2025 SQA Exams

[Issy422]

With SQA exams starting tomorrow, is it time for a general exam thread?

It's just DD for me, doing Nat 5s. My first 'anxious parent for formal exams' experience. Starts with Music on Monday and ends with Art & Design on 26th, so we've exams throughout. Study leave not started here so first exam is on first day of study leave. She's over revision already so going to be a long 5 weeks.

An awful lot of kids we know have English as their first exam on Tuesday. It’ll be DD’s third and by the end of the week she’ll have done 5. Not sure the spread has been favourable for her!

DD has AH History on Friday which I'm nervous about given the shambles that was Higher History last year, she feels confident she will do well but she had that confidence last year and they still only gave her C when the prelim was an A

Sorry to hear that, I’ve just been stressing about higher history having read about what happened last year. My dc is feeling swamped with all the info needed for the higher next Friday.

DD just one more exam at the end of the month, higher art and then that’s her finished with school (s6)
No rest for her though as she has also been doing an online college course in digital and data innovation this year and that doesn’t finish until June.

She has a conditional place to study computing science. Needs 2 more C’s.
Higher geography and higher Admin this week were crash highers. Said it was ok.

So we’re keeping our fingers crossed for her.

H English is on the 7th so on Wednesday. We will be 3/5 done by then and all wrapped up by the 12th May! It's been a bit tricky having them all together.

Highers here, first one yesterday which was economics, which went well. Feeling the pressure for DS, he has his eye on English unis that are will need a min AAAAB plus 3 strong advanced Highers. He’s unexpectedly found one of Highers harder than he thought he would this year, not helped by having a fairly weak teacher (not just his view, others in the class feel the same, and we got a tutor to help who has been a bit 🤔 about some of the teaching he’s shared), and typically it’s the one actual subject he needs to do well in to have a hope of getting a place on his preferred course.

He’s fortunate in that his are well spaced out, some friends have had three already.

Fingers crossed! Good luck to everyone!

Why are you doing her timetable for her? Does she have an issue that stops writing it? Tell me to mind my own business if it's too nosey of me or if I missed it somewhere.

Because she asked if I could. There's very little I can do to help her as she's doing arts and humanities subjects and I did sciences and languages, so trying to help where I can. Also wanted her to kick start her to get started with revision in earnest and it worked for a few days at least.

On the 8 exams question I asked in the quoted post, I realised that DD is also doing 8 including both maths. I did have two separate viruses going on when I wrote that, so blaming them for adling my brain 🤦🏻‍♀️.

👋 At all the new thread joiners this weekend.

Oops, didn't quite edit that correctly you get the idea.

Ah right. If she asked then that's good.
I've just come across some parents who get a bit too involved. 🫣
It's my last year as an exam parent - DS's are reasonably well spaced out though the crash Higher was very early on. He's also got one subject with no exam but intensive coursework.
Good luck all.

Nat 5 Gaidhlig was terrible yesterday apparently.

That's a shame. Sometimes a bad exam can mean it was harder than average, and so the grade boundaries move down.

Hopefully. I think everyone found it very hard, not just my DC.

This is a nice thread - stop being goady there is no need for it. We're all living is stressy houses at the moment.

I was genuinely asking, and OP replied.
Teens at my son's school are/were encouraged to organise their own study, but some parents can be very pushy and over-involved, causing themselves and teens more stress than is needed. PP explained that her daughter asked, which is different.

I did my DC revision timetable too. We discussed it together then I drew it up and checked she was happy with it. It took the pressure off her as the idea of filling the time with revision was overwhelming.

My other DC just gets fed and watered.

I think if they ask, and it's a joint affair then that's great. I've just come across some parents who feel they have to do it, and it all gets a tad stressful. By doing it together this time they'll feel better to be more independent in the coming years. 👍 The only thing I do these days is ask how it's going and provide warmth and food/drinks....oh yes and access to my stationery box. 😬

I suspect it is not the parent impose timetable per se that is the issue. I suspect parents drawing up timetables are those whose children are finding it hardest to settle down to revision or understand the value of it. I can’t imagine parents of otherwise studious offspring, doing so.

I think it's probably a mix of both tbh.
Encouragement is great though, which it appears to be with pps.

Sorry to hear Gàidligh was a tough paper @cornflourblue. As others have said, hopefully it will be reflected in the grade boundaries.

Thank you @Riverswimmers for keeping the thread positive and glad to know that I'm not alone @CleaningSilverCandlesticks. We're all trying to do our best for our DC here.

I have found this week a challenge, as DD has not done anywhere near the amount of revision that she should be doing, given that she had four days off school for study. I don't want to be pushy, but I also don't want her to have to spend another year doing maths, if she fails, for the sake of a few more hours on it in the next ten days.

She's come to her own realisation this evening that she's now behind and needs to crack on with it, so fingers crossed for a more focused week next week.

We also helped DD draw up her timetable. These are her first exams and prelims were no help as they were spread over 4 months. This is her first experience of a solid block of exams. She also has no experience of how to tweak it when things go better or worse on revision. She’s a very academic kid who does a sport that involves a massive time commitment each week. She pretty skilled in juggling work and life and very self motivated. However, I’m not going to sit back and leave it as a life lesson if I can see things going wrong!

Fifteen (and some of them only fifteen by barely two months) is still very young to expect them to have all their shit together. Study leave will be the first time they have ever had to organise themselves to study over a period of weeks in this manner. Of course many will struggle with this on their own. Some may be on top of it, but a lot will require some degree of guidance.

Well perhaps not the first time but the two terms of lock down when they were ten and eleven were probably a disaster for those without parental guidance (and not much better for those with).

What harm does it do if someone draws up a study timetable for their child? Learning to study is itself an acquired skill. It’s hardly comparable to doing their work for them.

Hi , I think we are all doing our best to support our children through this stressful time . I think we all need to accept that sone children are more mature / independent than others . They all have different personalities so I also don’t think we should judge others for any support their children ask for / we provide .

we know our children best and I agree that if we spoon feed our kids too much we are not letting them learn their own life lessons . But I am not sure that this really stressful time is the best time to leave them to flounder if they could do with some support and that could include helping them with drawing up a study timetable and the importance of breaks etc .

There does have to be a balance though where we are not heaping the pressure on our kids and being too pushy as that won’t be good for them either .

It is challenging for us though and frustrating at times . I do feel my DC could be doing a lot more studying than he is and I have to nag him to get out of bed or otherwise he would probably sleep all day .