Year 10 2024/2025 - come and join!

[36and3]

A thread for those with kids beginning their GCSE course next month.

Dd is my oldest so this process is a first for me. Her options are: triple science, Spanish, history and food/nutrition.

We've spent the summer organising her room. We've bought revision guides and files etc for every subject and she's excited to get started!

Would anyone like to join me for the ride?!

I find it so interesting how different they all are; computing was the one subject dd was most desperate to drop asap! Science and maths is her thing and what she wants to do for alevel.

How's everyone doing on the work experience front? DS is coming to my workplace with three other students. I don't drink so will be stockpiling the chocolate for that week.

Re previous posts re homework, my DTs seem to have minimal homework which spooks me. I am guessing some state schools have reduced homework massively following prior teacher complaints on workloads and trying to ensure they can recruit/keep teachers.
we have exams end of March I am hoping that will stir my two into making notes in what they have learnt to date and trying out revision techniques 🤞.

we have got work experience placements sorted.
latest saga is trying to sort silver DofE volunteering!

We haven't had any information on work experience yet, its in the school calendar, so I'm assuming it is happening, my eldest didn't attend this school, and I don't really know any other parents very well, so not at all sure. My eldest went to my DSIL university, and DS would like to do the same, unless they insist on the kids being local that will be the plan (she's in Lancaster and we're in Hampshire so he'd get the train up and stay with SIL for the week).

First day back today, heard more about him sliding in the snow on the way home than about lessons. He also doesn't seem to be getting much homework, he is in prep 2 hours a week and only seems to have another hour ish to do at home. He has an extra hour of art a week as well and uses that to keep up with art homework.

I'm a state school teacher and haven't noticed any efforts to reduce my workload to keep me! I do hate setting homework because chasing the kids that haven't done it is such a ball-ache, the same kids who do no work in class also do no homework. One of the many reasons I moved ds out of state was that he was set maths homework exactly twice in year 8 - there are definitely some lazy teachers out there..

We’ve finally got work experience sorted last week after DS emailing a massive list of places and a huge load of no’s - we’d almost given up on finding anything computer related but he fired off an email to our local uni asking if he could do it in their IT support dept, and they were super helpful so he’s going to the Infrastructure and Networks team which sounds like my worst nightmare but he’s really excited 🤓 He goes last week in March.

Just had his Autumn Term report and it’s a bit of a mixed bag. 9s for maths and computer science, 7 for History but 3s for Spanish and English 😬 No grade for Science because they haven’t marked it yet he says (from before Xmas - so not sure what’s going on there 🤷🏼‍♀️). He’s going to Barcelona with school in a few weeks and then to Spain for our family holiday too so that should help but we need to up our game on the English. He only needs a pass really which he isn’t too far off and anything better is a bonus.

Fantastic news on the work experience front! I'm glad he's got a good placement sorted.

I have pretty much given up on DS getting a decent grade in French. Despite learning at school since Year 3, multiple trips to France and French immersion course last summer, he can barely string a sentence together. His vocab and pronunciation are shockingly bad and he has no interest in improving. I make him practice but it's like getting blood out of a stone.

My DTs told me that school had told them that there were changes to their English GCSE exam next year? https://www.aqa.org.uk/news/gcse-english-language-updates-to-our-assessments-for-summer-2026 seem fairly minor changes

Anyone been made aware of any other changes next year?

DD hasn't mentioned anything about exam changes here.

Everything going well for us. DD got an 8 in her last maths assessment so she's chuffed with herself and hopefully keeps up the motivation to keep working hard on it.

Has only just started sending work experience enquiries as her school do it in early Y11, but she's already had a positive response from an amazing sounding international engineering company. Has to wait a few months to confirm for definite once they know what projects they'll be doing though.

When is the 2026 GCSE exam schedule released? I'm keen to book a trip for DD & I for when she finishes

The CCEA (NI) draft timetable has just been released so hopefully the rest not far behind 👍

Just checked OCR and their draft timetable is also out.

No clashes for DS phew!

This is from the AQA website:

The JCQ awarding bodies have worked together to draft the provisional exam timetables for the June 2026 series.

When developing the timetables, the JCQ awarding bodies use statistics from previous series to avoid major clashes and feedback from centres to identify significant problems. However, we realise it is difficult to eliminate clashes altogether. Please review the timetables within your school or college and send any feedback to us at [email protected] by Friday 21 March 2025. Your feedback will be considered during our review and the final June 2026 exam timetables will be published on Monday 28 April 2025.

Link: https://www.aqa.org.uk/exams-administration/dates-and-timetables

Brilliant, obviously will have to wait until it's confirmed but looks like DD won't have an exam on her birthday

These provisional dates are really helpful. No clashes I can see. DD has AQA for most things and then OCR for Maths. I also want to get something booked for after exams but need to know prom date!

Had parents evening last week and she is looking on track for her target grades, mostly 7-9s just needs to put more effort in for homework!

@Propeaceful great that your DD is doing well! Homework consistency is a issue with DS too.

We had work experience end of year 10. DS was an architectural assistant for a week at my friend's practise. At the time although he enjoyed it, wasn't something he had in mind career wise, just fitted his skills set. But recently, he's been interested in architecture, so it might well be something he considers as a career. I've just sorted out work experience for DD in year 10. So difficult to get anything at just 14yrs, she only turns 15 in the summer, so she's ending up working with me.

Had DS's parents evening yesterday and it was mixed feedback. Able, but could do better if he applies himself, although a cliché, is literally what they all said. He needs to take ownership of his work and have more self motivation, so true and I completely agree. He needs to spend less time on Minecraft and more time organising his revision and see where he needs to work harder, not necessarily longer time spent, but more effective revision.
Would be interesting to know if other year 11s are like this?!

Hi everyone. I have pinned/watched this thread, and read back a few pages. It is very helpful, and you're all sooo organised and inspiring! Because of you, I have now started up an Excel spreadsheet for my DS' exams. There are 21 of them! I wonder if 10 GCSEs is too much?

DS is in the middle of an assessment period at school (the second one this academic year, and there is another after Easter).

Yes, we have mocks in 6.5 weeks, going to be putting together a revision timetable with DS this weekend. He seems pretty relaxed about it.

How is everyone's half term going? chivvying DS up in order to do his homework/revision, since we're off to London for three days from tomorrow. He has been pretty good, though appears to require quite a bit of gaming time in order to 'decompress.'

DS has been doing some unprompted revision so I'm happy. We're in London for a day out today so he's had to emerge from his room before noon.

DS was very upset about being woken up at 11am this morning! He tells me he only had maths and he’s done that, I’ve suggested some extra revision, tidy his room and put his plates in the dishwasher and he’s spent the last 3 hours watching YouTube videos of people playing Minecraft instead.

We got projected grades from school before half term, he got 4/5 he’s hoping he can do better than that in Art and English which are his strongest subjects. Thankfully we are in a county which isn’t competitive for 6th form, so 4/5 will get him to the next step.

Dd has been out a lot this half term but to be fair to her, I'm lucky in that I never have to nag to get work done. She's quite retentive actually - colour coordinated files for each subject! So providing everything is up to date im pleased she's enjoying her half term. Her most recent grade card was all 9s and 8s, bar 7s in English. She has first set of mocks after Easter.

DS's English and Maths teachers off long term sick and suspended respectively 😳

School managing with subs... not good with GCSE modules round the corner 😬😰

How much homework are other Y10s doing with mocks at Easter? Our DS was happy to agree to a timetable with 40 mins x 2 Tues-Thurs and similar weekends. However tonight was getting emotional about it- he has autism so we have to adapt and work with him. He sat down and spent over an hour on some work, however I don't want a big ordeal every night, so we agreed to 30 mins Tues-Thursday and weekend work. We're going to set a 30 minute timer so that it is more structured. Do others think this is enough?

Oh no, definitely less than ideal! Let’s hope the English teacher recovers soon. I’m a teacher and we had a teacher of a year 10 class off for a few months, when it was clear she was not coming back quickly I was taken off a KS3 class to support year 10 instead. I’d expect most schools will prioritise KS4 over KS3 where they can. Still unfortunate though.

@jennylamb1 i think you need to do whatever works, it’s a marathon not a sprint and you don’t want your ds getting overly stressed at this point. My dd has school homework club, he does an hour after school Tuesday to Thursday, one afternoon is art club and the other two everything else. I’m not sure how productive he is, and he often has to do a bit extra at the weekend. I do worry I’m not doing much supervision, but he’s at a private school and I can’t do the work to pay the fees and be around for homework!