Is it too early for an A level support thread!

[HereWeGo2023]

Hello all, apologies if there is already a thread but I can’t find one.
May had finally rolled around and the first exam is a mere 2 weeks away. Exam stress has hit our house! It’s feels like everything is about waiting at the moment - waiting for the predicted grades, waiting for the uni offers, waiting for the exams to start, and then the long wait for the results!
This is our youngest DD but the first one in further education so would love to chat to other parents going through this

Good luck with this afternoon.
The recruitment crisis has been beyond awful for them...

ikwym about having difficulty getting anything done myself, I'm just plodding and doing fairly mundane stuff. It's all I can cope with right now!

The recruitment crisis has been beyond awful for them... Yes, the school really did try to recruit someone. They've apparently got someone for next year (ds2 will be year 11)

OCR Comp Sci here today too - our CS teacher left at Christmas and it was fudged until a new teacher could start after Easter. Fortunately the outgoing teacher had pretty much covered everything.

Teacher absence and teacher retention has been shocking at my DDs school. At one point, out of 5 teachers, she only actually had 2, the other 3 had either left or gone off on long term sick. I feel like she's basically been teaching herself for the last 4 years.

Same here, no tutor in psychology for entire first year. No maths tutor on and off for G.C.S.Es parents complained about psychology and they had to pull in tutoring company but that was very late in the day second year, and by then all the stuff which they should have been taught before was very late.

We could really have done without the stress. As I'm sure is the case for many on here.

DD had French this morning. Said it was her best exam yet - after a very rocky road of late, that was music to my ears.

They've all had such a tough time over the last couple of years. Just getting them through this intact is difficult enough, never mind the results come August.

Yep no physiology tutor here for most of year 12 and all 13. Used a qualified physiologist and an online revision package.

well done DD and you

Wow - I feel very bad now that I've been grumbling about the Physics teachers for being absent more than seems reasonable - I suspect they were covering other classes and so on. We have been comparatively very lucky - excellent and consistent teaching in Biology, middling and a bit sporadic (but same teachers throughout) in Physics, supported by a private tutor more recently, and then he does Spanish privately with a fantastic one-to-one teacher based in Spain. So not surprisingly, she has been superb. Bloody expensive, mind you.

OCR Chemistry was good. So says everyone on TSR. High grade boundaries predicted?
Still six exams to go. Maths tomorrow.

DD had EdExcel chemistry this morning - it's her best subject and she's predicted an A * but found the paper very difficult and ran out of time. She said there was quite a bit of content not on the spec and that most of the questions seemed to be phrased quite oddly, so hard to know for sure whether she had understood the question or not. She's done lots of past papers but said this one was the hardest of any.

@Outnumberedbytwo im so sorry your dd feels it didn’t go well. My dd felt similar to OCR Biology (predicted A star felt she didn’t understand any of it) - I think students can often be very harsh about their performance and only remember the hard bits. My dd said there was very little maths in this mornings paper and 2 x 6 marks which is unusual. She said there was one calculation no one had any idea about. Dd knows she had the graph wrong on a 2 mark q and was planning on going back to it at the end but only had a couple of minutes left so couldn’t.

I hope your dd feels better soon and I’m sure she did better then she thinks - has she had a look on TikTok? Dd found that quite helpful after biology.

@Forestfriendlygarden well done. I can feel that DS2 (with whom I generally get on very well) would quite welcome an air-clearing screaming match at the moment but I'm refusing to be tricked into one (and consequently having to bite my tongue about 10 times a day - but, eyes on the prize). June 23 cannot come soon enough. Hope your DD feels better.

@KittyMcKitty Thank you for your reply! Yes, I know you're quite right that some dc are very hard on themselves and focus on the worst bits of the paper, rather than the bits that went reasonably well. I know the grade boundaries will shift as well if it's a 'harder' paper than other years. DD also mentioned that there were 2 6-marker questions and possibly a 5-marker one too, when she was only expecting one. That might account for the timing problems - and I think that and the 'tricky' wording of some of the other questions put her off her stride and made her doubt things she thought she knew 🤔

I'm not sure if she's been on TikTok yet, but I think she's been on Twitter, which might have helped a bit. I hope your dd has done much better in her biology paper 1 than she thought she had too - I do think it's extremely difficult to judge how you've done in an exam, as its not just your own performance but how you performed against others ... roll on 23 June!

Thanks PS that means a lot.

Yes she seems okay now. Well done for not being drawn into screaming match, I get how much patience is entailed.

Yes 21st for us can't come soon enough. Still all washing is out on line and nearly dry...

Yes very hard to judge thats so true. And they are so hard on themselves.

@Outnumberedbytwo yes roll on 23rd - and what fun they’ve saved the 2hr 30 mins paper for the last day. Dd is majorly stressed as we have been told that our village is having a planned electricity shutdown on the 22nd from 8am - 5pm (we have no mobile phone reception here either) so she will have to go into school for the day - it’s not ideal but it is what it is!

Considering DD’s exams started 2 weeks before half term they feel like they’ve been going on for ever (and she’s only done 5 so far).

dd currently playing Allory Chemistry videos on 1.5 speed in the kitchen which is somewhat alarming!

Has your dd got more exams this week? Dd was so down after Biology saying she wouldn’t get to Uni but todays exam has picked her up a bit - hope your dd feels more positive soon.

Oh and steer her away from the student room chat - it’s full of people chatting shot about what geniuses they are sigh

@Outnumberedbytwo ive asked dd about the paper re yr ds’s comments - she said she could see how she felt like that - she said it wasn’t a typical paper 1 which you expect to be all maths. According to dd this had statements and then said discuss / explain etc. Dd does Psychology and felt that had helped in terms of answering these type of questions.

OCR Chemistry here this morning which apparently "yeah was fine"

Still 8 to go here - literally ALL of his friends are already done and have been since last week

oh gosh 8 to go. We've got three left.

I'm familiar with that 'yeah it was fine' reaction.

@StartinOverAgain We still have 7 here as well and are not even half way through yet.

Hang in there all.

Dd1 also.finishes on thr 23rd and still has 5 exams left.. She thought chemistry AQA was a but meh.. hasn't answered everything and left quite a few if the calculations incomplete. She said it could have been worse though.

Wednesday will be her last Soanish exam so at least one while subject will be out of the way then. But 2 chems and 1 bio next week...

I think becaue he is doing 4 - he still has maths and biology this week, then biology, maths, further maths x2, chemistry x2 next week...!