Year 12 - 2024/25 - Support, Discussion and Looking After Each Other

[BlackBean2023]

A survival thread for Y12 parents (24/25) now that GCSEs are over and our young people move onto KS5

Oh @steppemum your poor DD! having the fall was the last straw for her by the sounds of it. I hope she leans on the learning support team over the coming days. There is so little you can do as a parent to calm them down, but sounds like you did a fab job of being there reassuring her.

It awful when you want to scoop them up and protect them, but probably the best thing is for them to plough through the hours until it feels a bit easier to handle. Hope she has a better day today.

My DD is doing ok still, work is interesting and she is very engaged (especially with her good looking chemistry teacher 🙄). Friendships seem on an even keel for now, frees are now not too stressful as she generally has someone with her.

And DD too has found a potential new 'friend', a boy from one of her classes who she spent a free with. Problem is DD tends to go head first into everything and ends up getting hurt, so we are now watching and waiting hoping she can be a bit more restrained this time (some hope! 😂).

@OfficeAccount mine hasn’t done holiday courses and I don’t see the need for them, especially in Y12.

And DD too has found a potential new 'friend', a boy from one of her classes who she spent a free with. Problem is DD tends to go head first into everything and ends up getting hurt, so we are now watching and waiting hoping she can be a bit more restrained this time (some hope! 😂).

Oh I recognise this! This is my dd too.
she limped of to school on the bus this morning, feeling much more robust.

my kids schools often ran revisions sessions in the Easter holidays in year 13, but I haven't seen anyone running holiday courses for year 12?

Hope you’ve all ended the week well. DD feeling more socially settled and has been invited to a party tomorrow evening. She’s finding the workload heavy but is generally in good heart.

A good end to the week here - DS has passed his driving theory test so we can get cracking with booking the practical. We had a good chat about sixth form so far tonight - apparently a few people have opted to revert back to their previous schools and so have left, and there has been quite a lot of subject switching in the first couple of weeks. Must be quite a challenge for the teachers with timetables etc! Limited out of school social life so far though. People are spread quite far over so needs more planning I think. Hope it picks up for him.

Oooh - well done to your DS with the driving theory @MiniMidiMaxi. If there aren’t any test dates showing for your area you can look forward to being online at 6am on a Monday morning (!) when the new dates are released for 24 weeks’ time.

Added: obviously I should have said DS will need to be online at that hour, not you!

Congrats to your DS @MiniMidiMaxi definitely a good start to the school year! I don't have to worry about that just yet for DD she's a spring birthday.

Glad your DD is settled well @JessyCarr . Hope the party went well. DD informed us of a 'party' yesterday lunchtime which was taking place last night 🙄. She tried to get lifts sorted as we live miles away but decided not to go when she realised the effort it would take. She is also extremely tired at the end of each week still and is working today all day at her part time job so I'm secretly pleased she decided not to go.

When we chatted about this 'party' when I got home from work it appears it was some badly organised event which started as a small party at someone's house, then escalated to too many kids going and they were going to use a field nearby instead!! Thank goodness DD decided against it without me ruining the fun by saying no 😂.

All good on the subjects though still.

Loving the updates from you all. Just wanted to say I feel for all kids who is struggling with friendship groups. @steppemum and others. Hope they will learn/find a way through this soon enough. DD had issues in primary school, it was so heartbreaking to see her settle with playing football with boys rather than having girl groups.
@Waspie that’s funny! You never know where life takes you! That school sitting very closely linked to two good girls schools, no wonder 😁
DD settling well into A levels as well, so many drop outs/changing in her school as well. She was told economics now have room, but she says “ it will be interesting to learn, but I won’t be good enough to write down all that on paper for exams” so that’s it then! I am glad she had a chance and made a decision herself. We have constant talks about dropping Chem after this year, she can’t do it now with FM in tow. But enjoying C lessons so far. So leaving for her to decide @anoukis good for your DD to have that mindset already, it will be tough to have 4, but she will get there! Same boat here, although not going for Med( for bizarre reasons, she loves everything related and reads up on it but decided Bio is not for her). Just leaving her to sort it herself

Oh fab news well done to your ds.

dd's birthday is November so I am looking to book her her first lesson!

DS has also just passed his theory test, he has had a few driving lessons with me but his proper lessons start in three weeks. At least I can get his test booked now, it's a 6 month waiting list here.

@JustHereWithMyPopcorn well done to him! DS booked the first available slot this morning, beginning of March. We’ll see how he progresses but hoping we can bring that forward.

DD has a St Valentine’s Day driving test to look forward to 🚘 ❤️

(They finish school at lunchtime for the half term break).

My DD is jealous of all her friends who are taking driving lessons :-). She's always been the youngest in her class, born at the end of Aug.

6th form is going well so far. First set of tests this and next week in all 4 subjects. I think the school wants to use these tests to see who is quick to embrace adjust to the new pace, otherwise I can't imagine what they are testing after barely 2 weeks of teaching.

DD found a hospital volunteering role that which she can use for her Gold DofE. She isn't sure what do do for the skills section yet... in the bronze/silver phase she took art lessons. She is looking at online courses, either driving course (GA driving education) or cookery, so that there is no commuting time. I think the online driving course is a bit too early to take given she's only turned 16 and won't be able to do anything for at least another year. The cookery ones look fun and useful - each week you watch a recipe video then you cook it and send a photo/video to the assessor.

May I ask, how many driving lessons are your DCs taking? I am thinking to ask DD to start saving towards those costs.

@anoukis DD has one 2-hour driving lesson per week. £40 per hour so £80 per week 😭. We’re covering this for now but in the hope she passes first time! Obviously there are various additional costs for e.g. the theory test, the practical test and the learner insurance if they are going to practice in your car.

I’m a bit aghast re the early testing some of your DC are having in their A-Level subjects. Surely they’ve barely learned anything yet?

Just belatedly did the college welcome webinar, it's quite scary how quickly they want them to start thinking about university, basically having some idea by the end of this academic year to start applications in September. Also had a little play on the parent portal and there are predicted grades in there already! They base them on their GCSE attainment. Apparently dd should be aiming for at a minimum of BBB - seems like a lot of pressure.

She's signed up for gym as her enrichment option because there's no minimum attendance, she just needs to swipe her badge once a week. I have said I don't think that's quite the thing, but if that's the only liberty she's taking I'm happy. She seems quite settled and calm at the moment, she's not really made any friends outside of those from school, but I'm sure she'll start talking to her classmates at some point (no one from school in any of her classes).

Well done to your son! DS has no interest in driving yet but I've called about 6 different instructors and none of them will start him with lessons until he passes his theory test and he said he can't commit to that till summer holidays

DS first lot are October and these are for their baseline assessments and predicted grades. They need to keep at this grade or higher to continue to year 13

@JessyCarr Maybe they want to use it as a baseline of some sort and/or to see who's adjusted to the pace and who is not? Content-wise they were told to revise from what they were taught in class which is less that one chapter, apart from maths. I think it's too early. Mid-Oct or mid-Nov testing would've made more sense to me. I think we will also get their target grades and "on track" reports in Oct.

@wonderstuff that's interesting - are those minimum targets? may I ask what GCSE grades did your DD get for the subjects she is now studying at A-level? It's a mystery for me how target grades are set.

She's doing economics, psychology and maths, so only did maths at gcse and got a 8 in that, she got a range from 5 in Eng Lang to 8 in comb science, maths and spanish. I'm sure there's a program that calculates, in school we get predictions based on KS2 SATs - how they calculate an Art grade from scores in Reading SPAG and Maths is a mystery, but they do!

Thanks, I guess it's better than GCSE target grades that were based on year 6 SAT scores in English and Maths :-)

I like how some schools are very transparent on this, here's an example: https://thebicesterschool.org.uk/target-setting-and-assessment/

Our school said they will use a system called "ALPS" to set minimum target grades, but they haven't provided details. They did say there will be 3 types of grades shown on school reports: target, working at, and mock. Predicted grades will be available early in yr 13.

We found it hard to get an instructor as everyone is booked up but we have found one now who can start in three weeks. She hadn’t asked for him to have the theory done though, we just wanted to get it done so we could book a test, it’s a six month wait for a date. 😭. In the meantime I’ve been taking him out to teach the basics.

Lessons here are £40-45 an hour it’s so expensive!

DS has had some topic tests for his A levels but no proper exams until January.