Year 12 - 2024/25 - Support, Discussion and Looking After Each Other (Thread 2)

[BlackBean2023]

You’re a chatty lot… continue

Oooo, that's a good idea! Where did you get them from?

From https://printfromyoursofa.co.uk - not received them yet but will report back on quality etc once they’re here. Website was very easy to use though, was simultaneously adding photos from my phone and my laptop at the same time.

DS is quite stressed about going back tomorrow. I came in at lunchtime abd he just looked at me, said Last Year Mum. And shrugged 😪
He'll be fine when he's back in the groove, but I just felt sad for him.
We've had a walk, a chat, pulled pork and cake. Hopefully that will help.

DS is quite stressed too, @gingercat02, and generally he’s never stressed! He was in today to help out on y12 induction day and starts proper tomorrow. A combination of ‘it’s the last year’ and how daunting the next ten months are going to be. Not long is it!

Stress here too, as DD has her Economics exam (resit of the Y12 mock) today. She’s worked pretty hard for it (between French jaunts!). Fingers crossed.

@JessyCarrgood luck to your DD for the Economics resit! And to all stressed YPs and parents, hope the year starts (and continues!) well.

DS is stressed over History NEA. First (partial) draft is done but he struggled to find good sources and not completely happy with the ones he got.

Parting words from DD: "It's my last first day of school ever!" <looks for tissue, sob!>

Good luck to all

What topic is he doing it on? There is a good website called Parallel History which for quite a few topics has good sources. Has he managed to fine 3? If he's not happy with it, changing it is always better in my opinion.

Congrats to you DD @bluefineliner that's fantastic news!

So DS has settled on a party so madly trying to organise stuff. I've bought a load of 18th banners etc. which he is horrified by! 😂 I was down in Cornwall last week and have bought him a very nerdy present from Tintagel which he has been desperate for since he was 14. That's now added to the birthday present list. I've asked what he wants but he just says 'nothing'. 🙄 Probably end up just giving him some cash at this rate.

DS is also starting to get his usual back to school anxiety. He's had it since he first went to school, it makes him very depressed. The fact the have put out a HUGE chunk of maths homework to do before going back has not helped!

Someone up thread asked how his NASA trip was, he had an amazing time thank you. He was exhausted when he got back though.

Good luck to those resitting or doing further mocks. I'm glad DD doesn't have these to consider too, she's been so wrapped up in UCAT she's done nothing else. She weirdly can't wait to get back to lessons again though, I think it is more comfortable for her as it what she loves and is good at!

We are now scrutinising uni websites and admissions policies to refine her final choices ahead of the last few open day visits before the early UCAS deadline looms.

Exciting birthday preparations @JustHereWithMyPopcorn I am relieved DD is April born so can put this off a while yet 😂.

So pleased the NASA trip went well, @JustHereWithMyPopcorn! What an extraordinary opportunity.

@bluefineliner FWIW the happiest med student I know is my nephew at Newcastle (now 2nd year). He almost didn’t apply there as a false rumour went round on TSR about a sky-high UCAT cutoff which, if true, would have ruled him out. They ended up having to go to Clearing to fill a few places that year due to enough would-be applicants having been put off.

DD has done her Econ resit this morning and is pleased with how it went. I had purchased a couple of Y12 mocks from an online tutorial company (official Y12 past papers not being a thing) and there seems to have been a notable similarity to the questions used by the school. So that seems to have been useful preparation! A nice confidence boost at the start of term, anyway. Once she has that prediction sorted she’s ready to go with UCAS.

Hope all our Y13s settle well into the new term.

By the way, even if they're in y12 or y13, they can and should use A-level past papers. Yes they may not be able to do the whole paper, but they should just slightly adapt it. So for English they may have done all of paper 2 content, so they can just do a paper 2. The AS questions tend to have less marks and the mark scheme and expectations will be lower than A-level. Its better to just practice with the A-level ones so they get used to the length needed, writing in timed conditions, and also the mark scheme etc. Just do the questions you can do (I.e the topics you've covered).

Obviously by now, they should definitely be able to do a whole paper. Perhaps even 2 out of 3. But even where they can't do, perhaps do Section A of a paper if you haven't done the content for Section B. In terms of timing, just cut it down to how long it is for one question. So a 30 marker for Sociology should take you 45 minutes. A 10 marker, 10 to 15. So calculate it off the benchmark (which they should know, but if not ask teachers) and then do that, so then they're used to the time limits for the real thing. No need to get offical Y12 papers, just the get the free past papers, on the exam boards website and adapt them to what you want to practice. It's better in the long-run.

@TheLivelyViper Perhaps you have misunderstood me. We didn’t use AS past papers. Full A level papers would not have been good preparation for today’s exam as we knew she would only be tested on content they have covered. So she has done practice papers based on the A level economics covered in Y12, not Y13. The practice questions were A level standard.

Yes i get that, I shouldn't have mentioned AS but I was generalising. I was saying she can adapt the A-level paper, by just doing questions on the topics she's done. So I don't know her exam board, but for example let's say she's done all of topics 3-6 but not other ones, let's say those topics are Paper 2, but Paper 2 also has topic 7, she can perhaps only do Section A or B, and then cut down the time accordingly (because obviously she hasn't done a full paper). The questions will still be to A-level standard, she can just adapt what she does, so I'm saying you can still use the offical past papers for practice if you want. Just only do what you can, so only do the topics you've done, and then just do those questions. Normally if you Google 30 marker or 25 marker in x topic for x subject for x exam board you'll fine free questions people have done, or teachers have made up (YouTube is great for this). So you can also do that, if the issue is that you can't find any 20 markers (or the equivalent) for this topic, on any of the past papers.

Also Chatgpt is also great for this, just give it the officak specification, and say what specific topic you want questions on and the form (so 10 marker using explain or 30 marker with historical sources etc), give it an example of one (from a past paper etc) and it will make really realistic ones for you, as long as you give it the right detailed info. It's also been great at predicting topics for the final exam, if you put in all the topics that have come up since the original exam, like per question so q1 was x topic etc. I know that this year it worked for some people I know, and multiple times predicted more than one right question. Obviously don't completely rely on this, the people I knew didn't trust it fully, did lots of proper revision, but actually after it got many right, found themselves annoyed they didn't trust it.

Though there's no issue with what you did, just saying you don't necessarily have to buy them, unless you want to. It sounds like they were useful and I hope the exam went well for her.

Yes @TheLivelyViper I get all of that, but DD had already spent the summer devouring past questions and their mark schemes from the exam board’s website, her CGP study guide and Uplearn. In the final week I wanted to set her 2 full papers in the expected format, using questions she couldn’t have seen before. I asked ChatGPT to set such a paper and mark scheme, but there were serious errors in the mark scheme including representing a demand curve going in exactly the opposite direction to which it should, and selecting the wrong answers for some of the MCQ. Although it looked the part, ChatGPT’s product was unusable.

So, all in all, £20 for some decent practice papers set by a tutor as a final-week revision tool was money well spent.

Yes fair enough, if you got good papers then it's not a big deal. If there's any good YouTube accounts for Economics, sometimes they give you practice questions they've made up, but for A-level, there's actually quite a lot less content creators than GCSE.

I find that you need to attach the whole offical specification and the offical mark scheme for Chagpt to do good quality questions, I'd download them onto your computer or one druve etc and then attach. Also be specific, so AQA A-level Economics, topic x, and say exactly what type of question you want. I'm not sure what they are but I'd give it a past example of one and say I want a 30 marker source question etc, and it's worked well in the past for me, just have to give it all the content. But once you attach the one time, it then remembers it forever afterwards. Sometimes it's just trial and error with AI tbh, but I haven't used it for Economics so not sure how good it is. Might be better for other areas.

@TheLivelyViper there was nothing wrong with ChatGPT’s questions - it was the suggested answers that were wrong. They were so wrong as to be impossible in economics, regardless of the spec. How dangerous is that for our Y13s?

In my profession (law) we know that ChatGPT makes up cases. Just invents them, and invents quotes from them. It seems it also invents demand curves not previously known to economics. I don’t consider it a safe resource for my DD’s education (and neither does she).

Well Chatgpt is a tool and when people know how to use it well it works well. So for example always adding, don't make cases or whatever up and fact check the information. I know many law firms have copied Chatgpt (not added anything else to software) but made an in-house version for data reasons and use it to make the draft for a contact. It's then quicker for lawyers to adapt it. It's a tool which works well, the better input, the better output.

I'm saying you have to use it, just an idea, completely get buying papers if you're running out of questions, and can't find videos or random resources with some. I'm glad it helped her out and I hope she got what she needs. It is going to become commonplace and I think as a whole (not just in education), it's better to learn how to use the tool well then to completely disregard it. It will be in workplaces and people who can use it and add to it, with their own knowledge and skills will be preferred over those who don't use it at all. It can quicken processes and let humans do the important things, and spend more time on that. For example teachers spending more time with kids and teaching, doctors spending less time doing admin and more time with patients. It's another tool, just like Excel, if you don't know how to work excel it's pretty hard and you won't get good results, when you learn some of the codes etc, it can be amazing. AI is similar, and it's improving every day, it's not like the industrial revolution because that was a few changes slowly. This improves every day, every few months there's a new better model and it will become in some way involved in every job. Whilst I have some concerns, environmental etc; on the whole that's where companies and the markets are going and many governments.

I'm not saying to completely trust Chatgpt, just an example. With past papers as much as possible give you work to teachers. I know she was on the holidays so different. But teachers are happy to mark work when kids put in the effort. Also kids should be able to recognise a very wrong answer from Chatgpt, I think most can, as they know they content and I don't think are too naive to recognise it can get things wrong and not to completely trust it. Not sure about the answers, as I've mainly used it for essay subjects and so don't ask for answers but would give it to my teachers from there.

I’m not sure why you are talling me this stuff. I am more than a little familiar with YouTube tutors and with AI. In my bit of the legal profession we use bespoke AI programs to assist with research (but specifically not ChatGPT because it is not up to the task). And yes, my DD can recognise obviously bad outputs in economics as can I, but we are both busy enough that we don’t want to have to weed them out. Do you have a Y13?

No I don't have children, but I work in educational policy, changing subject exam specifications and curriculum rules from a more government side and also exams, working on digital exams etc, working on creating AIs accessible to students that would do marking (so the can use for practice, it wouldn't supplement teachers but would give them opportunities to do more past questions etc and get good marking) some new debates that have arrived over AI and coursework, hopefully we'll keep coursework (seems to be the way exam boards and government want to go) but we will need to adapt it, which I think will happen anyway. I wasn't directing the comments on AI to you sorry, just my general thoughts on it. Q

Yes they don't use Chatgpt but the software is the same, they haven't developed it more, it's essentially copying it and just adding in more legal info, the actual sort of mechanics aren't really changed. Newer Chatgpt software is up to the task, the most expensive one would be and the one for businesses which is the ones law firms are using (as in the software and the same programming codes, like it's not a massive upgrade just small tweaks, but thw components are the same), if that makes sense. I've seen firms use this across the firm, for drafting contracts etc and documents, they use it to waste less time as well as for research, and they use it to gelp with client pitches etc. I don't know loads about it but the 2 I know of are used for that, may be different in different specialisms and firms. I don't really think it takes that long for her to weed out bad answers, depending on how much you're doing, but that's fine, it's just a suggestion, if she doesn't like it she doesn't have to. But when she's at school, as you said the questions are good, she could practice them and then give the longer answer questions to her teachers if she wants. Depending on her exam board, I think these are typically 15 and 25 marks. She seems to be doing well anyways, and I'm she'll do fine, revising in whatever way works best for her.

DS doesn’t seem stressed about the return to school, although he has had a head cold this week which has screwed up some of his plans. He seems better today though fortunately.

I’m glad your daughter’s economics exam went well @JessyCarr Is your daughter still thinking about Exeter next year? I have been skimming a thread on the higher education board which suggests some issues with accommodation. I hope this is due to the ongoing refurbishment of some blocks and will be resolved by 2026.

I’m pleased your son’s NASA experience was good @JustHereWithMyPopcornHope the maths homework isn’t too onerous and his party goes well 😊

I like the photo playing card idea @MiniMidiMaxi- inspired!

Which topic is your son doing for his history NEA @ComingInByAnsible? DS is doing the French Revolution and has read a several books and articles over the summer. He has lots of notes but I don’t think he’s started writing it yet.

Does anyone have any advice on where to get history essays marked outside of the class teacher? Thanks!

@Waspie Exeter is still on the list as it has a great reputation in her lead subject (Arabic), but their accommodation woes are real and, due to planning/building delays, will not be resolved in time for 2026 freshers. It’s not the most important factor but it is one of a few issues which may push Exeter down the list. Edinburgh has a lot of factors in its favour and she’s going up there for a few days at half term to stay with a friend who’s just starting now, and to attend the open day (plus parties etc, no doubt!).

Also Manchester has a completely fab course which nobody else offers: Arabic (or another language) with International Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Response - how beguiling is that for a young linguist who wants to save the world? They do placements with NGOs and other agencies such as the International Red Cross, Médécins sans Frontières etc. It may end up being too specific for DD at this point, but we are both looking forward to the Manchester open day to learn more.

You could get a tutor and they could do it? Or maybe anyone in univeristy doing History at degree or who did very well at A-level. I'm sure they would do it for a small amount. Otherwise, I'm not sure, it's best to have a teacher mark it, maybe a different teacher in the department.

Are there many Arabic and IR or Politic courses @JessyCarr? I know Sheffield has a Politics and Modern Languages course (whether or not it specialises in Arabic, not sure). Does she want to do her language as language courses on the side and then do something like IR and Politics as the main degree? Just what some of friends with language interests have done, but Arabic on its own is also a great degree, it's very sad less languages degrees are being taken up and are being dropped by universities.