Thread 34 Covid Cohort - Heat 'Waving' DC to final exams and drinking more

[OrangeCinnamonCroissant]

...water

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. It's all relative!

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 continue down various pathways ( employment, apprenticeships, higher ed) We have decided for anyone interested they will find a thread within the Further Ed board.

Possibly a move to Parent of Adult Children Board in future? Post Results?

Previous Thread

Thanks @crazycrofter 😂We have loads of stuff , it’s a fair distance and I can’t walk properly at the moment so will be paying an eye watering amount for a local company - one small one declined to quote as said too big a job 🥺 Hoping it will take a lot of the stress out of it. Stepmum and friend coming next day to help us sort things . Very excited and really hope it happens. Fingers crossed for us both!

Thanks. Ds kept moaning that he didn't want to do one more exam when everyone else had finished. He will stay and play football on the school field one last time at lunchtime. It's a 2 hour exam. Then he's bringing mates home and wanted me to drive them all to a local brewery where they can all sit outside and drink beer for the afternoon. But I am at work this afternoon. So they will walk. It's about a mile and a half. Ds will be glad to finish. I won't find out how he got on until later this eve.

A nice walk to a brewery and back sounds great fun to me !

Great idea from little @icanbewhatiwant finishing strong there , hope in the exam too.

Don't berate me all, I've just been sorting out some of the stuff I've been getting weekly for Dd for Uni. Spreading the cost!
I've not got much left to get now ...just a double duvet and pillows, possibly mattress topper and a pan and pot. She xan get rest of kitchen stuff there if needed...Southampton is full of shops.
It leaves her to use most of her money to inevitably sort her wardrobe for her Uni 'transformation' apparently Music student is an aesthetic/style...there is also witchy core, cottage core and 'dark academia'. Who knew ?

@OrangeCinnamonCroissant they will definitely want a lift home. It's narrow country lanes all the way...not good if you've had too much to drink. Though hopefully they won't. Last time they went they did walk home, then I found Ds laying on the kitchen floor singing, he'd only had 2 pints, but nothing to eat. I've said before he's only 5'3" and just over 7 stone, so I always suggest not drinking as much as his mates who are all 6' plus. No word yet....but I'm sure he won't message. It should be over.

@OrangeCinnamonCroissant I'm relieved I haven't started getting stuff for DD yet. Having collected all DSs stuff yesterday, our living room is now almost full (he is in the box room so no storage there) - I really don't know where I could squeeze anything for DD. She will have to wait until after 5 August when I take all DSs stuff back to his new house in Bristol!!

@OrangeCinnamonCroissant I think that’s sensible as it can add a bit. I think we have pretty much what DS needs from college and spare bits we have around the house. Sympathies @Seeline , DS’s stuff is scattered around , no wonder I had hardly any towels left here! DD is moving this week but only 1 night’s difference so using storage.

@icanbewhatiwant : hope the last exam and the brewery trip both go well!!

DS1 is helping GF move as she moves out of one house in Sheffield on 30/6, puts stuff into storage for 1 night, then into new house 1/7. Seems ridiculous that they are all left with nowhere to sleep/put stuff for one night. They have taken estate car (with the insurance refund for using it!) and plan to wild camp in the Peaks for the night without a room. Hope it is a nice night for them.

Similar situation with DD @Monkey2001 , the same dates. Her BF’s Dad is treating them to a night in hotel, we’re paying for van hire.

Just back from a festival. DS reports the last exam went well which is good as we are awaiting the invigilators response to a problem with his coursework. He could lose that 20%. It was a panic last week but now everyone is feeling ok about it.

I have a question for those more knowledgeable on uni strategy; maybe one for you monkey given the tactics of those unis recruiting for medicine:

Whilst grade boundaries will be part-adjusted but still inflated vs 2019, do you think unis now have a better handle on potential % missed grades in Aug due to reviewing this year’s exam papers across the boards? Anecdotally, they appear to have been harder in the main, in spite of AI, as ambiguous that now appears to have been for some boards?

Ds just said via text that the exam was easy. I hope he's right. We will find out in august. They are already back from the brewery and sitting in our garden. So they weren't there long. They wanted pizza delivered. But nowhere delivers pizza here on a Tuesday. But apparently somewhere does deliver chips, so chips are coming. There are 6 of them plus Ds. I asked if they'd all done the RS exam today. They said no only Ds. Yet they'd all been to school to play football 😂

@ealingwestmum we have been told that the results statistics will be set between 2019 and 2021. In 2019 17.9% of A level candidates got AAA+, in 2021 it was 37.1%, so I am assuming the universities will expect around 27% of candidates to get AAA+ this year. The medical schools might or might not have made assumptions about how many people will miss grades, but the general view is that they have been cautious. I think there will be a lot of offers on results day and clearing may be used. I can't help wondering whether some of the 2021 people with inflated grades will have the ability to make it through to qualification.

It should not make any difference if the exams were harder (conclusion here was that Maths was similar difficulty to 2019 and Physics a bit easier, PE hard to say), but the grade boundaries will just move to accommodation the statistics agreed.

Nope...gone off walking back to the brewery again. They may as well celebrate freedom.

Thank you Monkey, that’s really helpful.

@ealingwestmum I’m no expert but here’s my tuppence worth as far as I’ve understood it:
The percentage of A star/ A grades are to be pegged back from (approximately ?) 45% in 2021 and that of 25% in 2019- so 35% overall for our Corona Cohort?
How that will ‘play out’ across individual subjects and the cohort as a whole Im not sure.
The grade boundaries per subject - IMO- won’t necessarily drop from where they were in 2019 which is quite worrying for those DCs that have found the papers in 2022 far more complex than those of 2019.
But that’s anecdotally from how DD has found her papers in comparison !

DS1 took DS2 to Spoons today. This passes as a rock n roll lifestyle chez Piggy.

Prom suit shopping for us tomorrow. No idea what to get. DS reckons no one is going. he doesn't mind. He'll just 'chat about Brexit in a corner'.

I thought just then that my two were both home all day for the first time in ages, but then realised ds isn’t in his room. He’s watching Elvis at the cinema apparently.

Good luck with prom suit shopping @Piggywaspushed . Dd has her second prom this Friday then we’re having a belated family do for her 18th on Sat. I hope she’s not in too late on Friday; I think there’s an after party after the prom. She’s quite good on no sleep though so she’ll probably get by either way.

I don’t think we can really guess grade boundaries.. there are too many variables.

Glad it's all over ican. So. We are all done then? Finished. Finito. Concluded. We all made it!
Never worry about things that you can't change.

It is indeed over !! I was thinking today that I’ll have 2 in university this autumn hopefully , with them having sat one set of GCSES and one set of A levels between them (DD did a BTEC when it was coursework only).

Thanks Proggy. DD definitely thought that compared to past papers, hers were more challenging. Not impossible, didn’t have any car crashes, just that she felt that it was as if they had tried to make things as obscure, or narrow as they possibly could, resulting in not being able to answer/write essays with the flair that past questions allowed. She thinks it was intentional to create differentiation, not relying on boundaries alone.

But, as a result, it’s left her (and others) in a more grey area as to how they may have performed.

I may have not explained that well, it is so subjective, but in the past she has always had a good measure of how she thinks she’s done vs actual.

ooh and I don’t know what UMS means (or if it’s still relevant?), is/was this the raw scores in actual and % of exam results vs obtaining a grade?

So it turns out the reason DS had not made any arrangements for prom is that he doesn’t want to go. Some of his friends who he thought would get tickets didn’t. He knows people going but not well enough to want to go ‘with’ them.

While I understand, I’m a bit disgruntled that I asked him several times before buying the ticket and he said yes he definitely wanted to go.

Is it a bit mean to make him pay for the wasted £45 ticket?? We would happily have paid for him to go but it just seems a waste and why should it be us who take the financial hit for him changing his mind? DH thinks we should make him pay. I am torn, I do understand but also we did check several times and it’s another case of mum and dad will pay for everything. For context we won’t miss £45 but it’s the principle and DS has a very well paying summer job that DH got for him starting in a few weeks so he will make plenty of money over the summer. Any thoughts?

I’d have no qualms about making him pay for it @272Newnames deffo don’t you take the hit, it’s the principle of it.