Can anyone recommend any residential Easter gcse courses, ideally in the midlands?

[PossumInAPearTree]

Dd has done crap in her mocks. Vitally she's failed English, as have 80% of the school by the sounds of it. God knows how she can go from working at level 7 as they've always told me to getting a 3 for language and a 2 for literature. School is shit, they've had about 3 different teachers per year in English as the teachers keep walking out. Literally walking out without notice mid lesson and not coming back.

Dd doesn't know where she's gone wrong, doesn't know what to do, says she's getting no help from school. She says Sam learning, bitesize, etc doesn't help her as it's not like an online maths revision thing where the computer knows if you've put the right answer??

I'd look at getting her a tutor straight away. Easter hols are two months away. You don't want to waste time if she feels she needs extra help now. Even non-residential revision courses are very expensive (e.g. Justin Craig) and by Easter will probably be concentrating on actual revision rather than filling gaps in her knowledge

Yes, was going to look at a local tutor for now as well. Maybe that will be enough?

There's another thread going too which has tips about dvds and revision guides. I'm waiting for parents evening to see if the school are recommending any, if not I'll get some fron CGP. Do you know which plays & novels she is doing?

We've got all the revision guides. She's doing Romeo and Juliet and Dr Jekyll and mr Hyde I think. But she has dyslexia and I think struggles to work through a revision guide. Will look at dvds though.

MPW 6tf form College in Birmingham does Easter revision for GCSE and A level, but is prob not residential.

as the teachers keep walking out. Literally walking out without notice mid lesson and not coming back.

nationwide problem....

it takes a lot for someone to reach the final straw in an actual lesson, and take the decision to forgo career, pension, reference.....

the behaviour has to be pretty horrendous.

But it was unheard of twenty years ago, and common now.

a few things.

1. get some revision guides and work through them with her yourself. You won't find it hard, and if one section is totally unfamiliar to you, leave that, and concentrate on other areas.

The advantage of this is you can cover so much more in little informal sessions, as and when you can fit it in, 10 mins after breakfast, 15 mins before bed, etc, and these little slots will add up to a huge amount more than you can get from a tutor. Also, flexibiity, such as changing subject when she needs a break from something, or staying on one particular area past the allocated hour, again very valuable, and not available from a tutor.

2. yes, get a tutor too, what ever time and price suits you, even an hour once a fortnight, etc is good.

3. Please please please write to your MP. The more parents do this, the more likely it is that eventually the government will realise that unless they need to tackle discipline and teacher workload in schools, they

I do feel sorry for the teachers. She's had two break down in class, one of whom sat on the floor and sobbed. The other didn't come back and left a massage to the kids on the white board saying they'd driven her over the edge and wasn't coming back. When the kids finally decided to go and tell someone there was no teacher it was the first the school knew of it.

St Edwards School in Oxford used to host residential revision courses. OXSS I think was the company that ran them.

Thanks, will check them out.

Looks like I've found a local tutor off now so maybe I will see how it goes with the local one. All the residential ones are a fortune!

MPW in Cambridge is very good, Eastern revision courses (crammers) are expensive, but you have tiny groups being taught and one to one revision support. It really depends on how much support they need, if it's just hitting the books & getting some graft done then nothing wrong with getting the revision books & a tutor. If they need a lot more help see note above re the crammers. Saved me doing re-sits