Are we ready for a GCSE’s 2019 thread?

[KittyMcKitty]

If so I’m in.

DS (my pfb) will be going into year 11. Mocks after half term. Crossing my fingers for him - needs average point score of 6.5 (across all 10 subjects) to stay for 6th Form.

Anyone else?

My p2b is about to start y11 too.

I have twins going into Year 11, similar target grades 6-8, although Ds wants a 9 in French - that would be him moving from a target grade of 5 in Year 9, and that was the grade they expected him to get at the end of 2019! Anyway for us it’s trying to limit competitiveness with each other - co-operation works better and makes for a better more supportive atmosphere - they took the same subjects and for that very reason I am already dreading results day.

HPFA,

DD will continue to dance (9-10 hours per week) and will help at the dance school 1 Saturday and 1 Friday after school on roughly 3-week rotations. She's doing an hour or so less a week, though, as we seem to have engineered a dance exam free year (only has 2 left to do, and she did 2 last year knowing Y11 was on its way). She will compete fully in a dance festival during Autumn half term, probably in a slightly reduced way at Easter, and may only compete with her dance school's groups in early May, though tbh all that is up for discussion. Shows of different sizes i November and just before Easter.

She may play sport for her school a bit less than usual this year though - usually plays for 2 sports in the first teams, for lunchtime coaching and matches after school.

As I said earlier, she is formidably organised,. However, bearing in mind she does 2 coursework-heavy GCSEs, including Art, we'll keep an eye and see how things go.

I'm in!

PFB DS is in the frame. His schools don't do prediction and nor do they do mocks so his first experience of studying more than two terms' work since his entrance exams in the summer of year 8 will be the actual GCSEs, which worries me a lot.

Not sure what he needs to stay for sixth form - distant memories of 6 As but I don't know how they are updating that and no one really seems to focus on this issue.

He'll be taking a mixture of igcses and GCSEs (but all 9-1) but mostly the former so will the first cohort sitting the new style and grades for about half his subjects. The paucity of past papers worries me too, but this will of course only matter if he does lots of them which is far from a certainty.

He is at boarding school so I don't get much chance to influence things. I have spent far too much time this summer organising his files so he has some basis to build on next term (I feel I shouldn't but also can't bear to leave them as they are ) and he has done quite a bit of physics but doesn't deserve vast plaudits - I discovered summer half term that his file had 6 random sheets in it only.
Much trepidation lies ahead.

I'm also in.

DS2 (15) is the first one of my DC going through GCSEs (DS1 is very, very disabled - complex special needs, and cannot walk or talk, so no question of mainstream schooling or GCSEs). DS2 did two GCSEs last year (A* and A) but they were in minority subjects, ie ones that had not yet switched to the new 9-1 GCSEs.

Nine GCSEs for 2019.

DS2 has a tendency to aim higher than perhaps his actual ability. His school sets for many subjects and he tends to be borderline set 1/set 2, and has learnt over the years that if he doesn't work hard, he will end up in set 2, whereas he generally wants to be in set 1. So he has tended up until now to work in the subjects that are set more than the ones that aren't. Realised after the mock in January in Year 10 that he had not been working hard enough in the subject he got an A in (for GCSE) (got a B in the mock). Then did work very hard from January to June, which was enough to pull him up from a B to a very good A (an A in one paper, but not the other). Then disappointed because it wasn't the A he wanted! The other GCSE subject (where he got the A) was set from the beginning, and only the top set was allowed to do the GCSE early, so he worked from Year 7 to stay in that set, and by the time of the mock came fifth in the class and cruised comfortably to the A.
How he will cope with having nine subjects all pulling at him, with his very high demands on himself, I just don't know. I think I am going to need a fair amount of support from this thread. He has a tendency to meltdown (to me) when he feels he is not performing as he wants to, although he can be better in exams than in RL (the adrenaline seems to help him, boy like!)
He probably doesn't really need the really high results (although he is quite keen on a sixth form which is apparently asking for seven A*/8/9s which to my mind is ridiculous), but he feels he does. Not sure if it is because he is 18 months behind DS1 and feels he needs to compensate!

Sounds like a majority want to stay at their current schools. Will they consider anywhere else, or are you all happy that that's the best place for them?

We've had a mixture so far - dd1 didn't even think of anywhere else and stayed, dd2 looked elsewhere and decided to stay, ds changed to a 6th form college. There are pros and cons of both options imo, and I'm interested to see what decision dd3 ends up making.

DS2 wants to move. Not sure where, but is hoping to go somewhere else. That may change of course, but at the moment he is looking to move somewhere with a better record at A levels than his current school (not that they do badly, although their GCSE results tend to be better than their A Level results) and ideally with a serious extra curricular drama offering. His current school has none - and while it did offer Drama at GCSE level, I pursuaded him that two creative subjects were too much (he was definite about taking Art); the school is stronger in Art than Drama, he struggles with essay writing and book analysis in English (although not so much with speech writing), so to take another subject where there is more of that did not seem smart, and that he could take drama extra curricular (which he has been doing). But he really wants a school with a decent school play, drama club etc. For A Levels he is hoping to do Maths, Chemistry, and out of Physics, Biology or Geography, so could do that anywhere Stronger in sciences than in humanities in terms of GCSE subjects.

I'm in too.

DS is starting Y11 next week and is far too relaxed about this year - I'm hoping that a serious attitude to studying will materialize at some point. I need to spend some time with him over the next few days making sure his notes from last year are filled, at the moment there is a sea of crumpled paper in his room. Am in awe of those with highly organized offspring!

I'm definitely in! Hello everyone
DD going into year 11 in a week, hasn't done much studying over the summer but has the subject notes sorted which is something?!
Took English and maths a year early and got an 8 and a 9, which is great! But studied very hard and got very stressed for them so im slightly nervous about how that'll pan out with 4 GCSEs and 2 AS levels this year.
Hoping to take chemistry, biology and history to A level so ideally 7s in them.

DD actually doesn't know where she's going for sixth form as due to financial difficulties she has to move from her current school. She's thinking state boarding atm so any recommendations would be really appreciated!!

DS1 definitely wants to stay at his school, he attended the junior (pre-prep and prep) school from ages 4-13, and then moved up to the senior school at 13. It's all he's known!

Although DD1 (13) moves up to the senior school this year, and DS1 has joked, that might put him off staying!

my youngest is starting y11 next week. He was only 15 last week so I am feeling a bit sad that all this pressure is on him so early iyswim.

having said that, he's very bright and very hard working so hopefully he'll do well. He got all 7,8,9 in his end of year mocks. He'd like to bump some of the 7s to 8s and some of the 8s to 9s!

His major extra curricular activity is drama and as he's doing gcse drama and wants to do it at A level, he will be continuing with it.

Thanks to everyone who replied about activities - that's been really useful. It's still a year off but I'm thinking that if she wants to she should certainly start Year 11 doing the same amount. I guess she can always rethink during the year if she thinks she needs more time for revision etc.

Sign me up! I have twins going into yr 11 next week

Like @Isentthesignal our twins are very competitive, only with each other, not other kids. It makes life difficult when reports and grades come out - I'm already dreading results day.

Both have high expectations of themselves and will feel as though they have failed if they don't achieve all 9s (absurd!) I try to talk sense into them but they're not receptive

Both want to do mainly sciences and maths for A Level. Neither is keen to change schools for 6th form, even though they think their school is v competitive and bad in general at dealing with mental health issues (I try to ask in what way could school improve, or do they think it's better in other schools but they don't respond...)

Tbf, the school is a highly selective grammar, but I'd be surprised if teenage girls in other schools were all 100% fine and happy.

Mine will also carry on with extra curricular music activities, I'm hoping they'll continue to see it as fun rather than additional stress. They're taking music exams in the autumn, GCSE mocks are in January.

Mine will continue with music lessons, music teacher cones to us, they don’t do exams, so there is no firm practice requirements, they just learn pieces they love, so music tends to be a good stress relieving activity in between study sessions. And both of them like to run, which also slips in quite easily and is a good stress reliever.

My dd is Y10 and will be doing a lot of study in her free time, and doesn't get much at all.
I have listed the suggestions on the thread about tips from those whose dc got good results.
I'm hoping she uses her time wisely and starts now in Y10, not leaving it until last minute.

DS2 and DD2 are twins, but are only just about to go into the equivalent of Year 6, so I've got a few years yet.

I'm relieved to see that others have competitive twins, because mine have just started to be like this in the past year, not in a school setting yet, but in other things. Family game night has been turned into a war zone. It used to be 'them against the rest', but now they want to beat each other.

Anyway, at least by the time my two go through all this exam stuff (lord knows what GCSEs will look like then), I'll have put two older children through as practice!

We will keep up with DD's drama, it is what keeps her sane. She does MT and Acting at GSA every Sat, and LAMDA at her school. For the LAMDA she will have an exam, I think Grade 7 in February, so that will come soon after mocks. There is also a History trip in February Half Term. No work or revision has been done during the summer, so I suspect we will get some this term, before mocks, and the rest in Easter.

When the dc’s Maths teacher realised they were twins he suggested putting them against each other - he thought a bit of healthy competition would push them harder - He very quickly was brought up to speed on my opinion of that approach!

My twins, like soursprouts started yr11 when the outgoing cohort went. I'm not entirely sure if this is the thread for us though, the aim is to get 5 4's if they can (both have dyspraxia, ds is autistic and poor dd got her academic ability from her father)

They'll both be moving on somewhere for 6th form as there's none at their current school, at the moment dd is aiming for musical theatre at the city college and ds is aiming for something yet to be decided at the same college...

Dd already has a level 2 merit in btec music so that helps, ds has a level 1 pass in digital media btec.

Ds only does scouting as an extracurricular, dd has 3 productions she's in between now and end of February, as well at musical theatre training one evening and Saturday afternoon and she's going to get onto an associates scheme once a month, so she's going to be busy, but that calms down by March and we've already discussed doing revision during rehearsals if there's time when she's just watching others, whether it happens is another matter

Oh and add in that their grandad is terminally ill its going to be quite stressful to say the least...

Mine has to keep up with all activities as it's part of her timetable and reason for being at school.
So there are 5 ensembles, 3 music lessons, concerts as well as prep.

The extra curricular choices she wants to keep up are Scouts and DofE, but the latter may have to be revised, depending on how well she copes with school commitments.

Romany our dcs did scouting and they did their DofE - the expedition wasn’t a challenge - they had done things like that before with Scouts. The biggest benefit to them (they thought) was the voluntary work - they felt it really helped with their confidence. It was a bit of an expensive waste of time for kids who do scouting.

DS starting Y11 on Monday. He's very much a second-and-third-gear kind of student, and his teachers all say that his preps are fine, he's great in class, but his EOY exam results are always in the middle of the bottom half of the year. Deficient revision practices, slack self-testing, really second gear, occasionally revving up into third I think.

He needs something along the lines of five 7s and four 6s to remain at his current school for A Levels (which he wants to do). His EOY Year 10 exams were mostly 5s and 6s so if he can manage to go up a grade on all of them, he'll be OK to stay.

I'm not entirely sure if this is the thread for us though, the aim is to get 5 4's if they can (both have dyspraxia,

Please don’t think that - I started the thread for all parents. We will all have different challenges- high points / low points throughout the next 10 months and I hope this can be a mutually supportive place.

Hopefully this time next year we can be celebrating our dc’s achievements and them moving on to their next stage. The most important thing being that our dc achieve their potential No grades are more valued then others - please stay