Year 11 2023-24

[Maxus]

Anyone else got kids starting year 11 in September?

@AmyandPhilipfan Has he identified a post-16 route, and what qualifications will he need to get him there?

Yes, there's a vocational college near us that will take them on a Level 1 course in the area he's interested in, without any qualifications. Or he needs maths and English at grade 3 to get on the Level 2 course. Maths he possibly will get the 3 as he got a 2 in mocks but English he got 1 in Language and 0 in Literature. I've always known he struggles more in English but for the past couple of years I've been told English he's doing well and on track for grade 4 but struggling with maths. I knew that didn't sound right. The thing is with him if a teacher clearly explains what they want him to do he's not too bad, but he does not have a clue what exam questions are asking of him.

It's so hard isn't it? It's moments like this you wish their 25 year old (hopefully now high achieving) self would travel back in time and tell them to give their head a wobble

Would he be willing to study with friends, ideally ones who may be able to coach him a bit? Or if going solo maybe agree he sits with you or another parent/adult for the first 10 mins of each study session to carve out a specific plan of "I'm going to achieve X and Y and to do those things here's the actions I'll take " kind of conversation?

I don't know about you but (having a DD who also struggles and didn't do great in these last mocks) when I think of the sheer volume of stuff they need to cover I feel overwhelmed I think they sometimes need help to break it down into specific chunks. Then maybe revisit what they seemed to have "got" a few days later. Then hopefully they feel like they are shifting the work it could motivate them?

Also we've seen a HUGE improvement in concentration and focus since banning her phone during any study. Went down like a lead balloon to begin but so glad we did that.

@AmyandPhilipfan is he in school? how many subjects is he taking? Is it possible for him to just sit English and maths plus maybe something else that he enjoys? Surely he would be best off putting all his efforts into getting the best grades in English and maths so he can access a course at 16.

@AmyandPhilipfan My DD2 did 2 years at level 1 at college and was so much happier for doing a course she really wanted to do at a level that worked for her.

However note there are potential problems with getting the maths up to a 3 as then the rules may be that your DC has to keep resitting GCSE at college rather than being allowed to do Functional Skills.
Though it depends as some colleges offer Level 1 functional skills but if you pass that they then move to GCSE rather than teaching Level 2 functional skills.

(DD2, 19, post college, is doing Level 2 FS English this year via a tutor, it is so much more straightforward than GCSE English Language).

Also we've seen a HUGE improvement in concentration and focus since banning her phone during any study. Went down like a lead balloon to begin but so glad we did that.

I put a time limit on my DS's phone that is only an hour. He asks me all the time if he can have more time and I give him a bit more because he likes doing duolingo and is obsessed with not losing his streak ( he's foung gcse Spanish so it's kind ifcrevision too! I once commented that there was no point him having a limit as he keeps asking for more time and he actually told me to keep the limit as it makes him stop going on his phone during revision time!

Yes, he attends mainstream school.He's down for 7 GCSEs and a couple of BTecs.

@AmyandPhilipfan If I can help at all with AQA English, please let me know. It's entirely predictable once you've been taught the papers.

Thanks, his school use Edexcel for English.

Probably not much use to you then, I'm afraid

DS spent time going through his English seems strange scoring if what he told me was right. He was 2 marks of a 4 and 10 marks of a 5. Teacher told him he could easily have got a 4 just needed to rwrite more. Also she struggled to read his writing in some areas. Any idea if some examiners give up if writing is so bad?

@Waspie well done to your son for his mock results.

We can read most things! We're not allowed to just give up.

"just write more" is really not helpful. More what? Does he know which questions are the problem ones?

@AmyandPhilipfan So he's facing 9 different subjects? If he's struggling that seems far too much. Couldn't he drop some of them? The school will push back against it but it is do-able, and at this stage the most important are Maths and English.

Can you get the paper back? You may be able to see where he needed to ' write more' so to add examples or quotes or explain what he meant. ' Write more' is unhelpful. I agree to seeing if he can drop back to just doing maybe 5 subjects. Edit: I just saw he's doing a couple of Btecs. Maybe ask if he can concentrate of English, maths and the btecs.

If his writing is an issue, ask for a laptop which he can also use in exams.

That only helps if they can type quickly. Many many teenagers can't.

We always start with handwriting intervention, then look at access to word processing after that.

By year 11, many years of handwriting intervention should have taken place already - these issues do not present themselves at 15-16 years old. At our school, laptop provision had already been identified in year 10.

And in other schools, handwriting intervention hasn't taken place and is therefore a starting point. Word processing is an expensive provision, and isn't always the solution.

Personally, at this late stage if I had a 16 year old who’s teachers couldn’t read his exam papers ( and he was reasonable at typing) id absolutely be speaking to the school about this provision. My eldest dc was marked as grade 3 for his year 10 English mock papers ( due to handwriting) and with a laptop got grade 6’s for actual gcse. I made the suggestion to the poster based on my own personal experience as something worth exploring with school.

@MrsHamlet thank you for your time. Think he said it was question 5 something about a short story! By sounds of it he may have ran out of time. Got parents evening next week so going to ask teacher for his paper. Got Christmas off so going to do a couple of practice papers. Hoping the marking is straight forward !! Any tips for marketing?

@Spacecowboys DS hand writing has always been really bad ever teacher since yr11 has commented on it. I tried everything at the start but he was not interested. It got worse over lock down as he was using a laptop. To be honest I never even knew you could request they used a laptop for typing instead of English.

@Tebheag word processing needs to be a normal way of working, and my experience tells me that many students find that much slower than writing. It's not always an advantage, hence suggesting looking at handwriting first.

If he's running out of time, he needs to know how long he should spend on each question and stick to it.

Marking is easy - after the first 100 or so, anyway!!! Are you AQA?

I would love for him to drop some but I suppose the issue is what would he do while the other students are in the ones he's dropped? If he's by himself doing self study then he probably just wouldn't do it.

He did have a couple of subjects taken off him at the end of Year 9, but then the BTecs were added so that didn't make much sense to me.

It was parents evening recently and I nodded and agreed that he needs to keep revising for RE etc but really at home I'm going to strip it back to English language, maths and science. I know other subjects are important but I think at this stage of his education he really needs to focus on the ones that jobs will look for in his future.

I'm no expert of course but DS has found having some model answers for the English language questions really helpful to identify what the examiners are looking for.

@Tebheag I'm sure you've already done this but the BBC have some good links GCSE English Language - Edexcel - BBC Bitesize including model answers.