GCSE curriculum change?

[Milklollies]

My cousin ( y10 gcse, a state comp rated excellent) has just told us that around 10 days of his term time are shortened to 5:30 hours due to teacher training( as the teachers are not prepared) is this normal? I would appreciate advice from anyone.

My school does these training afternoons too - the kids miss one hour of lessons but the training goes on till 5:30. I think the missed lessons are added up and there's a reduced number of INSET days.

The new syllabuses were only released for many subjects just before the summer holiday for teaching this year so teachers will desperately need that time to get up to speed.

I'm not against the teachers noble as I understand that the government have seriously fucked with the system. GCSEs are important and my cousin is already straining himself. I just feel as though he will fall behind a lot more.

Hopefully it will be different lessons hit each time. I suppose the best thing would be to encourage him to use the time off to study/revise rather than X-box/hanging around the high street.

At my last school we had two days of unplanned inset. We set work for the lessons that should have taken place on those days.