Thread 53 - Covid GCSE Cohort - Happy New Year 2025 to our fab young people

[Delphigirl]

New thread! Looking forward to traversing 2025 with this fantastic group 🎉😘

Great news @Shimy !

@Shimy Great news!

Thanks all. It's only two exams but hoping it looks impressive on his CV, the job market for graduates is dire at the moment. I wonder how our lot graduating this Yr are getting in with their applications? Would be grateful for any extra tips I can pass on to DS.

Well done Shimy ds. Seriously impressive. ICAEW paper passing is no mean feat.

Great news @Shimy !

Great news @PhotoDad.

Brilliant @Shimy I still remember the days of ICAEW exams, so glad they are all so long ago!

Well done to your Ds @shimy! I also remember the ICAEW exams - not fun!

I’m not sure if I mentioned the mess up Notts made of dd’s exams? Contradictory advice basically… they’ve now said the only way they can think of to make it fair is to allow everyone to sit the two affected exams in August - and graduate in December! Dd is seriously upset about it because she was looking forward to graduation with her friends and her last long summer!

She’s also just had another speeding offence which will take her up to 6 points. As she’s still (just!) within two years of her test, she’ll be losing her licence. Not a good start to 2025 here!

Argh @crazycrofter , what a bad run of luck she's having!

Oh no @crazycrofter on both fronts. The exam thing is utterly infuriating, the driving, well, I guess she has to take that as a life lesson, but it is going to make life difficult isn't it. How long will she be banned for?

Well done to DS @Shimy I know nothing about these exams but it sounds like quite an achievement.

@ExpensiveDecoration as she’s a ‘new driver’ it means she’ll have to pay for a new provisional licence and take both tests again! The thing is, she never knowingly speeds, she’s just not very observant - which is obviously a problem 😩

oh Crazy that is so shit, on both fronts, especially Notts uni exam.

Says the woman who went on a speed awareness course yesterday, re a recent drop off of ds1 at Notts, dreaded M1. only on mn does no one ever speed, like the annual sherry sip, I'm merrily driving along in the 2nd lane at below 75 mph, occasionally up to 80, people pass me by. How come they don't get done for speeding?

Notts are terrible for it @Oblomov24 , I got a speed ticket on a drop off once too, I reckon it’s their main source of income! I honestly don’t want to go back to Nottingham once dd has left, I’m not a massive fan!

I1Thanks for all your well wishes for the first exam, unfortunately he's just failed the second one. Not sure what went wrong as he said the first paper was the hardest. One of life's curve balls. I'm intrigued some of you have sat these exams before as I'd never heard of them until now except for the ACCA exams. Hopefully there will be an opportunity for him to retake it it's a bit of a drag and he had other things eg househunting lined up to do straight after exams but hey ho!
@crazycrofter I'm dismayed re the exam events unfolding for your daughter, somehow it just doesn't sound fair, how absolutely frustrating? As for the driving penalties, if misery loves company, ds1 is on his 3rd car, yes 3rd! Has had 2 accidents in less than 2 yrs of his license. He is waiting to get onto a refresher course. I'm convinced in the wake of driving tests /lessons resuming huge chunks were missed out of their lessons as everyone was rushed through to the tests, alsi the chopping & changung of instructors didnt help. Some things we've mentioned to DS he just looked blank and said it's not been covered in his lessons, eg reverse parking, not explaining properly about manoeuvring round abouts etc. When ds2 was about to sit his test, his instructor buggered off on holiday and sent his girlfriend to pick DS up for his test (no previous notice).

I hope your DD is brave enough to resit those tests, Perhaps she doesn't really understand the road signs too & could with a refresher in this area. My conclusion is the driving lessons are not as thorough as they were anymore & I find more youngsters are having accidents but that's anecdotal.

Which one was it Shimy. People struggle with different ones, but Accounting and Assurance are not too bad. FR (Financial Reporting) - all the FR's - the different Rules aren't terrible. Tax is a bugger! (My ds1 finds Tax hard, as do most of his Notts classmates.

I think it was Principles of Taxation. He was so certain he'd got it in the bag. Got 52%

Ahh. Explains everything. Makes total sense. Tell him not to worry. More people fail tax than any other paper, I think.

Ah that’s a shame @shimy, but he was so close! Hope he can retake. I liked the tax exams (hence I work in tax now!) but they were definitely hard.

@crazycrofter the Uni screwed up 5 out of 6 of DD's exams last year. They seem to have no resolution to this - she was just told she could resit if she wanted to, which given her exam anxiety she did not! Her disability advisor said that the failure to make reasonable adjustments on their part should not be fixed by requiring her to do additional work. The Uni argue that without resitting, they cannot demonstrate she has the academic rigour required to pass the year and the pass mark is non-negotiable, even where it is their fault.....

A ridiculous system, and the one thing where the A-level exam boards were actually better at than the Uni...

Arghh I don't want to hear about notts messing up exams as it's getting closer on DS list as his preferred top spot!

@Oblomov24 & @crazycrofter Thank you. He is convinced he's the only one in the company that has ever failed and feels embarrassed by it and also anxious it might be used to decline him an employment offer at the end of his time there. He does catastrophise a lot, resit is all booked for the 18th.

What aspect of tax would you say is best to get experience in private or corporate?, ds has been doing work in both but is unsure which way he should gravitate to when given the choice.

Re: exam mess ups, the departments should be horribly embarrassed and doing everything they can to not cause students any more worry instead they're causing even more distress but not taking ownership of the situation.

Sorry @NCTDN , but the Psych department has been terrible! On the other hand dd has just done a Theology module and had fantastic support, tutor responsiveness and quick turnaround of marking .

@shimy I did ten years of personal tax as I found it much more interesting, but then moved to corporate VAT. Corporate tax and VAT give much more scope to move out of practice and into industry and there are just more jobs. Is he thinking of doing ICAEW after his degree?

@handmademitlove sorry your dd has suffered too 😩

Sorry to hear of the exam nightmares.

@Shimy ICAEW is what is traditionally known as Chartered Accountant whereas ACCA is officially chartered certified accountant. Doesn’t help that someone qualified under ICAEW has either ACA or FCA after their name!

Have people seen the consent to cookies or pay model MN have just brought in? Are people bothered? I always reject all cookies on every site I go on so am having quite a problem with this on principle. At the moment my mobile is fine and it hasn’t kicked in but I tried to log on my PC and it was consent or pay.

I am debating my future use of Mumsnet (which would to be fair save me a lot of time!) but am sad to be in this position.

@crazycrofter He doesn't want to do ICAEW after graduating but wants to work in industry perhaps in business or technological strategy. He was asked during his 1st training if he would like to work in private tax and he just said 'yes', as to be honest he didn't know his left from right then, but he's complained that he hasn't done as much work or attended as many meetings as he would've liked or has seen other IP's doing who are in Corporate and started to wonder whether he made the right choice. so what you've said kind of confirms the misgivings he's had. He's got 6 mths left so he can still gear things toward more corporate work/experience which sound more like what he needs, so thank you for explaining it.

@25newernames I agree it can be confusing, both are great bodies to have. Funnily enough I've just seen the cookie consent thing you're mentioned it, i just clicked on consent as i suppose it won't be any worse than it probably is and I'm not a premium user.

@25newernames yes, I have seen it, but will probably end up staying (not paying). I've been here 20 years and a few times have been tempted to leave because of their various disasters but it has always drawn me back. I tend to reject all cookies but am not religious about it, I do clear them from my devices periodically too. I do see the point that £2.99 a month isn't much for a service that I get so much out of, but when it is run on such an amateur basis (which has been shown time and time again over the years) I am not filled with confidence that it would be any better. But also accept that it might become pretty well unusable, in the same way if you click through to local news organisations on FB you get ads flashing up all over the place. Some of my groups of MN friends have migrated to FB/Messenger for these reasons.