New exam week for my dd

[AmiorEzzy]

The school have introduced a exam week where every lesson is a exam. This is due to the GCSE thing! She is stressed and has to revise. They shouldn't put that much pressure on them on top of homework.

What year is she?
I have two DC's at two different secondary schools. Both have an exam week in June, for years 7 -10. It gets the children used to sitting exams before they get to GCSE level. The results are used, along with the teachers assessments, to set the next years target levels and to adjust teaching sets for the next year.
Revising and sitting exams is not something that comes naturally to most children, they need to learn how to do it effectively before they start sitting exams that matter.

Ae you sure that the homework in the week before won't be revision?

It is far better for children to have proper regular experience of taking exams so that when they matter e.g. GCSE, A-Level etc they are used to them and know what they need to do to revise beforehand.

Where I work, a prep school, we have an exam week 2 times a year for KS2 and every term for Yr 7 and above. well actually 3 days not a week, the children cope with it fine. I also doubt that every lesson will be an exam, as some subjects have more than one lessons a week, e.g. Maths, English, MFL etc, so by the latter half of the week there will probably be less exams per day than at the start.

We did this at secondary every year from what is now Year 7 onwards. There were two maths papers, two English papers and one exam in every other subject. The tests were given in the normal class time.

At dd's junior school they have Assesment week twice a year from Year 1 onwards but its mornings only b

We always had exam weeks for next years sets, perfectly reasonable. Much better than DDs schools mish mash of class test spread all over the place. They forget them and don't realise some are important for sets or grades on reports and some aren't.

DD2 missed doing triple science because they didn't tell her they were basing the groups on a particularly dyslexic unfriendly long write up controlled assessment thing she didn't finish. She'd no idea it was that important.

Her teacher is a bit [embarrassed] she got 99% on one core paper.

What year is she?

When I was at school, every summer from yr7-10 we had a week of exams, seated boy girl boy girl with the boys from one year group and girls. That provided our end if year grades for each subject. It was great preparation at taking exams, things like timings and writing more for questions worth more marks.

As a secondary school teacher, I can assure you having an exam week is perfectly normal throughout secondary. The 'GCSE thing' is a big deal, and by having exam weeks before the real thing, the kids get used to the whole exam set up in advance. Admittedly the real exams won't all be in one week back to back, but it's less disruptive to normal lessons this way, it's easier for teaching and marking purposes, and it means when the kids get to their actual exams a couple of days apart in year 11, they know the drill, they're comfortable with the exam set up and having exams spread out over a few weeks doesn't seem anywhere near as bad. Trust me, it would be a whole lot more pressure to expect a child to go straight into GCSEs with no prior experience of an exam week.

I agree with you AmiorEzzy if they are having exam week and homework its too much my dd and 2 ds are all in year 8 and having this after having nothing in year 7 is too much at such a young age I especially for those in year 7 after having sats in year 6 as well they shouldn't have exams this year especially since gcse's so far away

My kids have all had exam weeks starting in Y3.

I did when I was at school too.

My niece goes to the same school and in same year as Amiorezzy's dd and was a bit shocked aswell. I believe it is good that they have to sit exams before GCSEs but I know the school well and they are prone to giving homework at the stupidest times. (None this Easter holidays, but piled it on them the first week back. Was helping dn with her Science and shocked by amount of homework). Hopefully they will not give them too much homework.
They are year 7 by the way.

Agree with the majority - doing exams in a formal way from Yr 7 teaches good habits, and means it is less of an issue when they get to GCSEs. I do however think it important that the school teaches the pupils how to revise.