Repeating Year 11 - is this possible?

[MEgirl]

Does anyone have experience of a school allowing their DC to repeat Year 11?

DTs are not doing well emotionally and CAMHS have not come through. We are still waiting for a psychologist to help with CBT. The school SENCO is being very helpful, the pastoral care manager not so much.

Currently the kids might scrape the As in in Maths and the sciences that they need in order to move in to the school's own 6th form. They may not get in to the 6th form college elsewhere. The rest of the subjects are very much in doubt at the moment.

I don't know how important the rest of the subjects are in terms of university applications or whether it is reasonable to check with the school whether it would be possible for the kids to repeat Year 11. They wouldn't want to retake the subjects that they did well in but we are potentially looking at 5 subjects which they could fail completely.

That's what I thought. I'll talk to the school this week about options but I'm don't have high hopes.

Do you have a college locally? Not sure if sixth form would allow it but a college would let them do 3 years: GCSE's in the first year and then A Levels?

And they could both just focus on those GCSE's they wanted to do. Not all the other compulsory curricula stuff.

There are a couple but not any that are particularly good. There used to be a private tutorial college which is where DH did his A levels before going on to Brunel but they closed down some time ago and I can't find another one in the area.

I'm sorry to hear that your twins are struggling with anxiety. Is there any possibly that your children can get help privately. I realise that it is expensive paying for private CBT, but six sessions can make a huge difference.

The problem with repeating year 11 is the goverment are turning the school curriuclum upside down. They might find what they learnt last year is not long revelent. (Aside I have no idea what the govement's time table is for beefing up GCSEs - I don't think they know either!)

I'm going to try and book them some private sessions with Relate tomorrow.

Nobody seems to know anything much about the changes that are coming including the schools. It is all so frustrating.

In the past it did used to be possible to do some resits alongside as levels but increasingly, funding is restricted for students who don't 'progress' and for students who require 3 years in sixth form.

However your best bet is to speak to the director of 6th of the places they might go, see what the options are

We have a boy who should be in Year 11 repeating Year 10 due to a serious health problem last year so it is possible. We also have a couple of pupils who should be in Year 11 in Year 10 because they are recent arrivals and their English is weak. It is probably worth a conversation if only so they can feel a little less pressured. Very best wishes to your family.

Could a pragmatic approach be to drop some subjects?

Keep the ones they are doing OK with.
Keep English.

Then just keep enough to reach 5 or 6 A*-C.

By dropping 'superfluous' subjects it may help with workload & emotions, and increase the chances of getting the good passes.

one of them has already dropped one subject and is down to 9. The other is now considering dropping something. The problem goes beyond the subjects though. It is an emotional/psychological barrier and he claims that he can't concentrate/isn't taking anything in. that's one area we are trying to work on. They both want to got to Uni, possibly engineering school, so we have to try to work out the impact of dropping subjects/low grades in non-required subjects etc.

I've booked an appointment with Relate for this week. Hopefully they can help with the kids' stress as this is beyond me and DH.