Is your school running GCSE revision sessions this holiday?

[TalkinPeace]

I just dropped DD off for her three lessons today and over half of year 11 were there for various subjects.

The teachers are giving up their holiday, the school is keeping the buildings open, the kids are going in.
Hopefully the grades will reflect that effort.

On my way home I passed the sink school.
No signs of life at all.
No evidence of pupils or teachers in the car park or the building.

Surely the failing school should make MORE of an effort?

I think here in England, the pressure on teachers to improve grades in order to retain or improve placement in the league tables is becoming silly. These sessions that teachers are becoming incresingly obliged to give are part of that. It seems most private schools and grammars don't do them.

I've done a day this week. I'm a none-core (academic) subject so I get no allocated lunchtime sessions. plus I lose curriculum time to drop-down days etc. I made tons of cakes etc and we had a productive day (well, few hours really)... Still saddened that some had clearly attended for a good catch up, and one explained that he was only there to keep his mother happy.... Most were appreciative though and about 85% said thank you!! (Most of our kids are fabulous, thankfully).

knit you sound loveley!

I am incredibly impressed by the teachers who run these sessions. I know that at our school they make a huge difference. Many of our kids are the first in their families to get to the "doing exams" bit of school, and they really have no idea how to go about it. It does make you realise the advantage a knowledgable, supportive home background is.

A massive thank you to the teachers who are trying to level the playing field a bit.

How is anything being levelled? The OPs school is a good one. The neighbouring 'sink' school isn't offering them.

I was talking about our school, word. Not sure about talkin's- the use of the word "sink" made it difficult for me to read the rest of her posts. Some sort of bizarre word blindness I suffer from........

Ah I see - fair dos. And yup, hats off to the teachers at your DS school? BTW do they mind about it eating into their holiday?

They volunteer, Word. And they get paid. And the governors provide cake. But yes, it a lot to ask- thankfully, so far they are happy(ish ) to do it.

Noble - thats true, but these are teachers who are either still in the profession and running masterclasses - albeit they are coming to the end of their careers - or they retired 5/10 years ago from the school.

If the masterclasses we're talking about are one class every few years is that really going to result in burnout??

That is not to say I am not hugely grateful to those teachers who run the classes - as a parent I always thank the school, and as a Parent Council we extend our formal thanks.

Martorana - I have a similar syndrome but it's more of a phrase blindness than a word blindness. Whenever I see phrases like cream rises to the top, especially in relation to the mumsnetter's own DC, I feel quite weak and can no longer read any more of the thread.

Wordfactory I teach in a grammar, there are lots of sessions going on... The pressure to get A/A* in all subjects regardless of pupil effort is immense.

We don't get paid extra either. Its all for PM purposes which I'll probably fail anyway as a few pupils think the 5 hours I'm offering is going to make up for nearly two years of not much work on their part and so consequently FFT targets won't be achieved. I've already been running an hour after school every week since January for year 11 revision... Best attendance at that was 6 out of 25 pupils (averaged around 3). Still... what can you do?

No, thank God!
DD needs some down time and some sleep! She's had Music, Drama and Art deadlines right up to the end of term. With hours and hours after school. Then a school trip to Europe.

Revision starts in earnest on Saturday (she's getting cold and wet tomorrow) and she really needs that week with no chasing in and out of school to get clear in her head what she doesn't and doesn't know.

Because of being at the very top of set 2 maths and off the top of double science (long story). What she needs to revise (things her dyslexic brain can't remember or spell) is not what the majority of her science class couldn't understand!

At the school I teach at there are revisison classes going on every day this week. My hod has about 45 mins to see me about something I need help with because I've never done it before.

I would not give up my holidays to this extent. I go in one day.

During term time the kids mess around in lessons and pay zero attention for me to then see them in the holidays to "catch up"? Nope.
Maybe I'm not in the right frame of mind for teaching nowadways, but then I am leaving the profession soon.

My dd is at a high achieving grammar school and has one revision class in the holidays. For 1 hour. Because the teacher was ill before the holidays. They got an exam and revision timetable and are expected to get on with it.

Honestly, term time has always been teaching for me, holidays are a time to get all the stuff done that never gets done otherwise, not for teaching.
I can't wait for the colleagues to tell me how little time they had to relax during the holidays. It's all wrong.

But surely every single one of your colleagues won't be teaching every day throughout the holidays? One maths masterclass shared between a team of 5/6 teachers (or however many maths teachers you have) = 1 masterclass every 5/6 years if the teachers chooses to run them. That still leaves a heck of a lot of holidays across the years - unless of course your school runs many, many masterclasses across every holiday, with every teacher participating?

My sister teaches science and is in every Easter, she's been in three days this week doing revision classes.

My maths department has three teachers in.

So no, SirChenjin, not every school runs things the same way. Is your school quite small? One teacher would not be enough to cover the amount of students who need to come in in my school.

SirChen, out of 10 colleagues in my dept 5 are in every day, running 4 classes a day.
They are not masterclasses, they are revision classes of stuff that should have been done during lesson time. Or supervising children doing work for their controlled assessments because they would not do it otherwise.
I have given mine 3 lessons during term time (as specified on the sow) and who has chosen not to do it can't be helped.

The school is very big, btw.

1200 pupils I think - not sure how many pupils are doing Highers as each class is a different size, but obviously nowhere near as many so the classes will be smaller and there are not as many. I agree that 5 teachers from one department running 4 classes a day seems excessive - I presume that's the same across the school?

Also it's possible the "sink" school (vile way to describe it) has done a lot of revision sessions in term time.

For the DDs school to run stuff in the holidays would be very unfair on the poorest and most distant rural pupils.

At least 1/2 the DCs rely on contract bus services.
Local public transport is very patchy, very expensive and very slow. My DDs can't get into school at all without walking/cycling 3 miles (and finding somewhere safe for their bike), then getting a once an hour bus.

I might of cycled the whole trip, but I lived on a bike as a teen and my roads were better and quieter. Here they are very narrow or main roads with 40 tonne lorries)

My guess is many less well off DCs simply don't have the bus fare or a non working parent, with a car and petrol money to ferry them in and out of school in the holidays).

I went to a 'sink' school, never had any revision classes at all. Talking to a lot of colleagues in their forties that went to grammars and good schools almost all their schools ran revision sessions in the holidays so I don't think it was that unusual even back then in decent schools.
I'm glad to say my DSs' school runs sessions over Easter and I will be encouraging them to take advantage of them in their pre-GCSE years.

I'm 46 and neither my run of the mill, but still got people to Oxbridge, Welsh comp or DHs grammar would have run classes out of school hours.

Both rural areas where not all families owned one car, let alone two.

I can just imagine the phone calls to the HT had he suggested our parents did a 24 mile round trip to collect us from a revision class.

Or that DHs DF who lived in a village that had a once a week pensions and shopping bus, on Thursdays.

Yes it's brilliant that teachers are prepared to give up their free time, but there is a breath taking arrogance from the school management in thinking all parents can be available to get DCs to and from school at the drop of a text.

Well most people live in towns and cities, or at least in reach of a public bus route to one where the schools are likely to be, plus why would it be 'at the drop of a text'? This year's timetable has been up on the school website for weeks, with a bit of planning and/or lift sharing it's hardly likely to be impossible for the majority of students to take advantage of it if they want to.

Breath taking arrogance? As a teacher who has been in school helping students on three days this week I take exception to that.

Oh, and Nocomet, times have moved on. As a child, I lived in a village that had 6 buses per day, to one destination only. My parents still live there and the bus service has improved considerably. Comparing what happens now to what happened 30 years ago is plain silly.