Year 9 exams in subjects not being taken at GCSE...

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I have year 9 twins currently in the thick of year 9 exam revision.

They're currently in disagreement as to how much effort one should put into the subjects one isn't taking forward

Views seem to range from a. it's important to do well anyway to b. I'll see if there's any time left to c. fuck that for a game of soldiers.

Any thoughts?

At my DCs school the year 9 exams are in Jan/ Feb - before options are chosen. This hasn't completely stopped the 'Well, I'm definitely giving up x, so I don't need to bother with revising for it' attitude, but they can't be certain what they will be able to carry on with/ drop.

My dc have in the main gone for option b - with the exception of Art, DT and Spanish where its always been option c

Although the subject itself may not be important, practicing revising a number of subjects all at the same time is. So maybe only spend half the time on these that is spent on others?

At my sons school all exams have a minimum pass mark. If this is not achieved the exam has to be resat. So he had to revise all subjects last year (current year 10) but spent less time on the ones he was intending to drop hoping to scrape the minimum pass mark.

My dad told me in year 9 (or whatever it was then, I'm old not to start revising for the subjects I was dropping until I was confident of 100% in the exams for all the ones I was taking for O level

That said, I now teach a non-compulsary GCSE subject and it drives me mad when year 9s do this! But from a parent point of view, those kids won't have anything to do with me next year.

Thank you all.

From the other side, I wasn't impressed with my Yr9 dd's teachers who refused to let her make an appointment with them for parents evening if they weren't putting that subject down as an option
Seems it's not just the students that think like that in her school.