Going to university (2019/20 academic year) - wave goodbye to family, say hello to fellow students and key uni staff and they're settling in (hopefully)

[NewModelArmyMayhem18]

Previous thread. Possibly a little precipitous but for some of our DC their university start date is only just over a fortnight away. Yikes!

The cost of the tumble dryer, plus hanging round the launderette put off DS using the dryers other than for towels and bedding (though I’m not sure how often they were washed if I’m honest!)
In the uni accommodation the rooms tend to be very warm so clothes dry pretty quickly but remind them to leave a window open slightly so the room can air and not get mouldy!

We are only 30 miles away...I can see ds coming home with a bag of laundry! Though not having a dryer I can't dry clothes quickly in winter. So he will need to stay home a night.

rag porridge in a bowl, add milk, microwave 2 mins, stir half way and after. No pan to wash up.

I dry on a line in the garden but use a clothes horse and a Minky line in my utility room in the winter. Only use tumble dryer in an emergency as I find it needs to be on soooo long and still clothes damp, some things shrink. My clothes don’t get musty on a clothes horse.

@Benjispruce no ours don't usually get musty either. We had an aga in our old house. We moved last year. I miss drying the clothes in front of it. I never had the need for a tumble dryer, but now we've moved I might need to invest in one.

@Piggywaspushed I seem to remember your saying something about OCR English boundaries being really high this year - they are certainly higher than AQA and their own previous years ones. In my day 88% would have clearly been a brilliant A - now it’s a B!

To a non teacher this seems to mean the goalposts have changed quite a bit - do the exam boards tell schools this will happen, so they know eg what was an A standard is a B and what was a B is now a C? If not, it all seems rather unfair - I’m an accountant, and we can’t just redefine standards each year without advance warning from the accounting authorities; this system seems far less transparent.

I know numbers taking English went down significantly this year thanks to Gove’s reforms of GCSE; surely that means the cohort taking English this year was more likely to have high achievers, so if they changed the boundaries to maintain percentages at each grade, that is penalising this year’s cohort because the average has risen in quality due to removing the ‘tail’. It all seems very murky - or have I missed something?

We got dd a couple of the radiators airers as there were some shown in the photos of the rooms online and because of not knowing her room size. We may get a tall one she can stand in her shower once we have seen her actual room.

Arrival slot booked for 1pm. We are a couple of hours away but think that should work with time to pack last minute bits and then drive the 2.5 hour ish and get her there easily.
Then theres a 3pm parent talk. And we may take her for dinner before we head back... or we may have chosen to stay over but she has a full morning of induction activities so we may not.

The pile of bits and bobs grows. Bless Asda for a £6 iron, a silentnight quilted mattress protector for £6 and a 75p loo brush!

It'll be in their examiner's report , somewhere. They will say there was an exceptionally high standard this year, I imagine. I doubt last year's boundaries were the same which is why teachers hate being held responsible for predictions , especially in subjects like English! They may also have found their markers were over generous and are compensating, but that usually happens with coursework, rather than exam.

The standard won't have changed much : it's a % of students getting each grade which is fairly fixed (and why the alarmism over low maths grade boundaries is nonsense, really : it's how Edexcel may have fixed their problem of a very hard maths paper)

The other issue with OCR English is it is favoured by selective schools, so will, therefore, have many many brilliant scripts. You'd like to think they'd all get As and As then, if they deserve it, but, in practice , they will still have %s of each grade similar to other exam boards (slightly more A and As iirc)

Oh, for one , unified board!!

And, actually, anecdotally (and I don't actually blame Gove for the drop off : can't believe I just said that! ) it is the high achievers who are deserting Eng Lit A Level.

AAAAAARGH!!

Just checked the exams officer got DS's resit form I handed in before the Bank Holiday to a receptionist and she says she hasn't! She says she does have post to open . The trouble is she works in two sites (6 miles apart...). But I can't imagine it takes her nearly two weeks to open post!!

GRRRR : knew I should have checked sooner and bloody well posted the thing in the post.

I don't think it's high achievers/naturals at English who now eschew it, but all round high achievers who are being predominantly pushed into STEM subjects.

My clothes always pong when they have been on a clothes horse... the area I live in, they pong if they've been on the line too ! And no actual room in the airing cupboard.

I am afraid I break all MN rules by strewing everything on radiators (but then hardly ever have heating on!)

But, yes, I can't understand these people who tumble dry jumpers etc.

I do have a jeans setting on my drier and it actually doesn't shrink them!

Yes, that's what I meant really dangling.

Dd did OCR English at a normal comp. They did Richard III too which apparently isn’t the friendliest Shakespeare to do. Dd said they do give out full marks for essays - which I think is strange as I would instinctively feel you could never get full marks in essay based subjects (don’t know why it’s just full marks seems more of a science thing). Presumably that means they have a rigid marking points system?

OK, so now I have discovered the exams officer has not been in one of the school sites for the whole summer holiday!! So, I was clearly meant to drive 5 miles to one site, rather than hand it in at the one less than a mile away...

When she said, she was at the other place on Tuesdays, I assumed it meant she was at the main site the rest of the time ... seems not...

Such bad communication!!!

This school seems to assume that people are ultra decisive about remarks and can hand everything in the morning they get results. I am very shocked by the very part time summer working hours of exams officers in many schools!

Has the remark deadline not passed? Dd is in two minds whether to recall the Biology script she apparently did so much weaker on. Might just depress her more and she is not studying it again.

Interesting to hear your views about OCR exams @Piggywaspushed. DS at a super-selective and did OCR for two of his A Levels.

FWIW DN who has always been very, very good at English (and got 9s in both Eng Lang & Lit two years ago) scraped a C in her A Level. On paper it's her best subject and yet she totally under-performed. Her other two results were AB.

I actually tend to use the landing railings as my dryer (slack) and it works a treat for big items. Otherwise things stay outside on the line until they dry.

@Piggywaspushed that’s so frustrating .... but maybe it will get a quick turnaround as many/most scripts submitted for review will already have been dealt with?

Thanks for your comments on OCR - very useful context, although I still find the whole system and lack of predictability pretty baffling. No wonder most teacher grade predictions are wrong - how can they possibly predict such moveable grade boundaries?

Piggy that’s horrendous! Hope you get it sorted.

Yeah, we can't. Which is why it annoys me when kids come to my lesson from other teachers and say 'I got a 9 in my coursework' (ermmm. .. you can't possibly know this!) or 'I got an A* in my mock exam@ or ,even worse, 'in Question 3a)' (no, you really didn't!). But, of course, our schools force us into these situations as much as anything! Once upon a time, we sent our predicted grades to exam boards (not sure why) but this doesn't happen any more.

Only priority remark deadline has gone, so don't worry !

zanda, it is my real bugbear that lots of English teachers just won't give full marks. I always challenge this in marking meetings!

The idea is that full marks does not mean perfect : it means 'as good as it gets at aged 17/18'. It is an issue in English/history/media etc. definitely.

When are mark schemes made available?

@Piggywaspushed we have underfloor heating downstairs. I miss radiators for clothes too 😩