What do you think is most important in education Year 7 -11?

[keyboardwithpaper]

I realise how many mistakes I have done in primary school eductaion - tutors, nagging, not enough time for reading together ( work commitments). Most importantly me being stressed - through work, high ex[ectations...I woudl really like to learn from experienced mothers who had children through secondary education - what was most important? Thnak you

organise themselves

learn to do homework well (not just dash it off)

learn how to revise & make revision notes even for 'not important' tests, as that will stand them in good stead later

That doesn't mean leaving them to it from day 1, it means teaching them the skills and then letting them practice them.

Encourage regular reading for pleasure.
Take an holistic view, remember you applied for the school on the basis it was best fit for your DC. Do not expect fabulous lessons in all subjects in all years. Doesn't mean it's no longer best fit just means in most cases there's a bump in the road.
Continue a sport or club outside school so there is a second friendship group.
Some form of limit on screen time so it doesn't become dominant.
Be interested, go to parents' evening, go to watch plays/matches but also give DC space to become an independent learner.

DS doesn't make revision notes at all, he prefers online revision tools.

Encourage a sense of perspective.
Academics give you more choices for later, but they aren't everything.

Reward effort not achievement, but they live by their own decisions. If they choose not to do homework and get detention so be it. Let it happen in year 7, by year 9 they should be sorted.

I had to treat organization as highly as academics in y7 for my daydreamy son. I'm hoping that it will be useful when he goes to uni and I'm not there to check on him.

His phone was very important for to achieve this. He learned to set alarms so on PE days an alarm rings 3 mins before he leaves asking him if he's got his kit and he takes photos of timetables, school letters etc so if they are misplaced then he's not screwed.

He's y9 and gets up, does his homework and takes the right kit to school every day without me nagging. He's lax in telling me when his shoes need replacing but he's miles ahead of where he was at primary.

Encourage independence as the school won’t feed you all the usual information you are used from primary. DD has to write things down or they won’t happen for her.

Give a dedicated space at home for school work and again, encourage independent to sort out work, books for the next day and how to time homework.

Be realistic that some after school activities will fade away, we had to give up one as there was just no time anymore and DD also let one of the school clubs go after one term, again, no time. But on the other hand encourage to keep some going, for friendship reasons, for exercise and just being away from school.

Be flexible when it comes to phone and social media. I wasn, and still aren’t, a big fan but I have to confess, agreeing to WhatsApp made DD’s life tons easier. They communicate school stuff on the groups, things she would def miss otherwise. Her traffic on it, the groups and content is monitored by us and there are rules in place about where the phone lives, when she is allowed on it etc.

I'd agree about organisation. When it came to revising for summer exams in Y7, I realised that DD had piles of dog-eared, stained bits of paper from when she'd forgotten her book/glue/common sense etc so there was no hope of reading them when she didn't even know what they were!

Revision/learning is easier for some than others so they may need some pointers.

Also, on the academic side, try to make sure they don't fall behind in the subjects where the learning builds on the previous year. Much easier I think to recover history (though I know there are skill as well as facts) than get to Y9 and realise you still haven't learnt your basic French verbs so really are up against it at GCSE