When should y11 start revising for GCSE?

[SilverPosey]

I work in a local coffee and cake shop. Yesterday a woman and her husband came and got two coffees to have in, and a brownie to take away. As i handed over the brownie the woman explained it was a treat for their daughter who was at home revising for the GCSE. My daughter is y11 too and she hasn't started revising yet, I was surprised this girl was already revising when the exams are still more than a month away. If you have y11 kids are they revising already or do you think its okay to leave till closer to the exams?

Teacher.

Yes they should be revising already.

Little and often is better and easier than cramming it all in at the last minute.

Most schools do mocks and at least half of the point of mocks is getting the students to revise!

Mine would be revising at this point. Yes. Depends on child I suppose. We have done it twice. One more to go but not this year.

The Easter holidays is the key period to start your revision. Or at least it was when I did GCSEs many decades ago! Not sure if things have changed since then but I definitely remember it being the time to knuckle down and get the revision timetable in place.

I have no idea! I never did any revision for any exams that I took. Presumably it depends on the individual?

My Y11 son has been revising since September there is so much content to go over. He will be spending all of Easter reversing with odd time out to chill / relax but even then he gets stressed as feels he should be revising. He has a revision time table of what days he is studying which subject and then broken down into how many weeks before each exam in that subject and the content he needs to go over.

Mine has been revising solidly since mid Dec. First for mocks in January, and then revised all half term and has been off for a week for Easter already and revising 8hrs a day.

I don't really get involved other than feeding her regularly!

Mind you, I don't know if this is normal, she's the oldest and v academic and planning for all 9s.

All her friends have got their heads down for the Easter hols they aren't socialising.

MFL orals take place the first fortnight back at school and some kids have their first written exam at the start of May, with the main ones beginning on 9th May.

Yes your child should have been revising already! First exam is 6th / 7th of may. Not long at all for all those subjects.

Easter holidays should be all about focused revision.

Presumably you did all your gcse exams before the changes made by Gove? They are incredibly content heavy now.

My DD has been doing about 20 mins a night of revision since she started in Y11, and has now upped it to an hour a night.

I'm surprised your dd hasn't started yet, school are really hammering the need for revision this year for months now.

Should be revising, my daughter did her GCSEs last year and her teachers ran revision sessions all through the Easter holidays and May half term too.

Or gifted. I didn't do my education in UK as I grew up in Europe but I didn't revise before university. I wasn't lazy but I was a straight A student so why should I?

But again, not the current english gcse system.

Lots of gifted children including ours go easy with GCSE. But our children did revise and worked. So important to learn to study at 11 yo rather than at grammar or university. Tbh my parents should have made me too.

op you are going to get a lot of people giving you irrelevant information about their own experiences of gcse in the 90’s, 2000’s etc, or about completely different systems. But the bottom line is your daughter should be revising.

Surprised school hasn’t given you/your DD information about this. We had a ‘preparing for exams’ parents & Y11 meeting in Dec, and another one in late Feb.

the expectation is absolutely that she would be revising by now. My Y11 is aiming for 3 hours a day. Even her totally unacademic BF is planning for an hour a day.

What was her plan then? To spend two days per subject memorising two years worth of curriculum?

Of course she should be bloody revising - should have started a couple of months ago.

As a teacher this is what I'd be inclined parrot out too. However everyone learns differently so I'd try to remember this too.

My personal experience of revision was that....last minute cramming was more effective for me.

She should have got into a routine of revision since Xmas at least.

There's so much content to cover now in GCSEs, you can't expect teachers to reteach/revise in lessons really. A lot of subjects will still be teaching content until exams start as the curriculum is so enormous.

If there's revision/intervention classes listed after school your DD should be attending those as well as revising

They definitely should be revising at Easter.

Depends on the child but yes, they should really have started

Y11 at home here .
Been revising since December alongside homework for content they were still covering .

Teachers - how much revision would you recommend per night and how many subjects? I saw something on here about an hour and a half per night and 3 subjects. So 30 mins per subject?

Mine is year 10 but awful at revising so would be good to have an idea.

End of year 10!

Easter holidays should be for revising in year 11 if you want good grades. A month is not enough for all those subjects!

Sounds great, good luck to him. So glad mine are passed that, although I still have one to do A levels, but that's next year.