3 miles away. The lack of a big supermarket was ds's only complaint. He's now moved to a student house quite close to the big Tesco. But now he's a fair walk from campus.

Fruitygal · 07/02/2022 19:03

@Piggywaspushed are the department sessions starting at 9am or are you referring to the day as a whole?

My DDs session in the biology department start at 10am and I know the day shows things starting at 9am but these seem to be things that you visit at any time between 9-4pm.

Not sure where you live in UK but its about 3hrs for us so we'll leave at 6am and be back for a chinese takeaway and a glass of wine by 7pm.

DD hates getting up early but she'll sleep in the car.

BlueMarigold · 07/02/2022 19:14

Is anyone else annoyed with the way BBC have reported this?

OrangeCinnamonCroissant · 07/02/2022 19:26

@BlueMarigold

Is anyone else annoyed with the way BBC have reported this?
Yes...like it is all new news and our.kids are going to get some kind of golden 'leg up'
Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 19:36

[quote Fruitygal]@Piggywaspushed are the department sessions starting at 9am or are you referring to the day as a whole?

My DDs session in the biology department start at 10am and I know the day shows things starting at 9am but these seem to be things that you visit at any time between 9-4pm.

Not sure where you live in UK but its about 3hrs for us so we'll leave at 6am and be back for a chinese takeaway and a glass of wine by 7pm.

DD hates getting up early but she'll sleep in the car.[/quote]
They won't tell me what time the department talks start!!

About 2 1/2 hours for us .

Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 19:36

Radio 4 referred to students having 'cheat sheets'!!

Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 19:38

I realise our attitude to Sheffield is rather lightweight! If it was just me, I'd be p the M1 at the crack of dawn!

DS has all mock results back now - A A A.

He is deflated by lack of advanced information for economics and sociology.

Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 19:39

@Zandathepanda

Piggy Dd says it’s a one-sentence wonder with her OCR subject as well. Which is a vague ‘point in the general direction’ of one question. Unfortunately you need to know all the content for the other questions.
No.. I was Angry because it is so helpful for sociology!!
Fruitygal · 07/02/2022 19:49

The whole thing is pants - most of todays info is no help at all. DD says those doing RS or ClassCiv have large chunks removed from their exams but none of hers like that.

Given classics had one if the highest uplifts in the past 2 years that seems a little odd but irrelevant to DD as doesn’t take them.

Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 19:54

Twitter teachers are interesting on this. Lots of irritation including from some heads.

Heifer · 07/02/2022 19:56

My DD seems really happy with what she heard at school today regarding AQA Biology, Psychology & PE. Bit miffed that something taken out of Psy is somethign they have been working on for the last month but other than that is happy.

Re Sheffield visit. We haven't had any actual timings apart from 10-4 whereas other open days we know exactly what times things are happening. That does remind me though I need to cancel Sheffield as spoken to DD today and def not going, (I had hoped she would change her mind).

Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 20:01

10 would be fine!

ProggyMat · 07/02/2022 20:11

@Fruitygal

The whole thing is pants - most of todays info is no help at all. DD says those doing RS or ClassCiv have large chunks removed from their exams but none of hers like that.

Given classics had one if the highest uplifts in the past 2 years that seems a little odd but irrelevant to DD as doesn’t take them.

I don’t think anyone could extrapolate any meaningful conclusions about the ‘uplift’ of ‘Classics’ in the past 2 years given the stats lump Classical Civilisation Ancient History, Latin and Classical Greek together as one subject ‘Classics’
BlueMarigold · 07/02/2022 20:17

@Heifer it sounds like your DD is closer to making a decision. What was her reason to not go to Sheffield?

Monkey2001 · 07/02/2022 20:43

Actually @ProggyMat the Boards have published by subject.
OCR Classical Civilisation (H408)
A* - 2019 - 2.78%, 2021 -21.19%
A+ - 2019 - 24.87%, 2021 - 52.24%
B+ - 2019 - 59.38%, 2021 - 79.75%

Monkey2001 · 07/02/2022 20:55

DS said that people studying History at his school are saying half the syllabus has gone!

Piggywaspushed · 07/02/2022 21:03

DS doesn't seem to think so but he was happy with it.

crazycrofter · 07/02/2022 21:05

Dd seems to think huge chunks of history and RS have gone, not so much from Psychology though? I hope she’s got it right.

I printed off the AQA info for combined science GCSE for ds and originally misread it as them saying which topics were in the papers and which out, but actually they were just highlighting which topics would get the most marks. There is definitely a list of topics not covered though, which for biology seemed massive! Which is a shame as ds got a 7 in his biology mock and a 3 and 4 in the other two!