Year 11 2023-24

[Maxus]

Anyone else got kids starting year 11 in September?

@tellmewhenthespaceshiplandscoz Do you have a plan B? If not you/she probably should. I think a 2 to a 4 is doable maybe as you have 6 months but the grade 3 band is quite wide.

We have Seneca but he’s asked for a tutor which we could start but we all ready have 2, one for English and one for maths 🙈

worth a try I think

https://www.my-gcsescience.com/parents/
this option also looks good

Hi can you ask to see a mock paper? Sorry if daft question. DS spoke to the teacher at lunchtime she said something about what why how paragraphs and explode! all lost on me.

Hi Teen yes we do and actually I think her plan b will be a much better fit and entry for maths is 4 minimum. They do say she would need to resist but there's isn't a deadline I can see. Her current school where she has her heart set on state 5 minimum and if not achieved resit only November to get

Thanks for your reply x

You need the paper and the markscheme and to know what he missed. "Explode" is not helpful!

@MrsHamlet thank you we have parents evening in a couple of weeks so will ask for a copy and mark scheme.
Emailed couple of tutors too as DS actually asked for one. He needs a 5 in English but 6th form would consider a 4 as he thankfully does well in other subjects.

We had sixth form open evening this week which was quite interesting in terms of the variety of A levels on offer. DS would like to do politics which they do offer (it’s not an option at GCSE) and economics which they don’t offer but he really wants to stay at school and not look at FE college or other sixth forms in the area.

I’m pleased to hear that state schools prioritise state educated pupils and don’t let them get pushed out by those transferring in from private schools tbh. It’s not a problem in our school as it’s a Welsh medium comprehensive and there are no Welsh medium private schools for pupils to try to transfer from. Hopefully it’s not a big surprise to those planning this move!

I’m pleased to hear that state schools prioritise state educated pupils and don’t let them get pushed out by those transferring in from private schools tbh

Me too. I'm not happy with my DC's school for doing this. They revamped the sixth form and took the lower school facilities to make a massive library and common room for the 6th form I think to encourage kids from the public school to transfer for 6th form. The private school kids are always the ones that get Head Student etc. I thought universities had to look at where a child went to school for their whole career, not just 6th form, because so many parents were trying to game the system by moving to State 6th form.

I couldn’t agree more.

I hope that education from 5-16 gets taken into account on university applications too, not just the post 16 years.

I couldn’t agree more.

I hope that education from 5-16 gets taken into account on university applications too, not just the post 16 years.

I agree with what you are all saying in theory (even though my child is looking to switch to state for sixth form), but sometimes there is another side to the story.

We had to look for a school place in Year 9. No local state schools had places so we were forced to go private. It was never our choice and now we’d like to switch back. It’s nothing to do with trying to get a contextual uni place, as we’re fully aware they take into account where GCSEs are taken.

Absolutely agree with this. In my area 6th form colleges also give preference to those in the same academy chain ( 1 college to 5 secondarys in the same academy chain none of those have 6th form on secondary school site) Much farer than kids from private schools thinking they can jump the gun for places.

Dd is really struggling this week. She is halfway through her mocks and suddenly realising that the “revision” she’s been doing for the past couple of weeks has not really worked. Some of the exams have not gone well and mentally she has checked out. We had always assumed she’d get at least the 6s she’s needs for sixth form but now I’m not so sure.

Havent a clue really how to support her. I’m offering to revise with her but she says I’m just stressing her out talking about it. Any advice?

This is what mocks are for.

How has she been revising this time? Has she really done as much as she thinks she has or might she have been distracted by other things in her room and not been as focussed as she might have been? Can you look at what type of learner she is and help her to devise strategies that will be more effective for her preferred style of learning?

@BeingGrownUp I helped DC revise the most 'fact heavy' subjects (Biology, History, Eng Lit) by going through the revision guides page by page and learning it together. I won't lie, it was painful and we took months (started in February for May exams). It worked for them, half an hour per subject every day. It's not for everyone but worked well for them. But we did have some very late nights ...

Thank you both. I thought she had been going through the exam books and making notes of the key points on flash cards. And I can see evidence of that but she hasn’t learnt any of it. I really like the idea of doing it with her - thank you pancakes. Will discuss with her today

I did revision 1-1 with my DD1 it helped focus her mind. Otherwise she got distracted and/or convinced herself she knew stuff when she didn't.

I think that is so true thanks Teen. I think she thought she knew it all and it was going to be easy

I found that my son didn’t know how to revise and actually the school didn’t really teach him what revision looks like.

@BeingGrownUp help her to find as many questions as possible to practise on. Use all the questions at the end of the topics in the exam book, plus free resources such as BBC Bitesize and Seneca, plus any past papers you/she can get your hands on (school may have made some available to them). Help her to use the questions to find out where her knowledge gaps are, then go over the knowledge points with her. She will absorb much more when the learning is directed towards being able to answer questions. Use model answers and markschemes, where available, to improve her answers, and impress on her the different levels of detail required for a 1-mark question versus a 3-marker versus a 6-marker etc.

If you are AQA, past papers and marking schemes are here
www.aqa.org.uk/find-past-papers-and-mark-schemes

DS got his results on Friday. He did really well but instead of being proud of this he spent Friday evening ranting about how unfair "miss" was in her marking. I really wish he could look and see positives in his achievements rather than negatives.

The "miss" in question gave him a 7 in his mock and is predicting an 8 in his GCSE, so hardly a bad score. This is one of the subjects he wants to take for A level, and one where he is strongest, so was hoping for an 8 in mocks and a predicted 9.

The whole "unfairness" of it all is apparently compounded by the fact that he did this particular past paper in an after school study session a few weeks before the mocks and a different miss within the English dept. marked it as a 9. Sigh. But his "miss" is well known as a hard marker. He's in top set and no-one in his set got higher than a 7. Although some people in set 2 got 8's and 9's (this compounds the grievance). He has English later this afternoon so hopefully miss will go through how she's marked the papers and explain her position. Fingers crossed because I don't want another evening of "it's so unfair".

On the brighter side he has text this morning to say that his maths was only a couple of points off an 8 so "sir" is really pleased with him. Maths is perceived, by DS, to be one of his "weak" subjects. Hopefully after a day of reviewing their mock papers he will feel a little less p-ed off about it all.

Apologies for all of the annoying quotation marks in my post. I just do not want anyone thinking that these are my thoughts or feelings on the subject!

Well, got my son's results back. All ranging from 0-2. I don't know if he has any hope of getting any up to a 4. I know he's always struggled but I wouldn't mind if I felt he was trying his best. But he's so anti revision and if he says he doesn't understand something he has such a mental block of working at it to try to understand it. I've told him he's going to have to start doing more work, including in the Christmas holidays and he feels that's unfair and 'harsh.' I'm not going to make him work 24/7 but he slobs around at home gaming all day, I'm sure he can fit in a couple of hours of study time!