Is there a Y7 2024-25 support thread?

[Eastie77Returns]

I’ve been following the 2023-24 one as DD starts secondary school this year so was interested to read about the experiences of pupils who started last September. I’m ancient and things have changed so much since I was at Secondary school. I’m already struggling to keep up with the e-mails and flood of information from her new school and the new term hasn’t even started yet!

Next week she is attending a week long summer school / transition week which I thought was a really good idea to help her get settled ahead of September but she is complaining she doesn’t want to go and it’s unfair she has to spend part of her summer holiday in school (which is fair enough). She has already spent a day at the school and came home overwhelmed saying the buildings are too big, she felt lost and lunch was rushed. On the other hand she really enjoyed the taster lessons and as she likes structure she was excited about having a timetable of different classes.

I’m sensing the months ahead might be a bit tricky and DD is my oldest so the first to attend Secondary and I’m really not sure what to expect!

That’s ridiculously unfair re the bus!!!

Well just received an e-mail that she has now collected a second negative for lateness this morning. I drove her in again as there was a continued issue with the bus so she ended up coming back home and asking for a lift. Dropped her off at 8.34. The gate closes at 8.35 but obviously she didn’t make it. There will be a lunchtime ‘Restoration’. It’s not the end of the world but DD gets soo stressed about it. She was crying in the car as she knew she would be late and lunchtime detention means she cannot get a hot lunch and sit with her friends😐

They will find out this week which sets they are in for Maths. I’m a bit concerned about the sets being established so early as the impression I got at the parents information evening is that there isn’t much movement between them throughout the years. Almost as if once they decide your child’s level they are then on that trajectory right through to GCSE. Anyway, I’m probably over thinking at this early stage!

I’m already looking forward to half term so DD gets a bit of a breather.

Punishing kids for public transport issues (or is it a schoolbus?) Is just wrong. My school back in the day was very strict, but they always excused lateness if there was a known problem on the buses or trains. (They had a log of how everyone got to school!)

Sets at DDs school can change every term, but it is tricky as there is overlap between each set.

Another one chiming in to say how ridiculous it is to punish them for factors out of their control like the bus/traffic etc.

I have a feeling our school puts them in sets after Christmas but I'm not sure how often they move around if their ability changes. I'm expecting DD to be in a lower set for some subjects but I hope that she won't be stuck in them forever if she improves.

We are in sets now but it’s more or less streaming. There are exams in October before half term that will decide the sets for the next 6 months

DD got 40/45 on one Maths test, 19/20 on the other but thinks she will be in set 2. It seems top set is reserved for the ‘genius kids’ (her words😂).

I’ve been a bit surprised to hear that quite a few of her friends from Primary are driven or walked to school by parents. These are kids who love less than a mile from the school. There have been a few nasty road accidents near us and on a parent chat I’m still on several have said that is why they won’t let their children go to school on their own. Not sure if I’ve been a bit negligent packing DD off on her own from day 2 but I do think it’s been good for her confidence and ability to navigate roads on her own.

My son has started with a few tests although no idea how he's done as he never tells me. They have been in sets for most things from the start although I think there may be some movement after half term.

I'm surprised at how many children are driven to school and it completely clogs up the roads round here. People trying to stop their child being run over so they drive them to school causing more road problems and danger for other children. It's madness!

I think DD would think I'm going doolally if I offered to walk her to school, she's been going herself since Yr4.

Where we lived in America, people would drive their kids to school. There was a free bus that picked the kids up from your house but they would give their kids an extra 20 minutes in bed and drive them which meant sitting in a car-queue 🤪 totally mad

My DD is driven to school but that's because her brother has been going with his friend and his mum since he started y7, she drops them on their way to work. She'll be on the bus in y9.

Lots of hoo-ha on the village Facebook this last couple of days due to buses either not stopping, not turning up, no replacement when broken, causing loads of kids to miss school or walk 5 miles and be late. This is scheduled buses not contract.

Because of this I've decided to just drive the boys in every morning. I can change my schedule a bit to facilitate this but it's a bit of a pain. I know not everybody has this option.

We have to drive to school - was the trade-off we made for not going to the local outstanding but awful on SEND and bullying exam factory.

Its outrageous that essential bus services are so unreliable

A lot of children at DDs school are driven as there's no sensible bus routes from the villages just under the three mile limit. No 0ne thinks anything of that... judgement is reserved for the ones who live within the village where the school is with less than a mile walk!

Transport issues sound awful and even worse when the kids can't do anything at all about it! Shame they are receiving punishments.
My DD luckily has been able to walk and has found a couple of friends to walk with so that's good as she's gone with no one from her primary school. However not so great when it's pouring down!! - there are no lockers for year 7 so they have to carry their wet coats around all day which isn't ideal!

I was really surprised at no lockers!

Ours get lockers after half term. Apparently it takes school a full six weeks to turn around all the ex yr11 lockers for reuse.

Cross Country this week for everyone. Ds1 has done his this morning, Ds2 is running tomorrow.

An external provider rents out the lockers at our school. Parents had to send off payment for the rental during the summer. They were allocated on a first come, first serve basis as they do not have enough to go around. I managed to get one for DD but a few of her friends don’t have one and have to lug their coats around all day.

We have form teacher consultation meetings next week, to discuss how children have settled in to Y7. Great. Except the slots are between midday-3pm only, child also has to be there so needs to come out of their lessons for it, but the appointment is only 5 mins long. 🤷🏼‍♀️

Ours are 3-6pm, also only 5 mins long,.... you have to wonder what the point is!

Ours take place after the welcome mass.

Ours closed the school for ✨two whole days✨

We had to go in for a 15 min appointment during the day with the child in full school uniform to talk about target setting for the year. They put a number by each subject and then some other targets like “join two extra curricular clubs” “get x positive points over the year” etc.

Nothing like this for us, thankfully. We have a parents evening in November which is 5 minutes each with up to 9 teachers online. I can log in from wherever and so can DH. It annoys some parents not to be going into school but as far as I'm concerned its much more straightforward and logistically simple.

We have 5min meet the form tutor session this week. Thankfully it's after school. @arinya those timings are not useful for working parents!

Oh dear some of these meetings arrangements sound quite tricky. We haven’t been notified about any Parents evenings. I hope we don’t just get an e-mail with very little notice.

DD came home a bit despondent earlier this week and for the first time said she hadn’t enjoyed her day. From what I can gather, her teacher was ‘angry’ and raised her voice at the class as pupils have failed to enter their homework on Lexia. However she went on to praise DD and a couple of girls as some of the few who have actually done their work correctly. This resulted in a couple of annoyed kids following DD around and calling her Teacher’s Pet for the rest of the day. I’ve told her to ignore and hoping she can build up resilience re. incidents like this. The trouble is she finds anything like this quite upsetting as she wants to be liked by everyone!

My daughter was very upset today as she didn't do very well on a Science test. She knew it but seems to have panicked a bit. Not helped by her Science teacher not actually being in lesson today and a PE teacher covering for her.

DD seems to be in a never ending cycle of tests at the moment.