Exams cancelled

[noblegiraffe]

Alternative arrangements will be made.

How stressful to announce that with no details about what will happen.

[quote treeeeemendous]@TheSunIsStillShining you sound far too involved in your sons homework?! Are you actually writing his essays for him? [/quote]
That is how it reads...

Eg. when analyzing a chapter I made 10 points. All valid I'm sure of that. Yet the essay got marked down because I didn't point out that the grammatical structure was x and the use of the word xxxxx was in relation to something. I didn't, as it was so obvious I didn't think to make that point. I went way deeper than the syllabus, and his teacher did mention how in-depth his analysis was, but deducted points for trivial, obvious things not being mentioned.

@TheSunIsStillShining

Everyone felt bad for last year's exam cohorts. They only missed a few months of consolidation and actual exams.

Now we feel bad for this year's exam cohorts saying they had almost a year of disruptions and how unfair a lot of things are.

Now have a think about current y10s. They have had 1,5 years of disrupted learning by next year when going into y11. And I can bet my hat on the fact that if things normalize (big if) by autumn gov will expect these kids to do a proper/as has been before exam next year.

So Id like to see not just plans for this year's cohort, but for next year as well.

Another post suggesting DS is yr10. Obviously all are welcome to discuss the issues of cancelled exams here but I agree that @TheSunIsStillShining should start a new thread to discuss helping her DSs analytical skills of The Crucible & OANTOF. And maybe steps back a bit and let DS do his own homework. Maybe he’d have spotted the obvious connections.

[quote treeeeemendous]@TheSunIsStillShining you sound far too involved in your sons homework?! Are you actually writing his essays for him? [/quote]
That’s what I thought too.

My friend checks through her dcs homework and makes changes, she’s been doing it throughout high school, I find it quite weird. I offer support but feel they need to be self motivated.

Probably why continuous assessment that involved kids doing work at home was scraped.

@NotDonna

Probably why continuous assessment that involved kids doing work at home was scraped.

Exactly. I have friends who sit with their university child and help them do their online tests. When does it stop? So unfair,

Before I leave I'd like to clarify things, just for the record.

1. I am not a helicopter parent and as I said I did all of 1 hw in all his life as he was struggling with it. He has not been in school since march and the english lessons were non-existent (not really a fault of the teacher/school, but circumstances)

So, like it or not, I had to step in. And in science subjects there is a textbook and it helps as I set his work and then quiz/test him. I'm missing this in English and have no support for me.

1. Fifth form is below gcse, yes. Yes, my kid is not part of this year's shitshow, I get it. I'm not asking about baby wipes, but actual potential gcse content that might be useful to others as well. I am not going to start a thread over something like my question as it is not that important. I happened to come across someone and asked for 1 small bit of help. No need to bite my head off.

1. I don't get why these topics are so "closed". On a tangent, yes, but not massively off question should not invoke such a frenzy.

It's not like there is a very limited amount of space and I've taken it up with something totally irrelevant.

@treeeeemendous @NotDonna
No, I'm not too involved. We did not send him in to school in Sept, but school only provided limited help with home learning. They tried, but 99% of their year group was in school, so I didn't push for special treatment. It is not fair to any 15/16 yrs old (be it exam year or below) to expect them to be able to study on their own when the whole school system is built on spoon feeding them and marking their way in small increments.

Is he actually in the UK as fifth form is Year 11.

@Comefromaway

Is he actually in the UK as fifth form is Year 11.

He is in the UK. And I double checked - he is in fifth form and not doing GCSE this year. It's quite confusing...

I’m guessing it’s a private school with their own unique numbering system then.

Why the hell can't they all be the same numbering system????

My DS is in Fifth form in a private school, which is Y11, which is GCSE year. You then go into Sixth form for A-levels (lower and upper). I would assume that is the most common terminology for schools that haven’t adopted Y7-Y11 terminology.

DS2 is in Year 11 and his year is referred to as Upper Fifth, Year 10 is called Lower Fifth. I guess that may be the cause of the confusion. It's a private school and I think it's just a traditional thing.

If you want to be really confused then Upper Remove is Year 8 and Lower Remove is Year 7!

As for the numbering of year groups - Year 7,8,9,10,11 were First, second, third etc. when I was at school.
Normal comprehensive in the ‘80s.
I think it changed in the ‘90s to 7,8 etc...

@Comefromaway

I’m guessing it’s a private school with their own unique numbering system then.

Back in the day (when I was at school) the 5th form was tge year we did O levels (now GCSEs) hence the year after being the lower 6th then upper 6th.

We used to start counting again from the start of secondary school but at some time it switched to encompass primary and secondary (maybe when GCSEs came in?).

It’s odd how we seem to have uniformally kept 6th form but not the rest.

^ this was a bog standard comp.

Schools use their own year names - at DS’s fifth form is year 9 and Gcse year is Upper Shell. At DS1’s they take GCSEs in D Block. That’s why on MN it is sensible for everyone to be unsolipsistic and to always use the standard state school year numbers

Back on topic, this from the Times. How is that any better than just carrying on with exams but making them briefer, later and possibly with more optionality to accommodate issues with syllabus coverage? If the intention of “mini” is to restrict the syllabus, if they don’t get that news out by the end of the month latest, it will be too late to do any good. And how can it make sense to take national exams on lots of different days?

sandy ‘upper remove’? How unusual. I’ve heard of upper & lower 5th is done if the indys near me but never ‘remove’.

We had a 3 school system up north. I’ve no idea what primary and middle school years were called, (too many decades back to remember) but going into high school it was 3rd year (yr9 now) to 5th year (yr11 now) where we took O levels, and into 6th form. So the 1st year was called 3rd year. Not remotely confusing! It was a state comp that had been a grammar a few years earlier.
DDs school 6th form is sometimes referred to as yr12 & yr13 and other times as L6 (lower) and U6 (upper).

Oh sorry revenge! You’ve taught me a new word today. Had to go off and look that one up.

It's not revenge
It's shit piled on shit. I wish I could say I was surprised, but I'm not.

Thanks for sharing pangolins. I agree with you.

Plus, exam boards would be setting the exams but not marking them... hopefully they’d be sending a universal marking system to teachers.

pangolins = revenge

Mini exams? Mmm doesn’t make a lot of sense. Will still be reliant on how much content has been covered. Also very reliant on them being back in school. Does the article say much else please?

Hi Revenfeoftgepangolins

Thank you for the picture of the article from the times. Can you please upload another picture showing the rest of the article where it discusses Internal Assessments