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

On the suggestion of @tribpot i have created a new thread for after the exams
countdown to A level results day - 2023
maybe we can jump over once our DC have finished their exams? The support on here has been great
will try and link in a moment

DD has her last sociology paper this afternoon and then finishes on Friday with English Lit. Good luck to others with exams today.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/higher_education/4827264-countdown-to-a-level-results-day-2023?reply=126878785

Great, thanks @HereWeGo2023 - looking forward to seeing you all over there in 7 days, 3 hours and 42 minutes (yes I do have a countdown timer on my phone).

I thought your comment was very appropriate, relevant to us on this thread and moving. 😢

@tribpot 😂😂😂 at a countdown timer on your phone!

@SerenadeOfTheSchoolRun thank you for that comment

DD seemed a bit happier after her maths exam yesterday, and I think chemistry went OK the day before. It's her last further maths exam today, which gets further maths out of the way after today, thankfully.

@AfingeroffudgeisNOTenough is TCD Trinity? My mum went there! She was there in the 1940s. She became a medical social worker and at some point worked in a leper colony in (then called) Malaya.

DS had edexcel Maths yesterday and said it was harder than expected. Further Maths today. Hayfever affecting him this morning so that’s not good 😩

@mondaytosunday yes! DD really likes both TCD (Trinity) and UCD (University College Dublin - on the south side of the city) but prefers the campus of UCD. To be honest, I think she’d be happy with either, so it’s just a case of deciding which order to put things in. The course she previously discounted is likely to need the highest grades and she wasn’t confident of getting them, and I suspect that’s why she didn’t put it down - would rather go for a safer option. We’ll see what happens - roll on 30th August when Round 1 offers are made!

Spanish Paper 2 this morning, I'm looking forward to seeing the back of the utterly depressing La Casa de Bernarda Alba.

Break a leg for Friday. DD here has two on the same day this Friday. Biology and English.

Well done and thanks. See you there 7 sleeps, Biology x 2 and English plus hopefully the long awaited rain!

Further Maths and... I want to say mechanics? for DS2 today. The endless maths modules are doing my head in. He reckons it will probably be alright with a 10-20% chance that it will be bloody awful. Apparently last year's paper left lots of people in tears.

The maths does seem to be endless, @PacificState but at least your DS has the comfort of knowing the prime minister wants to put all our children through what he's doing voluntarily 😆(I realise Sunak doesn't really want everyone to have to study an entire A-level's worth of maths, let alone two)

@tribpot I have lots of thoughts about this! It's clearly crazy to 'force' people to do maths post-16 but I do think for people like me (fine at maths O level but didn't take it any further) the option of doing something like a post-16 module in, say, how to read statistics might be useful. But only voluntarily. And of course can't happen until we've solved the crisis in maths teacher supply.

But I found it really fascinating how emotional people became about the proposal. Maths really does provoke a totally visceral reaction in some people, more like food or sex than a school subject - people were furious about the idea. Whether that indicates that we're teaching it in the wrong way, or it just is a topic unto itself, I dunno - but I was really struck by it. For whatever reason, lots of people are really, really eaten up by their experience of maths at school. (Not disparaging those people btw!)

I'd be all for a reform of post-16 education that allowed for more subjects to be studied, and yes some useful applied maths would definitely benefit lots of students @PacificState . As evidenced by this thread, a greater emphasis on assessment over exam would be extremely welcome too.

That’s one of the benefits of the Scottish system - most students study 5 subjects in S5 (English year 12), take their Higher exams and then can apply to Scottish unis with grades in hand.

On the other hand, in the English system you often take a wider range of GCSE subjects at 16. I know it will have been modified since but my eldest was the first cohort of the Curriculum for Excellence and was restricted to taking only 6 subjects at 16, which had to include maths and English.

AQA Spanish seems to have gone okay - questions were a bit weird.

Same feedback re Spanish.
Dd1 looks like a zombie now, really tired, pale and looks like she's lost weight. Has gone to a friends house to revise now for biology on Friday. Its all taking the toll.. another 4 exams to go ...

It's awful isn't it. Mine has lost weight too. With the heat and lack of rain she is not sleeping properly either - two exams Friday Biology and English. English she said is unseen so doesn't need to revise for that.

Last one next Wednesday, I hate watching how stressed they are.

It really is. Our house is an oven. We have fans in the bedrooms but she says she has barely slept. Starting to look exhausted.

Its only another week but I worry a lot. Dd said that a friend sat next to someone typing in the exam and burst out crying and ran out of the hall. Problem is when you are so sleep deprived and stressed this can be the outcome.. let's hope they keep it together for another week !! 🙏

Ps two exams in one day is pretty brutal ...

DD's chum had Spanish this morning then Business Studies this afternoon. DD said BS (she did hers this morning) was tough. She doesn't hold out much hope for this one.