Repeating year 11

[Bollard]

My DD is in year 11 at a UK state school. She has recently been diagnosed with significant anaemia. She has been prescribed iron tablets and is beginning to perk up a little but it will be a long haul, I think. Difficulties in getting GP appointments, then lengthy waits for blood tests, have made things worse. She is finding the iron tablets difficult to tolerate and I would like to speak to the GP about changing her over to spatone, but again, delays with appointments and blood tests are making this very difficult.

I had anaemia when pregnant and I had an idea of how debilitating it can be, but I’ve never seen a child as exhausted as she is. She missed a couple of weeks of school because of it and a busy day still leaves her utterly wiped out. She’s not able to do any school work in the evenings and very little at the weekend.

She quite likes school and wants to do well in her GCSEs. She didn’t do very well in her mocks and was motivated to work hard for the summer exams. She hopes to go on to A levels and then university.

I think that it is inevitable that her GCSE results will be lower than she is capable of.

Does anyone have any experience of a situation like this? Is it possible to repeat year 11? Would it be better to keep her at school for now but withdraw her from the GCSE exams, or to have her sit the exams? She’d find it difficult to join the cohort in the year below her and she would miss her friends, but for subjects like history and drama, where the set texts/syllabus vary between schools, to go somewhere else could be difficult. She did English Literature GCSE in year 10 so that isn’t a concern.

Any thoughts or advice would be very welcome. She’s having a rotten time and I am awfully worried about her.

State schools really don't like students repeating year 11 - they aren't funded for it, and they are measured on the gcse results students achieve at 16.

In situations like this most will agree to dropping one or more GCSEs in order to concentrate on the rest. In the time when your DD would be in the other lessons most have some kind of "hub" where she can go and either do independent revision or do homework etc.

You might want to consider starting soatone anyway. Iron tablets are notorious for causing gastric problems.

I wouldn’t retake the year but you can apply for special consideration. Talk to the school Exams Officer about it.

If her GCSE results still permit her to go on to desired courses I'd just continue.
Reasons for lower results can be covered on her personal statement / school reference.

Obviously more of an issue if she won't reach desired grades, but even then I'd think more about dropping a GCSE or 2 than repeating the whole year. (Dropping a GCSE or 2 will also help with summer exam schedule, helping her stamina).

Yeps agree with others - focus on key subjects and ask school if she can drop some. She will have been entered by now but they may agree.

Focys on Eng lang maths science and then what she needs for A levels. Is she looking at grades 5/6 or more 3/4 realistically?

Thank you. That’s very helpful and has helped me think it through. She was aiming for mostly 7s. 5 or 6 in science. The 2 she could drop - keeping maths, eng lang, science and the subjects she wants to study at A level - would be media studies and Spanish. Media studies she’s already done 30% of and she quite likes it. Spanish is horribly taught at her school and it was recently decided that she would do the foundation paper. That would be the one to drop I guess. As far as I can tell she knows virtually no Spanish. But that’s for a whole other thread!