Year 11 support thread

[pasanda]

I can't find a new thread, moving on from the old full one, so I thought I would create one (please tell me if I'm wrong!)

Last night ds stayed up till 4.30am doing his biology coursework

This time the tsunami affect didn't work and he left it far too late to do a reasonable job. Which is a bloody shame because he wants to do biology A level and he has done so well in his other controlled assessments.

I wait with bated breath to find out his mark

Oh well, thank God for half term!!

Well dd is deposited at a two day Justin Craig revision thing (it's just down the road so she isn't staying over). I feel like partying at the freedom of not having her moping around if she's in a decent mood when I collect her (at 8pm !!!!!) I said she could go to the party until midnight - any more sulking & straight to bed.

(I did indeed have wine last night thankfully & dd did an hour of maths & watched iZombie on Netflix)

From dd "some rich family just sat down on the row I'm on and left a two seat gap between us despite there being legit no room to do that without sitting right next to the people on the other end ... I'm putting my hood up in the hope they leave!

Seriously tho everyone here is so posh I can't literally feel my accent turning west Berks and I'm not even saying anything this always happens around posh people. "

Don't think there's much chance of a good mood this evening she's just followed up with a OMFG text about the posh woman talking about some kid who 'had a test to prove he's retarded. Seriously he's so stupid he has to get someone else to write for him" dd has a disabled brother & an overly developed sense of outrage - this won't go well.

Well developed I should say rather than over developed. We just dropped her off & left, perplexed why there are still parents hanging around tbh.

Hope your daughter enjoys the course Lania. She should hopefully get into it.

We have just landed in Spain, DD having revised the whole plane journey and standing at the luggage carousel too. Seeing the pics of the hotel texted by DD2 who is already there, she has announced that she is not going to revise at all now today. Here's hoping!

And that other parent sounds awful!

Draylon let's look at it from the perspective of aworking adult then. We get holidays. Unless we are in ultra high pay jobs, we are not expected to work during those holidays.

And if you want to look back to the 'good old days', I remember my A-levels back in Holland, in 1986, before things got 'dumbed down'. I didn't do 5 hours a day every day. It was not necessary. I took my holidays when I had them. So did my peers. We passed our exams, got degrees and jobs, became functioning adults.

I think schools are just shitting themselves about the new exam spec and we have become far too focused on data and performance. We will never be Singapore or China and i don't want us to. I have nothing against hard work, but there needs to be balance.

Raskolnikov - hope you have a great break! (And dd too :) )

Dd has been doing a lot more work than most of her peers - but that's because she completely dossed in y9 & 10. We've basically redone the whole of the GCSE maths course since September, hours a week. If she hadn't have been seriously under performing (coasting at good enough) she wouldn't have needed to have done half the work she has.

I do think Yr 10 especially is a really key year and it's worth them putting in the effort - it really set DD1 up that she did so much and so well in Yr 10. She also really matured in her attitude to school work.

I hope your daughter has a good break, Raskolnikov, and you too. I too look at it from the perspective of my past and wonder how much all this incredible stress is necessary. I feel very sorry for the pupils who feel under so much pressure. I was a very hard-working high-achieving straight A pupil and I did nothing like the amounts of work students today are doing - and I was considered to work hard. So I'm not sure if so much more work is really necessary, because my son's GCSEs certainly aren't any more difficult than the exams I took; they are differently structured, but very similar in content mostly, and things like the Latin and languages are somewhat easier than the exams we took. Of course that could explain 'grade inflation' - that actually nowadays everyone is much harder working than we were so get the grades they deserve from that.

DS is doing some dilatory history revision accompanied by a banging soundtrack.

I'm sure those kids might laugh... They might also feel a stab of envy because our kids get to have a childhood and a life. I don't think that culture is something we should aspire to. At all.

And watching my DD have a panic attack last night, I know that for her at least, rest is more important than cramming right now.

You seem to think all this pressure on schools is perfectly OK. I disagree adamantly.

I think this pressure is really detrimental. I find it crazy. I have no idea why the children put pressure on themselves like this. It is not us putting pressure on her, quite the reverse. But why?

I think the school is partly to blame - they didn't give them much work in the winter term, but are now presenting them with 30 page history printed sheets to revise. So of course the more diligent children will think they have to revise all the notes. I think it could have been better spaced out, although I appreciate teachers might find it hard to judge.

I had all my Easters off, and really feel for my children that they can't. Having said that, DD1 seems very happy revising in the sun on her balcony lounger whilst DD2 is swimming in the pool, so maybe this is the compromise for now.

Sorry I missed the last few posts. Pointy, sorry that your DD is finding things stressful. A proper break for her sounds ideal. Missing a week or two of revision will not, I'm sure, make an iota of difference to her GCSE results. I hope she relaxes and does lots of fun stuff. They definitely need it.

It is definitely children, mainly girls, putting this pressure on themselves. But the schools are much more worried because of the league table culture. My DS's English is easier than my O level (from what I remember) and his maths may be harder, I can't really tell.

DD has to do this amount this week because it has been set by the school and they will demand proof it's been done. They have given detailed instructions for how much has to be done as well, it just takes as long as it takes.

And I'm not at all arguing that DD1 should have the whole Easter break off - but it's two weeks long. It should have been made possible to get the work done and have every other day completely off. It isn't possible, there's too much work for that.

That sounds really tough, pointy. DS has past papers for maths and languages but I don't think they have to do all of them - it's obviously expected they'll do at least some but they won't be handed in, just self-marking. The same for the sciences.

The poor kids have to keep on revising for about 6 weeks once the exams actually start so it's an exhausting long haul. I'll freely admit that my older son didn't revise particularly effectively so my sons have form for this. Even he got really tired by the end and his last paper of all was a disaster, which brought down his grade in that subject.

I dragged DS2 out in the sun to get a haircut and now he can't concentrate on his maths paper because his hair is too short....

Laughing at the idea that your DS can't concentrate on Maths, because his hair is too short! Any excuse, hey?

My two are on a 5 day crammer starting today. Took them there for an 8:30 start this morning and I was back home by 9am for Andrew Marr, a jug of filter coffee and a pastry. Bliss.

We will all down tools for four or five days over the Easter weekend, because I agree that rest and recuperation are also needed. So lots of food, Easter eggs, walks in the country and seeing family will be what we get up to then.

Who knows what they'll do in the 2nd week of the Easter holidays - probably not much in the way of revision. DS1 has some A-level coursework to hand in, so I'll need to encourage him to finish that off before school re-starts. DS2's Geography GCSE starts on 2 May, so if I can get him to do 1 hour's revision a day on that, I'll be very happy.

Meanwhile the sun is shining, the house is quiet and all is well...

namechange I'm jealous at five days! dh & I are kicking ourselves that we only booked dd in for two. Despite all her grumbling & sulking she's admitted that it is actually really helpful - maths yesterday, chemistry today. I wish we'd booked her for French & physics too.

Glad that the revision course is going well.

I think our impromptu Spanish holiday is working too. DD got lots of Latin done yesterday, then spent late afternoon by the beach, and today is working hard on her chemistry, but will go down to the pool/spa at 5. And she has agreed to have tomorrow off for wandering around the old town. Travel back on Tuesday morning, do some papers in the afternoon, then back to normal revision for the rest of the holiday.

I'm very glad she has had this time out. There's only so stressed out you can be when revising watching palm trees sway outside the window. Strangely, I think she would have felt worse in London during this hot weather, as she definitely doesn't have palm trees there, and would have felt she was missing out on something.

Enjoy the rest of your Easters.

My DS's schedule and approach sounds more like yours, Draylon. I'm not sure he ever manages an hour at a time, though. So today he's done preparation for MFL oral - presentation rehearsal and Quizlet questions, history (note taking/summarising of the topic he still hasn't got summary notes on) and Latin literature (revising text translation via Memrise and possibly style revision via school notes). He is still got to do Chemistry (a chapter from his text book as he's gone through all the flashcards now) and will do Tassomai (which now he's 90% of the way through keeps dropping from all on track/ahead to 12 topics behind and stuff. Don't know if it gets increasingly hard to keep up near the end.) So I suppose it's a reasonable amount.

It would be good if he got some Vitamin D. He's reconciled to the short hair and has even picked up his guitar again.