Continuing Year 13: January 2016

[Needmoresleep]

Only two more terms at school. Let's support each other support our DC in getting through to the end.

Good luck for those with Chemistry tomorrow. Sorry to hear the OCR wasn't good either Northernlurker and needmore. (And needmore I would be having major doubts about going into medicine in our NHS at the moment - I don't blame your DD for having second thoughts!)

Fingers crossed for your ds's Maths Squirrels Interesting they got an extra question as well.

Atia it sounds like your DD isn't in too bad a situation then. Did she do C3 a year early?

No, she's in a very good situation tbh, she's just really really hard on herself, beyond any reasoning.

She did maths gcse in y10, C1 and S1 in y11, then C2, C3 and D1 last year. She could have done C4 last year but she left it till this year to give herself the chance of either resitting C3 if she wanted, or indeed stopping maths altogether and settling for the AS. So she feels like she's spent all this time on a fourth A level that she doesn't even like, and now she's not even going to get a bloody A* for all her effort!

(She is dd2. Dd1 got an A* last year, and younger ds will do at least maths and FM unless hell freezes over in the meantime. Out of the three of them she is THE WORST at maths. Our family is riddled with maths graduates - 3/4 grandparents, one parent, an aunt - and she is convinced we all judge her on it. The fact that she speaks two foreign languages and is looking forward to starting a third, and we are all in awe of her, doesn't matter. Bleurgh. Thank you for the therapy session!)

Hope everyone gains a bit of perspective before their next exam. So much pressure on them, poor things. At least the end is in sight.

Atia Oh the pressures of sibling rivalry real or imagined. I'm sure we all bend over backwards never to compare and yet they do it to themselves.

DS1 said his C3 went well! Nice for a change. OCR MEI board. Sorry to hear other boards were less well received.

DS1 is doing the same A levels as his father, who got all As back in the 80s and will do the same degree. His father got a first, still in the 80s. No pressure there! He's lucky that I got a Desmond!

The one I feel sorry for is DS3 who has always compared himself to his brother. DS3 is bright enough, but more of an all rounder, so unlikely to get the top grades at A level. DS2 has a get out clause as he's autistic.

Edexcel C3 here and DS says it went OK which is good for him after a low point with physics on Monday. It's miserable seeing them down when they've put so much work in. He did mention there were more questions than usual and one really tricky one which everyone was saying they'd barely touched on in lessons. Fingers crossed for them all for C4.

He's got computing tomorrow which is a two and a half hour paper. He's just printing off a practice paper now and seems to be using up the entire ink cartridge.

OCR (not MEI) C3 straightforward thank goodness, because Chem 5 and STEP 3 on wed and thursday will not be!!

I am hoping that Chem5 (AQA) is better than last week's Chem4!

Hi there any advice? my DD had AQA Spanish unit 3 yesterday and there was a fault with her CD for the listening part, then a fault with back up CD. Invigilator after having tried 2 CDs in 3 different players was at a loss what to do. She grumbled that she might have to put a report in. My DD cried with frustration! Eventually someone put their hand up and said they were finished and she used their CD and equipment. she reckons 10-15 mins lost but she was thrown and cried through the rest of the exam. Didn't have time to check her work at end. She was given no extra time at the end as she already had a clash and needed a half hour break before starting her next exam. I have spoken to exam officer who says they can put in for special consideration but not likely to be more than 2% - is there anything else i can do?

jaxxyj that's appalling - your poor DD. Is it worth speaking to the exam board directly about getting special consideration and see what they suggest? Either way a pretty irate email to the school is in order to ensure they really emphasise the issue.

Oh that's awful, really badly handled My dd did Spanish yesterday too, and someone's computer turned off whilst she was trying to do her listening, but she just got on with the reading bit whilst someone came to sort out the computer. She was offered extra time but said she didn't need it.

Yes, I would send a very robustly-worded letter to the school - the invigilator should have kept your daughter calm rather than faffing and moaning. And she should definitely have been offered the option of extra time if she needed it.

Poor girl. Does she have a university offer she needs to achieve? If so, the school should let the university know what happened too, just in case she misses her grade.

jaxxyj
I am so sorry .What an absolute shower!!
I would say she and the school must right to her universities and tell them what has happened.If she misses her grades they can then look at the individual module scores

'write' nor right!!

jaxxyj that's just awful & school have really mishandled it. Invigilator should have phoned exam officer straight away. Couldn't she have had extra time, had a supervised break & then started the next exam late? Exam board & uni need to be informed.

Sorry C3 been so bad for some. DS said Edexcel C3 ok today but didn't notice there were extra questions, hope he hasn't missed something.

Chemistry tomorrow.

OCR MEI here. DS said the C3 was ok but the numerical methods paper he did afterwards was less good.

jaxxyj that's awful. I hope you get some sort of help from school.

Thanks everyone, school not being particularly helpful, exam officer saying it is one of their most experienced invigilators and DD should of asked for more time and they would have looked in to it. She was a bit arsy to DD tbh.Not going to do anything just yet as DD is stressing out whether she will get in to trouble and she still has Biology and Sociology exams on Thursday, so I'm just saying to her -you will get special consideration and if we need to do something later we can sort it out. Not sure about contacting universities though- is that not a bit pushy? She needs ABB for Edinburgh and thought she might have a good chance at an A in Spanish

Jax - that really is poor. Your DD should have been offered the extra time. Is it worth sending an email to her teacher explaining what has happened and copying in her head of year, asking them what they can do?

Oh that's ridiculous, it's surely the invigilator's responsibility to be sorting out things like that, not the (upset) candidate's responsibility to ask!

In similar situations I've read about here, the school have been the ones to contact the universities, I think.

Coconutty , do you mean in general as I think it varies from one subject to another. Iirc In some exams AS is only a third of overall UMS, so good performance in A2 can counter lesser AS results. Some subjects currently still have coursework/ca options.

Most (? humanities I think) are out of 400. Maths (and other sciences??) is out of 600. I thought all were a 50/50 split though.

Final grade depends on ums total, so it would depend on the exact ums within the grades, if that makes sense. So a low A could be pulled down to a B, but a high A might not be.

Out of 400, you need 320 for an A and 280 for a B.

Anyone else got computer sciences this morning? DS is dreading it which is odd as he's a natural at computers, but this paper is apparently not the sort of thing he's a natural at!

He thinks this is the decider as he feels he could scrape his A* at maths if C4 goes OK but physics is a real grey area so he has to come out feeling good about this one. I will be absolutely dreading the post exam text.

Good luck to the chemists today too.

Chemistry for dd today. I feel quite nervous for her. She will be so, so disappointed if she doesn't make her medicine offer and I know this sounds very pfb but she deserves it! I've never seen anyone work so hard.