Moving school at end of year 10

[Nixxi99]

Not great timing I know but we are moving house half way across the country so children going to have to move schools, children in year 10 and year 7. Has anyone else done this? Not so worried about year 7 but year 10 is mid way through GCSE's.

Can you delay for a year? It would be exceptionally difficult as different schools do different exam boards and controlled assessments. It could end up adversely affecting results.

Can you not have weekly B and B for whoever needs to be halfway across the country and keep going through to the end of year 11? Finding a school with spaces offering exactly the same exams will be a nightmare. Also schools work through the syllabus differently so this could be a problem too. I would move heaven and earth to avoid this problem.

As a secondary teacher, no it is not ideal but it happens, we have pupils leave/start beginning of yr11. Good schools will do everything they can to help minimise any effects due to change of course etc. if it's the way it needs to be, then it is doable IME.

Presumably you are moving due to a job move? Could whoever is moving job weekly commute until the end of June 2015? As a secondary teacher and parent of teens I would also avoid a move for the year 10 at this stage.

At my school nobody is allowed to join in year 11, so students arriving have to do year 10 again.

Like the above posters, I'd be doing everything in my power to make sure this doesn't happen.

As someone who had this happen to them for similar reasons I would really urge against it. It wrecked my education.

There's no way you can do this and end up with a happy year 11 child getting good results in the same subjects ...

Seriously, don't do it!

It will be a real struggle to find a school who coincidentally will offer exactly the ame GCSEs by exactly the same boards, who is at exactly the same place in the curiculum as your DD.

Does your year 10 need good GCSEs for whatever she wants to do next? If so, don't do it. Honestly. Find a way for her to stay, or for whoever needs to move to commute.

I would seriously try to stay for the extra year. We've had kids arrive in Yr11 and it has been a nightmare for them. Problems include:

• Options not matching up - either because we don't do them or because those options are full.
• Controlled assessments having to be redone
• Different exam boards and specs.
• Having to do GCSEs in half the time because of the miss-match in options.
• Problems with fitting in to a new group.

I would repeat Yr10 if move is unavoidable. Unlike what tiggy says above - state schools usually only stop students being moved forward (i.e. Yr 10 age but in Yr11), repeats are not usually a problem and are quite common if there has been a move or absence.

We did it. We had no choice, it wasn't ideal, but it worked out absolutely fine. However, it helped that DD2 is very conscientious, focused and was completely committed to her work.
Every exam board, apart from the sciences (and even that was a different specification!), was different and her new school had done English Language in year 10, her old one was doing it in year 11 and vice versa for lit. She went from doing iGCSE maths to GCSE.
The two schools worked together to make the transfer as smooth as possible. DD2 dropped one subject which would have been to difficult to adapt to and used those lessons to work on her own in the library. She had an English language lesson once a week after school which we paid for and her teacher supervised her CAs.
She had extra maths supervision to help her catch up with the modules she hadn't completed.
She had been taking textiles at her old school which wasn't available at her new one. However, she was able to carry one with it and take it as an art GCSE.
It's not ideal, but sometimes moving is unavoidable. The key is to communicate lots with both schools and preferably ask them to communicate directly with each other. Having spoken to the school and the teachers I was reassured that it would be ok - they told me they'd done it before with good results and there as no reason why our situation would be any different and they were right.
That said, I think if you can put off moving for another year, it'll make life easier for your DC, but if it's unavoidable it can work out ok.

Thanks for all your thoughts and suggestions. Move with whole family is unavoidable. Have spoken to local authority and fortunately 4 schools in town we are moving to already have a 'mix and match' approach as they are all small schools and many year 10/11 pupils study some subjects at different schools. Due to holidays no one available to chat at any of the schools, but LA seem to think all will be OK from their end. If needs be we will get a tutor to fill in any gaps. Thanks again.

It happened to me. Went from solid As to Bs,Cs and even an E.
It was difficult to form friendship groups and I just wantef out of education by the end.
If you have to move I would give serious consideration to retaking yr10.

If the whole family has to move then could dd1 stay behind m-f?

Maybe move in with a friend's family and you pay them board?

Could dd do 1 or 2 GCSEs this year (is it too late for exam entry) so she has more to play with on her new timetable?

Also don't forget to look into FE colleges, although most courses are post 16 you can legally attend them from age 14. Obviously that would depend on how many GCSEs and what subjects she was/is taking.

There can be huge variations in syllabus between schools even in the same town.

My brother and I went to different schools (boys school and girls school) in the days of O Levels and even then we had (trying to remember)

History - I looked at various king Georges, Napoleon, unification of Italy and he looked at WWII.
Maths, I did modern, he did traditional.
Art - I think was the same, as was English
RE - even RE was different, we were both at RC schools but he did scripture and I did RE