Exams cancelled 2

[Orangeblossom1977]

Started a new thread as last one is full.

@MrsHamlet it’s WJEC English literature paper 1. Exam is 2 hours 15 minutes.

Not my paper but if there's an extract he can get a lot of quotations from that. Paraphrase is fine if not.

@MrsHamlet thanks seems like such a lot to memorise poor kids!

That's because they don't actually need to! "References" does not mean every one has to be an accurate direct quotation.
Getting the characters names right helps... I once marked a whole essay about Bob Marley. Bob crachit and Jacob Marley's child, I assume 😂

@MrsHamlet it’s a shame you’re not his English teacher! Definitely been told to learn quotes and he’s worried if he doesn’t he’ll be penalised as his presumably his teacher will be grading him. Luckily he’s got a good memory but it’s very time consuming and annoying as obviously he has all his other subjects to revise. Can’t wait until this is over.

We spent ages prepping son on Eng Lit P&C Poems. I genuinely thought ‘Checking out me history’ would pop up. I was wrong! Turned out it was a poem he knew anyway. The Mr Bruff shorts on YouTube are highly recommended.

@Tonylepony - we took a different stance on quotations, and used quotations where they logically underpinned key themes. We’re not right and we’re not wrong either. We did all we could reasonably do in our prep to game an Grade 7 or above.

@Hellohah - my DS feels emboldened, wrongly, enough to want to do Maths A Level. We worked his weaknesses over last 3 months to the point he was scoring Grade 9 on recent papers. But Maths GCSE is much easier to understand and work your weaknesses on (when you fall behind) that A Level Maths. It’s a completely different ball game, and I hope my DS thanks god for his Maths GCSE score and chooses a better A Level substitute.

That's good to hear Mrs Hamlet. My Dd2, still only Y10, struggles with working memory and all the GSCE content to learn by rote. She'd be fine with paraphrasing though.

And thanks Portico for the Mr Bruff recommendation. That looks like a perfect resource for Dd2.

DD1, is reaching peak stress at the midpoint of her 6 weeks of assessments - which I will also refer to as exams. Chemistry is the subject which has been hardest to deal with. They are being treated in the whole course, even parts taught in lockdown, and she can't be fully confident she's consolidated her learning well enough. She was shut out of clinics sept-december, to focus on less able students, and there are no clinics now.

Biology, where she excels, appear to have over simplified their assessments, and made any revision sessions directly relate to exam content. Students who hitherto scored low marks are now getting much bigger marks and so DD1 is stressed out as the gap between her and others narrows. They've also been told they can retake any prior assessments that are going to be used to make up their profile for their final grade. It's starting to sound very 'prizes for all' which is not good for DD1 who has a consistent track record of working hard and achieving high grades.

@Fortyfifty - try this link for past topical papers and mark-schemes for Chem. Choose the board that is relevant to your DC: www.physicsandmathstutor.com/chemistry-revision/

Thanks Portico. She's been doing some part papers. She's fully confident with the content now but it's not always translating in to decent marks. Probably the best thing to do is keep doing papers and looking at the mark schemes until it clicks.

I'll forward her that link in case there is something new there.

I'm so saddened and angry at what a mess this all is. Schools doing different things, no level playing field. What a shambles.

I’m new here but just coming on for a bit of advice/support/rant/moan/stress.
My Yr11 DS has Aspergers and has really hit a wall with all the stress of assessments and is just unable to go to school to do the assessments. However school are saying he does not have enough evidence without doing them.

He completed one round of mocks in November and another in February. He did really well in his November mocks and was achieving 6/7/8’s He thought that would be it but then this current assessment window was announced a few weeks back and he has struggled with it ever since.

I’ve read the guidance and it doesn’t actually state that 6 pieces of evidence need to come from formal assessments as his school are saying.

Does anyone else have this situation? Are all
Schools/students having to have 6 pieces of work or is there some leeway?

I feel cornered that if I push him to go in it will have a detrimental effect on his mental health but then so will results day if he doesn’t get a pass due to lack of evidence.

Schools have to have their own policy which has to be approved, so they can say whatever they want (within reason)
We have some students who have missing evidence. If they've a good reason (like your son) we've got a form to complete which explains why it's missing and what we're doing about it.
If they're off school because they truant, the gaps will just be gaps.

You also need to speak to the SENDCO about it

@MrsHamlet thank you.

The sendco has a meeting with his teachers tomorrow to work out what gaps there might be.
It just seems so unfair that he’s having to complete more assessments than he would have in a normal year.
Good to know about the form to explain gaps. Maybe that’s what will come out of the meeting tomorrow.

I'm really just fed up now. DD is beyond stressed and so am I. I spent 3 hours the night before last calming her down from a panic attack then yesterday she felt ill all day and was full of cold. She is struggling to concentrate. The art department announced yesterday that their portfolios need to be in on Friday after saying last week that they had until 24th. So now we need to spend the next 2 evenings mounting and finishing everything which is not great considering her 2nd (harder) set of assessments start on Monday. We also just found out a boy who assaulted her 2 years ago is going to the same college. Stop the world I want to get off!

@Titsywoo I'm sorry to hear about your DD, you really don't need more stress just now.
That's it for GCSE Art for my DD, final statements and books handed in today...she's so happy (to finally say goodbye to it)! I'm afraid the nature of GCSE Art sucks all the joy out of what should be such a creative subject, ah well, one down and two weeks of assessments starting Monday.

[quote Neversaygoodbye]@Titsywoo I'm sorry to hear about your DD, you really don't need more stress just now.
That's it for GCSE Art for my DD, final statements and books handed in today...she's so happy (to finally say goodbye to it)! I'm afraid the nature of GCSE Art sucks all the joy out of what should be such a creative subject, ah well, one down and two weeks of assessments starting Monday. [/quote]
Thanks @Neversaygoodbye - well done to your DD for finishing. Bet she is glad to see the back of that! Agreed ot certainly ruins the subject for many. My DD will be doing graphics for alevel so another portfolio 😫 Good luck to your DD for the assessments!

@MrsHamlet do you do edexcel? I'm trying to find the Shakespeare assessment stuff for dd, but the pages all seem blank to me? I was looking for R&J

Sadly not. I'll have a look though.

@Titsywoo your poor DD, what a nightmare. Has she spoken to anyone about the boy? Has she got any strategies for coping with him being at the same college? If not, please look at this through summer as the more enabled she is the better. It sounds OTT and dramatic but it’s better to start college with strength and strategies rather than ‘see how it goes’, which can be too little too late.

How's everyone doing? DD just seems at the limits of what her brain can deal with. Headaches, not eating much. Thank goodness we have 1 week left and this is all over for her (and me!)

She had a curve ball thrown at her. There's a gap, for her class, on one of the Y12 assessments maths are submitting for evidence. Something to do with how lockdown occurred, they missed being tested on an end of year unit. They have been told to sit it. She raised the unfairness of it as other classes did the test right after the teaching. She's been told they don't have to do it, but they will then have a gap in evidence. She doesn't know what to do. What will be worse? A gap or doing a test that she could get a comparatively lower mark on?

I'm still concerned about how strictly the college are going to map current pupils grades to historic student grades. At least 4 A level departments are repeatedly telling their students how many As, Bs etc.. are up for grabs. It's an overall low performing college, with a large spread of grades. But the year DD started they had increased the gcse entry requirements to be allowed to take maths and science A levels.
Teachers? Have schools been given any guidance on what would be an acceptable % of grade inflation from the 2017-19 data?

Being told grades must be broadly in line with historic data and at the same time telling schools to award the highest grade that they have evidence for... it's a baffling contradiction, so I wondered if schools had more guidance around that. Is there any directive to provide evidence and compare the cohort as a whole looking at GCSEs and Sats? I'm clutching at straws here...

DD’s last ‘exam which isn’t an exam but might as well be an exam’ today. Whoop. But wait there...they go back for two weeks to have more exams ‘if they need it’ and review their earlier exams. For gawds sake! Then they have two weeks off and then back at end of June (date tbc) fir sixth form transition week.

I’m just quite surprised any schools are submitting any evidence from years 10 and 12. As you would expect to see a fair amount of improvement by the end of year 11 and 13 surely evidence should be quite heavily weighted to anything done this year? That is presumably why a lot of schools have been endlessly testing since schools went back in March?