How many hours per day are your dc studying for nat5s/highers just now?

[Yumyi]

Looking for a sense of what everyone else is doing

My Nat 5s DC needs support so we have drawn up a timetable with between 5 and 6 hours (less tomorrow to have a half-day break). She is very good at sticking to it. It finishes at 4:30pm and after that her time is her own.

I have no idea about my AH DC - just leaving him to it.

Mine only finished school yesterday so study leave starting now. N5. S4. Been revising at the evenings and weekends but couldn't really tell you how many hours. Certainly not 6 hours a day like pp.

Nowhere near enough. He’s our third DC and we’ve come to realise that we cannot force him to do something he doesn’t want to do, but we have explained the consequences to him and made it clear that he’s responsible for his actions. He’s not academic at all, so it’s taken a while for us to adjust our thinking.

she didn’t do six hours on top of school! When going to school she just did an extra hour and a half or so as soon as she got in from school.

We are getting 4 hours in a good day. I do feel like it should be a bit more, with the first exam now only a few days away. But wasn’t sure if four hours was maybe fairly typical or not

I suspect 4 hours is fairly typical. It depends on the child as to weather it will be enough.

My eldest studied every possible waking minute - no input from anyone else whatsoever. Got straight As in everything.

Second child never lifted a finger, never opened a book, never looked at a past paper. Schoolwork gathered about an inch of dust during study leave.Got exactly the same marks.

Third one is doing 5 Highers this year, probably does about 5 hours a day. I don't think you can do much more than encourage and support them to do their best. They all have different personalities, hopes and dreams. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Mine is doing 5 Highers and is probably doing about 3 hours a day. I think it should be more and have said this on many an occasion, but dc did very well in prelims on not very much revision and seems to be good at cramming. Will see if that approach works - I do feel quite stressed about it.

Yes I just think surely if you have nothing to do and are just hanging around the house. Friends aren’t available to do anything (probably cos they are studying) then you may as well get on with some work and try and get a few extra marks in the exams.

At the end of the day, we can make a few encouraging noises and make sure they have what they need but there is very little we can do to make them actually revise if they don’t want to.

Mine is studying flat out just now (about six hours a day) but that is because he has been a bit lax in the build up since Christmas and has always been academic so is trying to make up for lost time. Strict study schedule to keep to through these exams. I just hope he’s given himself enough time to do what he knows he needs to. It’s his higher year.

This thread is reassuring! My eldest has drawn up a schedule but it adds up to prob 5-6 hours a day. She starts at 10 and finishes at 5ish with 2/3 breaks through the day. She did this during Easter break and is continuing through study leave. She has nights off and doesn’t do any study on a Sunday.

Personally I think she could be doing a little bit more, but I’m also keenly aware that this has to be driven by her. She did well in prelims for most subjects (6 As, 1 B and 1 C) but some of the As scraped through as an A and no more so could easily be a B (or worse) on a bad day.

Time will tell in due course and if it does go a bit pear shaped I’m hoping this will help show her how much study will be needed for highers.

this was my thinking but I also get it must be boring to study all the time. Mine is desperate to get out the house, she’ll offer to pop with me to the dump/supermarket/post office etc just to alleviate the boredom of studying!

she actually popped into town yesterday with a friend for a bit of retail therapy which I think did her the world of good. I think she’s missing school! Shock horror!!

DS (S5) is doing 8-10 hours a day, which I think is reasonable.

We take the view that they should be working as hard as they can now so they can relax over the summer knowing they've earned it.

The risk is the ability to maintain that and not burn yourself out before the exam. So ten hours per day might be just too much for some. My younger DC couldn’t manage it.

DD has unconditionalitis so hasn't been doing as much as she should cause she doesn't need to, so we've had to really push her!

Nat 5s here. Very little studying being done. Her friends are doing way more. She got all As in her prelims so I am trusting her to know what she needs to do from here. She has her goals in her head and she will do what’s necessary to get there. At this stage, all she needs is enough to get her on the higher courses so she is relaxed about the outcome. She knows she will need to do more studying for her highers and she’s happy to do that.

One thing I noticed from the course reports from last year is that quite a few of the subjects had a pass rate of eg 86% for an A
so I think it’s worth them knowing this as sometimes a 70% isn’t actually enough for an A

Just had a look at all the grade boundaries for Nat 5 last year. The highest percentage required for an A was 76% for practical cake craft. All the rest were between 68% and 73%

Can be found here: https://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/105159.html

https://www.sqa.org.uk/files_ccc/2024-n5-course-report-biology.pdf

Ah, I had been reading course report. Which states minimum mark required is 86. But maybe that’s not actually a percentage?

Makes more sense now

Yes, marks for Nat 5 biology were out of 125 (maximum mark).

Dd is doing around 4/5 hours a day with weekends off. She has adhd so she's doing an hour study then 15 min break to move about or whatever.

Have told her if she makes an effort we'll have a trip to alton towers.

Agreed - my oldest studies all the time and got really good grades in Nat 5. Middle child sitting Nat 5s next year and at the moment seems to be getting similar grades to oldest with much less studying. They all find their own path eventually. My brother hated school and left in 4th year. He has made a really good career for himself as he was taken on with a firm as an apprentice and worked his way up

Both mine are doing around four hours a day, during exam leave. This feels very adequate.