Thread 3: Continuing to GCSEs Summer 2020 - Happy New Exam Year!

[OrangeCinnamon]

Continuation of previous thread
Thread 2

Thread 1 Year 10

At the end of last thread there was a bit of talk on prom dresses ( recommend Fonthill Rd in London if you can get there) by @proggymat and @crazycrofter

@TigerMum had a query regarding moving to foundation level at this stage.

Sorry peeps thread progressed without me noticing so none can reply to your queries!

@Oblomov20 dd has already worked out her exam timetable by looking at all the boards’ websites! Nothing from school yet! She particularly wanted to find out if she had any exams on her birthday - she has History and Biology!

Ah. Thank you crazy.
I will have to do the same.

I just haven't worked it out yet.

When do they start?
And what is yours child's last date?

Please. Just to give me a clue.

So far, I have Ds1 starting GCSE's : 11th May
Ds2 SAT's : same week.

Prom 24th June.

So We can't go on holiday till after 24th June, right?

Are there any induction days he might need to attend ? DS might have one on 26th June .

@Oblomov20
DS starts on 6 May but that is a Welsh paper so may not be relevant.
Next is Biology on 12 May.
His last one is additional maths (if he decides to take it) on 16 June. Again that is a bit of an outlier as his penultimate one is history on 9 June.

So basically 12 May - 9 June with one before and one after.
It's easy for us to work out his timetable as it's WJEC for every subject apart from economics.

PS our school website says which boards they do for each subject if that might be a way of getting the info

Well done @Alsoplayspiccolo DD!
DDs mocks grades in:
6x9
4x8
1x7
No grade for L2 FM in as yet, although given her work load she ain’t holding her breath
DD is dropping a subject that has been graded at a 9 in mocks as it isn’t a subject she wants to study at A level.
Narrowing down to 10 GCSEs plus the compulsory FM will be a much better work load, even though she is allegedly ‘throwing a GCSE away’

24 June is the exam contingency date, and it's possible (though unlikely) that one of their exams might be moved to that date.

Re exam timetables - exam boards make no difference, except for the detail of the exam. French reading and listening is on 12 May, eng lit paper 1 is on 15 may (? or whatever the date is) for every board, to avoid clashes.

Absolutely excellent results for your DD Proggymat That's a lot of GCSE'S, can I ask what type of school she is at?

Sorry eng lit paper 1 is actually on 13 May (wow they start so early this year) - the content will vary from board to board but everyone will be doing eng lit that day.

@PostNotInHaste
Thank you!
Very small Indie.

Anyone got DC looking at BTECs or apprenticeships rather than A levels?

Amazing results, Proggy!
Well done to your DS, Post. When is the interview? Anything he can do to prepare?

2 of DD’s good friends are moving schools in order to access the PE BTEC and my godson is planning to do Photography BTEC and one or two A levels. He will also need to move from his current school, but his favoured choice will only consider applicants with GCSE grades in hand, which will make for a stressful summer!

Don’t think he can really Piccolo. If I’ve understood correctly it’s to see how he would cope with the style of teaching as it’s quite specific and i think he needs to be himself as have heard that if not offered a place then not the right place if that makes sense.

That’s stressful Kingscote, I haven’t heard of many do that, Friend’s DS has been stressing about doing BTEC PE but have heard that the A level very hard to get good grades so making his peace with it,

DD did a BTEC and once she got to grips with format it was very good for her.

Complete sense, Proggy, and in some ways takes the pressure off - at least he won’t think, “If only I’d...” if he doesn’t get a place.
Everything crossed for it being a great fit for him.

@Oblomov20 her last exam is 11th June. The only exam the following week at her school is Further maths.

Her Spanish speaking is really early though - I think around 25th March. I suppose it will be good to get it out of the way. Dd basically has two weeks either side of half term, with the the week after half term being the heaviest - which seems like a good balance to me.

@postnotinhaste hope the interview goes well! Dd is stressing about sixth form again. She’s now reapplied to the sixth form college and is properly considering the local comp. Both of these have induction days in June I think which she’ll need as a way to decide. I don’t think the grammar does one though which is a pain.

We had our timetables a few months ago along with mocks timetable so very prepared. Second set of mocks Feb.

Extra revision compulsory after school for 1 hour Monday to Thursday now which helps. Think they’ve started revision at lunch too.

Revision classes now started at DS’s school apparently. The sixth form decision can be really hard. For those that are happy where they are and school offers what they want it’s pretty straight forward but if they need/want to move not so much. They grow up a lot in those two years and emerge as adults and I think the right place for them really helps this.

I can not believe that DS can learn to drive in September It’s all goimg very quickly!

One of the sixth forms DS is thinking about applying to (and needs to decide about now!) has the following entry criteria:

If you wish to apply for any science and have taken triple science, you need a 6 in the science you are applying for and a 5 on the Higher paper in both the other sciences.

How (other than asking) will the sixth form know whether a student with a 5 got it on the Foundation or the Higher paper?

Why is a 5 on the Foundation paper not considered equal to a 5 on the Higher paper? Surely that's not right?

Reading between the lines, I'm guessing they are assuming that a student sitting Foundation won't have been exposed to so much science content as a student sitting Higher. Leaving aside why that matters for a science you're not even taking, that might be true for their own students coming up from Year 11 (which is why I wonder if this is mostly aimed at their own students where they clearly will know which tier they are sitting!) but at DS's school they teach science in mixed ability classes so everyone gets taught everything. And tiers for borderline cases are still not decided.

(It's a big deal for DS because it possibly makes sense for him to sit the Foundation paper and bank a 5 in the 2 sciences he doesn't want to take at A Level, but this will preclude him applying for this sixth form).

Great results Proggy!! Ours not going as well as that sadly but not horrific. The papers he's seen back he can immediately see where he's made a mistake and that's the important bit - learning from mistakes now and not repeating in May!

DS has finished his mocks and the results are starting to filter in.

Subjects where they used an actual GCSE paper and grade boundaries: grades quite good.

Subjects where they made up their own paper and grade boundaries: grades lower than expected. In one subject the mean grade was 2, in a school where the mean grade in the actual GCSEs is 6. I think the teachers are trying to prevent complacency, but it could have the opposite effect.

@RedskyAtnight I just checked on Facebook as a friend's daughter posted her GCSE transcript and it does say the tier taken for Maths and Sciences. However, I would contact the school now and explain the situation. Do you think he's likely to get less than a 5 in those Sciences if he takes the higher papers?

Is it a selective school? If it is, I guess they're probably over-subscribed and can be picky. Having said that, those requirements sound a bit low for a selective school. DD needs predicted grades of at least 4 x 7 and 4 x 8 for the grammar school she's applying to!

At the end of the day, schools want a full complement of students because 16-19 education is really poorly funded, so it's definitely worth applying anyway. If his other results are good, particularly in the science he wants to take, they may well bend the rules.

I'm hoping that's what's happening at our school Tumbleton, they make up their own papers and marking schemes. When DS has been doing past papers he does very well.

@crazycrofter I'm assuming that's a super selective grammar? They certainly don't expect those grades for the grammars here.