Anyone up for a GCSE handholding thread?

[BaconAndAvocado]

DS2 has his GCSEs in June. He had mocks in November and more (why??) next month.
He needs to get 5 6s to stay at his current school (IB, not overly keen) or to transfer to another local 6th form.
He said he’s going to start revising this week......
Think his school will be helping him devise a revision timetable this week. I’ve bought him flashcards, he just needs to knuckle down now.......

I need to join this chat. My dd has developed anxiety and panic attacks during the run up of her mocks. She didn't do so well in those. She has been revising a lot, to the point where I had to force her out of the house yesterday as she's barely been out over Easter.
She has a mock geography test on Monday and Spanish speaking GCSE Tues.
All I'm getting is a count down at the moment of X amount of days left.

@Myknewname hope all has gone well. Ds back in school today. Revision seems to have gone ok last few days so I am hoping he is realising that the exams are coming!

Hello! Can I join please?

Dd started year 7 as working above average. All round good student. We now face Gcses. Predicted 5 for maths. 3 if she's lucky for English. She's needs a 4 for college.
They have only just started music theory, she goes to extra music in form time. She can't do any editing for photography because another class is using the room. Still slogging through the science syllabus. They lost all last year's coursework.
Maths coursework was accidentally binned over summer.
She has extra lessons in form and at dinner. She stays after school for two hours 3 days a week. She was in all Feb half term and all Easter apart from the bank holidays. She revises at home.

We've just had parents evening and school reports which say don't worry she'll get the grades for college. But she does look stressed.
We've now had an email to say Monday and Wednesday after school tuition is mandatory, detention for non attendance. And then an email today to say she has a detention tomorrow for not editing her photography.
My clever, confident child is a shadow of the girl who started yr7.
I'm tempted to email the school and ask them to back off, I'm not the only parent by far. I'm cross the school are pushing the Yr11s for their own failings. So many different teachers. Changing syllabus. Teachers not turning up to lessons because they have other things to do.

I've told dd it will be OK. She only needs four gcse s at 4 to get onto a level 2 course at college. She's looking at 8 or 9 for Photography, Engineering and Music.
6 for Science and 5 for French. Its just Maths and English I worry about.

Would you approach the school?

( apologies for rant- appreciate you reading)

@Rowgtfc72 yes I would talk to the school and advocate hard with push back. They can’t mandate a child to attend outside school hours. If she’s leaving the school in June you have nothing to lose. My eldest DDs school is equally crap, my younger DD goes to a different school and has a lot more support including half timetable due to autism but no EHCP. I’ve had to engage (positively but very firmly) every step of the way…It’s interesting what you can get when their attendance stats are at risk!

@Rowgtfc72 also look up the work of Naomi Fisher it’s eye opening different look at the impact of our current education system on our young people.

@WinterMermaid234 thanks for that. Will definitely read that.

Dds just read her school report and pulled a face and said- see my music teacher didn't even bother. He hadn't. He's the Head teachers son, cocky and full of excuses. At parents evening he blamed everything on the teacher before. She was lovely, would do anything for any of her pupils- and did. Dd reported him to the head of music but he's to her to take it to the head. Which obviously she can't.

Since 2pm she has been emailed 64 science assignments to be completed by last exam, June 9th. Her friends at school were watching them arrive during the lesson and they continued till an hour ago. I've told her to ignore them and just concentrate on maths and English but she needs a decent science score for college.

We can't threaten her attendance. We've bought her prom dress and paid £45 for her ticket. More than 9 days off since Christmas and she won't be allowed to go. No refunds.

That sounds awful @Rowgtfc72 and I absolutely detest the fear they install over attendance = prom! My DD is the same until I pointed out it was “unauthorised attendance “ but authorised is ok. I had to quote the latest gov document on attendance management at my other DDs school as it clearly says they cannot penalise you for anxiety related attendance issues. Yet it’s very hard to prove 🙄as getting into the GP is hardwork! https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1136965/Summary_of_responsibilities_where_a_mental_health_issue_is_affecting_attendance.pdf

This sounds really awful for you and your DD, @Rowgtfc72 . Huge sympathy. The whole business is stressful enough without piling extra on top.

Interesting read!
School count every sick day in those 9 days. We've had 2 for sickness so far. I reckon a lot of that was stress related.
I have tried not to be that parent at this school. There are some lovely hardworking staff there that deserve more.
It's an academy though and no child appears to be an individual. I brought dd up to know her own mind. She is capable of holding a polite discussion. She's just too damp tired of it all.
I can't wait for college.

I do think there is a lot of pressure coming from schools. Ds is having very stressful assemblies, where they are being told you are not doing enough, your grades are too low. They seem to forget that they had a huge bulk of their secondary education at home and it is not the kids fault if they are behind. Right now they need calm uplifting guidance, lots of tea and biscuits. I stopped ds from going to after school revision and i think this is ok to do if they will revise at home. Ds is definitely not his normal happy self right now!!!!

@mumonthehill that's it exactly. This is the last year that lock down affected. But that seems to have been forgotten. My very confident daughter was having panic attacks and self referred to the school counsellor ( who she still hasn't seen)
She's thankfully through the other side of that but I feel the school are trying to make up for their own shortcomings, worrying about accountability, and blaming the kids.

mumonthehill I couldn’t agree more.

Rowgtfc72 Sorry to hear that about your DD.
DS2 went through a period of experiencing anxiety last year. We got him a counsellor and he seems a lot better now.
When I spoke to the attendance officer at his school about it, she said that they are experiencing a unprecedented wave of student anxiety, and other mental health issues, since Covid.
DS2 was always a sunny, confident child pre-Covid and, for a long time, I believed we had all got through it unscathed. Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case.
I’m trying to be mindful of this when reminding him to revise.

Hope it's ok to shove in? I have been reading the chat as my DD had her Spanish and French speaking this week and I just thought it would be nice to have somewhere to look for advice or tips.
I was sad to read about attendance and Prom my DD has had MH struggles and luckily our school does not take attendance into account. It hurts my heart to think of all the teens struggling with everything they have been through and then denied a rare special outing/treat event.
My DD has only been on one school trip before covid shut her experience down. She doesn't acrually want to go to prom just because she can't face the event itself and all the stress.I kniw the lack of opportunities to be social has had an effect.
Anyway Spanish seemed to go well and it's French today then she can settle in for revision up to the big start.
I am thinking about what food and healthy snacks I can provide to boost her up a bit.

Ds came out of one at the beginning of last term saying they'd been told they now had to go to 10 revision sessions to go to prom. He was totally unbothered by this as he has no intention of "dressing up to look stupid" and attending anyway.
However I did feel that if they were putting that down, then doing it at the start of last term would potentially have had a effect, but by now I don't think even dd1, who overworked to the extreme, would have had 10 revision sessions that would have been helpful to attend before exams start.
We then received an email over the holidays saying approximately "oops we're back tracking on that", otherwise known as "we didn't really say they had to, we just said it would show good commitment, which is what we're really looking for."
Ds has still no intention of going. Apparently the girls chose the dress code (black tie) because they wanted to dictate what the boys wear. He doesn't believe me when I say "black tie" also has expectations for the girls. He said if he did go, he'd wear football kit with a black tie round one arm as though he was in mourning.

He dresses up well, and the last time he dressed up smartly was for a wedding about 10 years ago.

I too think they are the forgotten year impacted hugely by covid socially emotionally and teaching which hasn’t finished the curriculum. My DD hasn’t been on a single school trip as they were all cancelled by covid and not restarted in time for their year group. Luckily she has had an opportunity with her sport but it’s definitely impacted her social skills a lot. Desperately hoping she can get the grades needed for college to experience something different from sixth form.

It is good to know that we are all feeling the same. I do feel for those whose dc are anxious, it is so hard. Ds has welsh speaking today and again on Monday. He is missing prom as we are away which is a shame but they changed the date. He has a weekend of doing a sport he loves which at least will get him out in the fresh air!!

Prom shouldn't be linked to revision sessions. That's ridiculous.

I too feel that this year has been forgotten a bit. Even though we personally were lucky enough to not have had massive covid school disruption as they had online lessons throughout, I do think the knock on effects of missing out on a couple of years of growing up and first experiences have been quite hard to deal with. There has definitely been additional anxiety as a result.

Also think that the last couple of years of children taking exams have had a lot of allowances made for what they missed out on. This year will be the first to try to move back towards the norm, so can completely understand the sense of slight panic I see in DD and some of her friends. They are definitely worrying that they'll be judged more harshly.

I feel so sorry for them. We had it so much easier in a number of ways, I think!

Solidarity, folks!
It is hard for this cohort. DC's school was pretty shambolic over COVID and they still haven't finished the double science course, which she's stressing about a bit. She's not really wanting to go out much at the moment, which isn't like her.

She has Spanish speaking looming, although fortunately it's been put back a week until May 4th, so it's no longer back to back with an audition that she needs to prepare for. She was quite torn as to what to prioritise - she'll be doing A-level music next year without having done GCSE (school doesn't offer it) so it wasn't quite as simple as prioritising the GCSE.

Ah well, not long now until they're done, for better or for worse.

DS had a second French speaking mock last week and scored an 8, last time for all 4 elements he got a Grade 4 overall and was quite upset so hopefully this has boosted him up a bit.

He seems to suddenly be making more of an effort with revision this past week and even came downstairs yesterday to do some revision at the dining table "so I don't distract myself".
I was thrilled :)

Well done to your DS, that's a really great improvement! Hopefully it will inspire him to more revision!

@Howamisupposeedtopickausername well done to your ds.
We're away this weekend with random family and friends, three of which have French oral next week. They've actually been speaking to each other in French and sharing exam tips.

This had been started by a friend of a friend and needs some love!
Please sign if this resonates with you.

Not sure if this is allowed but hopefully it is! A friend of a friend has started this petition. It’s in its infancy so needs attention. It’s to campaign for this years GCSE (and A level) students to be shown some consideration in the marking of exams this year in the same way they were last and previous years. Our children of all ages (albeit with many having their own issues going on - mine included) have definitely had their education affected by covid and will have missed out on a lot. To suggest that everything is back to normal because they weren’t officially on the GCSE course during covid is simply denying this. Please sign and get some momentum behind this. Thanks!

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/631743

My dd actually said that she’s heard the kids in the other uk countries except England were still getting advanced notice of topics and concessions made this year??. She was worrying a lot more than I’ve seen her before as they have barely finished the curriculum in the sciences in particular sadly their biology & chemistry teachers have said this is what I haven’t had chance to cover your need to do this yourselves! Ffs! She’s at G5 and needs a G6 for college so flipping hope she can do it as she started that school on a G8 glide path…