National 5/ Highers

[happyrage20]

In light of what John Swinney said today about it being unlikely schools return to normal in the next academic year, how worried are you about your teen in exam years?
My husband and I have worked full time through lockdown and we have left her to it mainly. Just realised last week when I got a chance to have a look that she has barely engaged. Marked stuff as handed in but nothing done. Teachers have dished out the work then few days later put up the answers.
Only had 2 things marked the whole of lockdown.
So I've sat on her all week (she's a procrastinator and now overwhelmed)
What will happen? I'm scared she will be marked down now and this will go against her.
No idea how they will cover the course for exams next spring?
Bound to be even worse for Highers students who didn't even get their nat5 exam experience!

What's your thoughts on what will happen? (I know no one knows )

yup. S6 here who was working her way up the grades and had been robbed of her true potential by estimation.
Now likely to happen again.

The Scottish government seem happy to be giving up on the education system. I'm guessing that Highers won't go ahead. My DD was doing v well academically, and will have no exam results to show for it.

Yet other countries have gone ahead with exams THIS year.

Dd missed out on sitting highers. Is stopped to be doing 2 advanced highers but as they aren't offered by her school she was supposed to go to 2 other schools for them. Don't know how that will work. She is taking a higher too but wasn't added to the Teams group for a few weeks and only after I chased it with the school. She isn't engaging well with little school input. Ds should be in S3 and is doing work. Some subjects seem to send loads of work, others very little. He has chosen PE as a Nat5, don't know how they'll assess that if they don't do it in school time

It really is very worrying isn't it? How can they proceed and even enter uni/college without exam experience?
What's awful for the new s5/s6s they didn't foresee this would happen so couldn't prepare for it.
Although speaking to my teacher friend she did say when assigning grades there were only 2 pupils she deliberated over(60 pupils) Spoke to her head of year etc and they agreed with her with all the evidence they had.

Yes, I agree little to no input from most of my daughters subjects. I don't count throwing out a few notes and questions as much input!
Only 2 of her 8 subjects have requested a 'hand in ' assignment- English and history.
English though , how can you study literature by yourself? Spanish is even worse.
I do know some of her studious classmates are working away no problem but she's not mature or responsible to be let to do it on her own.
I reckon I now need to crack the whip but if I don't nothing will get done.
Spanish though , I have no clue!

Get an online Spanish teacher? We have one.

DS3 is doing 4 highers and Nat 5 maths. He is being given very little work and will not do any extra on his own initiative. He's recently been prescribed meds for Adhd but keeps skipping them as he needs to be kept busy when on meds or he feels restless. Two of his highers are practical /creative and he can practice skills himself, im giving him one hour a day art lesson, all we can both stand! He's aiming for art school so we are prioitising that. Im imagining he will end up doing his Highers over two years, he's reasonably bright but his late ADHD dx has held him back and this situation will not help. Having 6th year as a catch up year is going to prove invaluable but he was hoping to go to college to do a portfolio instead. I could help him with his other Highers as his older brother and I did the same ones but he has always struggled to do school stuff at home. Hes charming, scatty and creative but a bit immature and lives for the moment...his older brother is doing uni work at home and has significantly upped his marks due to lack of distractions, they're like chalk and cheese!
His Nat5 grades are not going to be good, he did not take his prelims seriously and had just started on meds and started to get his act together when lockdown started.
All a bit of a mess but something always seems to go wrong with my kids exams and I've learned to take the long view...

Not everyone can afford to employ an online tutor, I'm very worried about the future for my 16yr old who hasn't been able to sit his highers , didn't do very well in his Dec prelims through not studying enough but as a result was working very hard in the run up to lockdown and thought he could do well in the actual exams.
If he doesn't get the grades he needs , he's going to basically repeat the last year, which will be very demotivating and means he can't do the subjects he wanted to do in 6th year.
What's even more worrisome is that he is not the type of student that works well on his own, he needs mentoring and to be prodded.
Being key workers we haven't been able to homeschool him, he's old enough to realise what he needs to do but doesn't feel online learning is working for his subject choices. He needs the real life reassurance of a classroom environment which even in August doesn't look like it will be full time. How will this work for 6th years ....he's already talking about having to go to college for a further year in 2021/22 to sort this mess out.

Ds missed his NAT5 exams and is now new S5 studying 5 HIGHERS.

For Maths, Physics and Chemistry he thinks he is doing OK, there doesn't seem to be much work coming through, but what there is he is completing what is being asked of him in 2-3 hrs per subject per week, plus, off his own back, a bit of extra work in the topic they are covering and taking down revision notes for later. He's had to mature a lot and after a bit of initial guidance organise himself, even though he enjoys science and maths he still has actually surprised me, he thinks he does more work at home without distractions in class (he was always easily distracted, joining in low level disruption). But it is a worry even though he is engaged with what is being given they aren't getting through the curriculum quick enough and missing lab work for science.

French, he gets some slides and a basic reading, listening and writing worksheets which he also completes. On top of that, after a nudge from me, he writes vocab revision cards from the vocab lists the teacher gives him and we practice him speaking them a few times a week. I don't know if his pronunciation is correct, he says it is as he checks online. Again worried about the lack of speed they are going through things and how do you learn a language, especially grammar, through slides.

English, is a tough one and a huge worry for us, not sure how it will work at all, I've bought some revision guides which he hasn't looked at yet, and we will maybe consider a tutor later.

It is a shit situation, but trying really hard to keep him motivated (while working full-time) and not let him know how worried I am about what will happen.

Yes we probably will need to get her a tutor as she will fail otherwise.
It's all the subjects though. She's bright but very lazy. She has never studied much before but seems to listen well in class which seemed to help her.
I just keep reading about kids doing their timetable daily and engaging for 5/6hrs.
My daughter would barely do an hour - which is why she is so behind and now trying to block it out.
I'm on holiday this week thankfully. I was looking at relaxing but will now become need to somehow work my way though subjects and see what's been set (she hasn't even printed out notes)
To be fair the high school hasn't been great even before now. She's no idea how to study or even do homework as she barely had any in s1/s2/s3!!
This is where I see a big difference in her private school friends. They have been taught to work from s1. They know what to do.

Ds barely had any homework in secondary either, hidden deep in the school handbook it said they should do 1.5 - 2 hrs independent revision a night in S3-S4, so before lockdown he had been doing roughly that for most of S4. It took us weeks at the beginning of S4 at easter last year to get him into the swing of it and it has really helped him now. We got lots of hints from you tube - the thomas frank videos are good for ideas. He also used TeeJay maths books and brightred revision guides. I've bought these again for higher.

I have a (new) S3 and S5 and I’m worried sick about both of them. The S3 has additional needs and will not cope with “ blended learning’.

The S5 is clever but lazy and immature, so far he is doing the minimum possible which takes him 2-3 hours on a few days a week. I have no idea how he can possibly sit higher prelims at the end of 202 if he doesn't get more teaching.

The Spanish tutor costs £16 and Dd has 1 lesson a week. She gets lots of homework. It's motivating. She's well ahead of where she needs to be.
For other highers, I've bought textbooks, and it's down to her. She's pretty hardworking. A rubbish situation though.

Do you really think they can have exams though end year? School a few days a week. How can they possibly cover the course?
The private schools have had a full timetable of zoom lessons daily. Surely this will have an elitist leaderboard?
No way the state school pupils could excel in the same exams.

I can't understand why there's not a full zoom it teams timetable going on for S5 S6.

I would need a timetable for that. And permission from my council who are still working on securing the platforms, providing IT and training to deliver live/recorded lessons.

I don’t understand either @IKEA888.

My kids go to a huge school, there must be at least 6 higher maths classes. They are timetabled to have 3 double periods of maths a week, so each teacher was expecting to spend at least 6 hours with higher classes. That’s 36 hours of teaching time. Surely they could produce 5 hours of zoom classes - one per day - in those 36 hours?

Same with English and other big subjects.

I know it’s harder with smaller subjects and smaller schools. Or practical subjects like science, performing arts, tech etc

My DD is doing a practical subject at university and was timetabled to have classes until July. The staff have brought forward all the lectures and tutorials from the autumn term and these have been running since mid May.

The lectures are recorded and the students have work to complete and submit after each one. The tutorials are live.

We don't even need each school or region running zoom or similar, we could have nationwide classes for each higher subject with a time slot for each SQA candidate to attend with a named support person available every day for a zoom chat to Tutor...

I think JS will end up cancelling next years exam diet- at what stage I don’t know- but will play the vulnerable children card to justify it.

I have sent in a written question to tomorrow’s Q &A asking him if he can commit to telling learners definitively what will happen - BEFORE the schools go back and they start their Nat 5’s, Highers &Advanced Highers...

Very worried! I have a child due to be sitting Nat 5s next year. Other who has just completed S5, obviously without sitting Highers. Everything is totally up in the air, nobody has a clue what is going on, kids are getting hardly any teaching - complete shitshow.

I also have another going into S1 - I am assuming that by the time he gets to exams it will all be resolved, but who knows at this point?

I do like the idea of a group online lessons ran by the education board covering the subject then teachers could deal with the questions /issues related to the lesson. This means everyone getting an equal platform. Can't see this being rolled out though.
Sadly I think our kids in s4/s5/s6 are just very unlucky and will be collateral damage in the fiasco.
I 100% agree they need to know a plan going forward but it seems it's just cross your fingers and hope for the best.

Just to mention that DD had a really positive experience of the OU YASS alternative to Advanced Highers this year. You might want to consider if you are worried about AH provision next year in your DCs school. OU have umpteen years of online experience so materials were good. DDs OU tutor was excellent. I suspect they give S6s someone used to dealing with 17/18 year olds. Courses are free for S6s in state schools.

I have a new S4. Work set so far has been variable. He is bright but I am worried about the sheer loss of actual teaching. I can see continuous assessment happening but it's not always great. When my daughter was doing highers, a certain teacher didn't like her. She missed a few lessons due to orthodontic appointments, but when she asked for the worksheets for relevant lessons she was ignored. If she asked for anything in class