Advanced Highers - who to complain to?

[dementedpixie]

my dd has just started 6th year and chose to do advanced highers. Unfortunately her school doesn't offer them (except art) so the arrangement in the past has been for them to attend other schools for those subjects. In these Covid times this has been suspended so her last 2 weeks have been full of nothing with no update from the school about what will happen next.

Who do we talk to (school? Council?) as at the moment she will be falling behind others that attend the schools offering her subjects (AH computing and AH english). Any help appreciated

Complain to your local authority as they are the policy maker here not the school. Seems to be a fairly uniform application across different authorities.

Ours have not been told no but no classes in AH school until after October break and then who knows? I know the nature of the course is some self directed learning. But not the whole lot! And no chance of catching up.

What they expect young people who will get conditionals based on AH to do is a mystery .

Might be worth finding out what the AH Hub at Caley is doing to add strength to your complaint.

I know it's a rubbish prospect but my DD1 changed schools to do AHs as she would have spending more time in the AH school.

She placement requested herself to where I teach and started the next day for S6 conference the amazing office team even found her a preloved blazer that fit perfectly.

DD1 was an introvert and had one bestie at school who she also saw lots of at their (all encompassing) hobby. It was a great move her as it forced her to make new friends, great prep for uni, and first year at uni was dead easy as she had covered the subjects at SCQF 7 already.

Wouldn't have worked for any of my others as they either had big close friendship groups or were very connected to the school DD3 was head girl and DD4 depute.

Thanks for your thoughts. She was going to have to go to 2 different schools to do them. Might look at complaining to the council then if nothing gets sorted out in school. Feel sorry for her

Yep your poor DD. I have always been a frustrated by the STEM bias in AHs where my DDs attend , the columns always seemed to accommodate taking 3 sciences plus Maths but English and French and History all in the same column.

Only Art does make me give myself a shake though . So thanks for reality check. Is it a tiny school?

900 odd pupils so not tiny. North Lanarkshire school

Our local authority has a campus approach to AH normally. Classes are now done by teams/glow.

we're still waiting for an update from the school as to what's happening. Even an idea of the textbooks/resources needed or the set text for AH English would be useful to start off with.

I’m sure Lidlfix is an English teacher so will advise much better than me but I would suggest that looking at the SQA website re the English dissertation and folio would be really useful for your DC to start pulling some ideas together - esp re the dissertation. Though with the SQA consultation re content for next year it might change.

There are no proposed changes to AH English so no need to exercise caution there.

Rubbish at doing links but Shetland library have a very extensive document helping candidates to select appropriate dissertation texts .

It's unbelievable that your school only offers one AH!! English AH should be a given, surely? I would definitely move to one of the schools that is doing the AHs, and maybe consider changing the second AH to fit in with that school?