Year 12 / 6th form support thread

[minesawine]

The term is about to start and I though it would be good to have a support group to help us on our 6th form journey.

May the year be drama-free and our DC's study hard and without complaint

BringontheScience
My DS is doing IB too.
His Highers are Geography, Biology and Economics. Standards are English, Maths and Chinese.
What about your son?
DS's school only offers IB at 6th Form so he has always had that in mind and has worked towards it.
And you're right - not many free periods!
Good luck!

BringontheScience
I have just scrolled down and seen the subjects that your DC is doing.
DS has started on Maya Angelou's 'I Know why the Caged Bird Sings' for English. He has 2 weeks to read and annotate the whole book - and he's only doing English at Standard!
Has your DC started a new school for 6th form?

Hello @blametheparents :-)
We had to change schools as our secondary has no 6th form. Lucky enough to have a wide choice of school 6ths or separate 6ths and the full range of qualification types.

IB is very much the minority option here, and we knew nothing about it at all a year ago, but she was wavering between combinations of English/history/chemistry/maths and has interests in linguists and archaeology and anthropology. A clued-up friend told us about the IB and I knew instantly that this was what she needed. She's got the right work ethic too.

Doing A Black Comedy as the first English text. They sent out the full year's reading list in the hols with deadlines by which each must be read before they look at it in class.

Lots of time spent practicing Russian cursive this week! Is your DC's Chinese ab initio or continuing from a GCSE?

BringontheScience - nice to meet another IB parent!

DS did Chinese at GCSE and got an A* so it is something that he has done before. He enjoys Chinese and is considering combining it with something at university - maybe Economics.
They have hurdle exams at school 6 weeks into the course to ensure that everybody has the right combination of subjects at higher and standard so those are coming up fast!
The school have kept a large majority of existing students, but there are lots of new starters too.

DS seems very happy at his new sixth form but I spoke to a couple of parents from his old school yesterday and two of their children who had gone elsewhere moved back to the old school within 3 days
It's hard that they have so little time to make what feel like massive decisions.

Out of interest, how many actual taught hours does everyone's DCs have per subject per fortnight?

I was pretty shocked to discover DS has only 6 1/2 hours time per subject per fortnight with a teacher in front of him! There are then 4 additional hours of study time per subject (where their subject is on the timetable but no teacher).

This contrasts rather starkly with my own school on 9 taught lessons.

The reason why students form private school perform so highly is down to a huge number of factors but contact time must be a he factor! DH teaches in a private school and they have 12 hours a fortnight.

Can anyone go lower than 6 1/2!!!???

A levels are meant to be based on 260 hours teaching time.

Sorry - fat fingers.... 360 hours.

Ds has 4.5 hours per subject per week teaching time. So 9 hours a fortnight. 6.5 does sound very low.

DS also had 4.5 hours per subject per week (waves at wiifit) so 9 hours a fortnight. Loads of frees, though I have seen on one of DS's many bits of paper from the college they're expected to do an additional 5 hours per subject of independent study per week. DS is trying to do 3 hours of independent study a day at college across all 3 A Levels, and then reading outside the core content in the evenings and at weekends. Well, that's the plan....

piggy 6.5 hours per subject per fortnight sounds like bugger-all to me, especially for a school 6th form (rather than a SFC) - or have I got that wrong?

Yes, ds has 9 hours a fortnight too (SFC). My older girls had 8-10 at their school 6th forms.

Teaching hours per week:
5 Physics
5 Chemistry
8 Maths + FM

piggy - I can't remember - is your DS doing 3 A Levels now or 4?

Yes, 3 : so bugger all contact time now!!

It does seem very out of step with anywhere else. No mention of this in the prospectus, of course...

5 hours per week taught by teacher per subject at ds's independent school..

However, it's the same at all three state schools I have knowledge of (increased from 4 hours per week since number of A levels dropped to 3 from 4)...

9 hours per fortnight here.

Plus additional 'contact but not subject' hours - EPQ / guidance on their future (seems to cover things like building up stuff for CVs / UCAS, UCAS itself / talks from employers etc) / lectures of general interest / an afternoon of PE.

4 ASs - will go down to 3 A-levels - means 1 supervised private study out of 5 lessons most days, but not all, and never 2 on 1 day.

DS has 40 minute lessons (8 timetabled lessons a day) so he has about 10.5 hours per fortnight per subject, plus one 40 minute study period every day. He has compulsory games for the equivalent of 3 lessons for one afternoon and a tutor period for one lesson too.

9 hours for the 3 main A levels, 2 hours for EPQ & 2 hours for creative writing (A2).

She's going to do a first aid qualification this term - which takes an hour a week - as enrichment. She's got a least one free period every day.

Dd has 8x40 min lessons per subject per week.

DS often has 4 frees a day!

Blimey piggy - out of interest, how does it compare with his other SFC?

They had far more teaching time there. Because he was also doing French and two lessons of core maths , he had only about 3 frees a week.

My Dd has decided that after 1 week at her new 6th form, that she wants to go back to her old school! I'm shocked because she really pushed to go to the new school and now after a week she wants to leave! Any advice? She's been back to her old school today to see if they can take her back and they've said yes, she can come back tomorrow, but we've not discussed this at all as a family. Don't know what to do. Ultimately I want her to be happy, but I just feel a week isn't long enough for her to decide the new place isn't for her.

Hi skippy I did a thread on this topic. My DS did exactly the same and I feel your pain.

Teenagers are creatures of habit and don't like change. They also respond emotionally to threat or fear!

I guess my feeling is that the longer it is left the more problems are stored up in terms of catching up. They won't have done the same work in both establishments!

Why does she want to swap?

I've asked her loads of times why she wants to swap. She keeps saying that she gets "a bad vibe" from the new school. Helpful...!

Oh dear! Would she be doing all the same subjects? With my DS a lot of it was to do with his intense timetable. He certainly has the easier life now .