Thread 32 - Corona Cohort 'May' the Mumsnet force be with them for their venture to exams

[OrangeCinnamonCroissant]

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 31

CONGRATULATIONS ZEBRACAT !

Mine has done 2 BTECs alongside History A level, which are Sport and Countryside Management. He couldn't have done maths, English or sciences either. There is a fair amount of coursework but they do all have exam content as well. DS had two major exams for Sport (anatomy and physiology which was learning a huge amount of facts, and sports coaching which was a case study exam based on a good few months worth of work). Together I think they accounted for 2/3 of the points. If you are considering BTECs the full course specs are available on the Pearson website, but you have to find the EXACT one and there can be numerous variations on the theme, then within that there will be optional modules which the school/college chooses.

Yes, psychology today seems to have gone well ... just under two weeks until the next one now. Good luck to all with more this week!

Thanks @Monkey2001 he’s going to do a single BTEC in Sport too. The thing is, he’s quite good at exams apart from the timing issue! He likes revision and I’m not sure how keen he’d be on lots of coursework. It’s just that he’s a very slow reader and processor when it comes to essays.

Thanks @EspeciallyDistracted . Ds can actually learn huge amounts of info very quickly, particularly if he’s interested, so he’s not a slow processor in that sense… it’s odd. I think we’ll have to see what his results are and then take advice from the school.

@crazycrofter mine can too, I'm astonished at how much he knows for History. It's getting it out and onto paper that's his problem, but he has a reader/scribe (this is in his EHCP). Another benefit of BTECs are that the exams are out of the way before A levels, usually one in each year and two sittings, if you do the winter sitting you can resit in May to improve your grade if it will make a difference overall. A disadvantage of having two is that if major coursework deadlines for both subjects coincide it can get pretty hard work for that period (and bear in mind that History has an NEA component too). But the hard work/stress is much more evenly spread over the two years than in A levels. And there are also the BTECs that are equivalent to 3 A levels, where hopefully courseworks won't coincide as much.

@crazycrofter Dd was originally going to do A Level History but the amount of content and writing for GCSE put her off. She was quite good at Religous Studies but ended up taking Sociology A Level. If your DS is into social history /the social context it might work. There is still lots of writing but Dd (who is quite easily distracted) has managed to keep up. It feeds into her other A level subjects well.

DD said Psychology was ok but not brilliant.

Crazy I'll ask ds1 about Business, once he's had his first exam tomorrow. But I can tell you now he finds it miles easier than psychology, and then sociology, by a country mile.

He wishes he'd taken economics.

I've just booked to go to Tallinn, Estonia, beginning of September with my mum. I've never been on holiday with my mum as an adult, we recently realised, so putting that right.

I travelled for a year pre Uni, but my attempts to get ds1 to book inter-railing, or a few different European cities had come to nothing so far.

We went to Tallinn (as a stop off on a Baltic cruise) a few years ago, the old town was lovely, we had a really nice day there.

What's the verdict on OCR psychology rather than AQA? Dd said it was really tough.

Crazy as a sociology teacher, from what you have said, I'd say NOT sociology , to be honest... it is interesting if you like people and are a bit political . But it has more content than any other Level I know of and does involve reading. The timings are very very tight in exams too.

Politics is drier and has , ironically, less extensive essay writing.

Business is a good shout. DS1 did the A Level (hated it!) but some schools do a more vocational equivalent which is less weighted to terminal exams.

OMG - just caught DS revising. No phone in his hand, no games on his laptop, not sitting there staring in to space. Just reading a file of notes I never knew he had 🤣 I smiled at him and left the room quickly.

Well done to all of our Corona Cohort that sat exams today!
Onwards and upwards!
DDs feed back on her Ancient History (Greek) paper: ‘decent ‘ (almost two answer booklets filled) but the 12 marker was an absolute stinker…

Crazy ds says he writes more in business exams than he does in any other subject. Non stop writing.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Weirdly I came home to find he’d had a letter from sixth form saying his initial choices (Sport, Business, Psychology) won’t work but they don’t say which ones clash.

Its frustrating as he writes very well and can do grade 9 work in history and RS outside of an exam, so he’d be good at Sociology - but probably wouldn’t get through enough of the exam by the sounds of it. Economics looks like a lot of reading and writing too. I’d looked at Politics and thought it looked relatively ok, but he’s not so interested in it.

Glad everyone’s first exam(s) seem to have gone ok. Good luck to those doing Business tomorrow. What else is on tomorrow?

ED bet you liked it right? Beautiful old town?

Oh dear @Oblomov22 I’m at a loss then! I was hoping he’d suddenly develop an internet in science or Maths but it would appear not…

@Piggywaspushed do you know anything about the Level 3 diploma in Criminology?

Gov + politics is in the morning here but I'm not sure anyone's doing it, good luck to the business people tomorrow afternoon 🍀🍀
Still doesn't seem real here as DS not started yet

@Oblomov22 I have been to Tallin couple of times. It is a lovely city. Depending how long you are there for, you could do a day trip to Helsinki (couple of hours on a boat) or explore the surrounding countryside.

DS has politics in the morning - hence starting his revision this evening 🤦

DD has Greek ‘unseen verse and prose’ paper at 1.30 tomorrow afternoon.
Then, in her opinion, that’s the 3 most difficult of all her suite of papers ‘done and dusted’- YAY!!!

We don't do it at my place but I have read the specification. It looks fab! Really challenging but practically applies learning.

Economics is a lot of short answers and then some 20 mark longer responses. A lot of graphs and diagrams. Repetitive. DS has a great teacher so he does politicise it quite a lot and digs beneath rote learning.

AQA sociology is less lengthy in its answer forms than my board btw so it may not be as bad for timing but there is still the huge content. Many AQA schools do Beliefs so that links to RS. The Eduqas spec is more inequalities led (so much more interesting, imo!). OCR is lovely but hardly anyone does it.

Hmm, thanks Hatti, I hadn't even thought of that.