Applying for Uni 2019 Part 6: exams, leaving school/college (the end of an era), a long summer holiday and Results Day on the horizon

[NewModelArmyMayhem18]

Just when exam season gets fully underway our previous thread has almost filled up. Everyone welcome .

Thanks for the new thread newmodel!

Citygirl... my DD also sat English lit Tragedy paper yesterday...

The section A question was an extract from the final scene of the play which started with Brabantio but also included Othello himself later in the extract. It was certainly a curveball.

Section B had a very odd question.. discuss the role of the military in Othello.. section B is usually a agree/disagree question. So also very odd. The other option was easier in sec B.

Hopefully the Crime paper will be more straight forward

My DD is the only one at her school taking A level maths - brilliant for her as the lesson is all about her! A number take it under IB, so they're studying alongside subjects like maths, english, language etc. While funding lessons at school, it meant not have other paid for hobbies and limited pocket money, but it was her passion and she accepted the situation.

She's only studying one faciliating subject (as she wanted to study A levels she was really interested in, not to tick boxes).

Just catching up!
@NewModelArmy - yes waiting for the results was very tense, the results came back on the same day as DS2 got his GCSE results which was frustrating because that took the shine off DS2 on what should’ve been his day. Still luckily it was worth the cost and stress.
@Piggy makes a very good point about how the re-marks favours the middle class because of the cost, in both cases we had to pay privately, perhaps a school paying is a private school thing?
However I think that frustration is better channelled on the exam boards and the examiners for their failure to mark it correctly first time round.

@Zanda hoping your DD is feeling better soon and that the meds have kicked in.

error and others- thank you. Antibiotics kicked in and she didn’t wake up until 8! She’s been incredibly lucky as all the early 3am and 5am wisdom tooth agony days weren’t on the 2 exam days. Phew.
She’s rattling with strong pain meds and antibiotics but at least she’s well rested today and, everything crossed, this will continue for the week-from-hell after half term.

Good to hear that your DD is on the mend, Zanda. What a time for them to get infected :-(. Hopefully she will be fighting fit in 10 days.

At our private school we have to pay all the costs of every exam GCSE and A level, we have to pay for a re-look at exam papers.

So sorry Zanda I did not know wisdom teeth as new teeth could get infected, that sounds awful.

just technically I think it’s the gums surrounding the teeth. The pushing through and moving is trapping bits and aggravating a nerve so it feels she has pain in her ear and other teeth too. It’s apparently very common.

Piggy Dd thought the OCR English paper Richard III was ok but the ghost passage too ‘obvious’ and worried grade boundaries will be high ?!?

Dds student finance letter came.

Scary to see the debt written down.

She gets £9250 for tuition and £9500 for maintenance of which about £1500 does not need paying back.

DrMadeline ..where are to get that much maintenance loan ?

zanda, they can't fiddle with grade boundaries for individual questions, just for whole papers, thankfully, so Richard III might benefit from the Hamlet stinker!

DrMadeleine it’s not a debt in the conventional sense though! She will only repay if her earnings go over the threshold of the day, and deductions from her salary will be exactly the same as any other student who did not get the maximum maintenance loan. It’s not connected to the amount borrowed but to earnings. Plenty of graduates don’t get up to the threshold for a while after graduating anyway (my DS won’t be anywhere near when he starts work later this year)

Piggy oooo that doesn’t seem fair but good news for Richard III pupils!

...though to be fair it sounded pretty grim to me!

...the question that is.

Has anybody seen the report in TheSunday Times today regarding a possible reduction in both fees and interest rates? Apparently the report is due out this week and will recommend cutting fees to £7.5K pa with a 1.5% interest rate on repayments, though the length of the loan might be increased beyond the current 30 years.

Link here, but may be behind a pay wall

Cut university tuition fees to £7,500 and slash interest on student loans — review

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/13a749ca-7f2b-11e9-b2a4-abb5a7a14605

What happens to those (mine!) Who have been charged £9000+ for the last few years?

We're in Wales. We earn enough between dh and I that she only qualifies for the minimum maintenance grant which I was expecting to be £1k but is a but more than that.
And I then expected her to qualify for the max amount of loan at about 6k. But again it's more.

No idea why. I'm glad we're in Wales though as even the minimum is higher than she'd qualify for in England.

Well I’d be pleased if they cut the interest rate to something more sensible.
I took out a £2000 student loan last year to do a course and have just had my yearly statement and it’s gone up by £135 because of the 6.3% interest rate.
It’s going to be pretty scary seeing the interest added to my DC loans, I understand the whole thing about not having to repay till you earn a certain amount but I think it’s going to feel like quite a burden for them, knowing about how I feel about my £2135.00 debt !

mustbe nothing would change for DC who have already paid £9000 in fees, that was the fee they agreed to when signing up to their course, but hopefully if the interest rate is cut it will be applied to all outstanding student debt so all students past, present and future will benifit.

More on fee reduction issue.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-48395951

“Different levels of funding for different subjects, which would recognise that some degree courses, such as arts subjects, are much cheaper to deliver. Different levels of fees would be more controversial.”

That could be a bit of a nightmare! DD is looking at courses with high delivery costs (30 hours min each week teaching time) but with poor outcomes in terms of hard cash earned.
It’s already very difficult to access the top quality actor training, this could make this even more difficult.

I think the main problem with a notion of differential fees is who gets to choose which ones are “worth” higher fees? What’s the criteria?

Ffs.... I have a degree of my own and yet have been reading the info on student finance right all along.
I was reading the figures for if dd stayed at home for some reason and thought she'd qualify for 7k total but as she lives away she qualifies for 9k.
That will make her life a little easier but I am still pushing a bit for her to try and get a part time job for luxuries and for the experience as she's volunteered but not done regular paid work yet.