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?!

Hi! DS is my first child going through GCSEs. He's taking Business Studies, French, Geography and PE on top of the core subjects. I'm tearing my hair out a bit over his apathy towards life in general at the moment but he's been prewarned that there will be a rocket up his behind come September. He's a very bright boy and I want him to do himself justice.

Marking my spot here too. My Son is going in Y10 and I have no clue how to guide him.
I did hideous in my GCSE'S due to lack of support, but still went to Uni after repeating a year at Collegae.

We've brought his Uniform and I've organised his room. x

DD is going into year 10, but her school are very odd and split triple science across year 9,10 and 11. So she sat Biology this year and got her result on Thursday - a 5. She'll sit Chemistry and one of the English ones (Lit?) in year 10, and then Physics, French, the other English, Maths, RE and Engineering/DT in year 11.

She really wants to be a vet. She's a smart girl in top set at non-grammar, but she's not 10 GCSEs at level 9 and AAA at A-level smart, which is apparently needed for über competitive vet med.
She needed a 6 at GCSE to study biology at A level around here, which she probably would have got if she'd taken biology in year 10 or 11, with more maturity and experience as she got a 6 in one of her mocks. She definitely didn't take revision as seriously as she should have - it's frustrating to have that learning experience with the main subject she needed!

I'm hoping I can gently steer her towards other routes into animal care if that's what she still wants to do. Any mention of it currently is met with 'oh, so you think I'm stupid?' 🙄 But I think she'd be great in a more engineering based role, so I'm hoping she'll love the course and go that way.

The next two years will be challenging I think, from a parenting point of view!

Morning
Just marking my space too.
Just finished with DS1, so it’s now DS2s turn. I’ll have A level and GCSE grades to await 🤪

DS2 is very different to DS1…….forget the grades! I’m aiming for completing Year 11 😅

Things I’ve learned from this years gcse experience:

• start tutoring now, especially for English
• Year 10 is probably more important than year 11 as so much knowledge is gained which needs revising in Y11.
• mock grades can be very difficult to gauge so don’t assume anything

DS1 did so well. DS2 has learned lots by watching him but he is his own person. Comparison is the theft of joy as they say!

Thank you for the thread. DD has her mocks in November, immediately after half term. Options are PE, Geography and Drama. Alongside 2 x English, 3 x science and Maths.

She has just dropped French. While near fluent, she is also severely dyslexic and her wonderful French teacher agreed with me that the grammar and writing side of it is just too much. She's a bit sad to drop it, but it also means she frees up 5 periods over the 2 week timetable where she can now get the extra support she needs with English Lang and Maths. She LOVES Lit and wants to do it for A Level.

A lot of planning and revision seems to have been done over the summer holidays, and she's actually quite looking forward to this next year. Time management has been an issue in the past, but she also plays a sport at an international level for England, which is adding in additional planning. As she's matured I think she has realised her limits well and, well we shall see. Dropping her sport is non negotiable for her, at least while she remains at the level she is.

She is my 4th though, so I'm quite relaxed I guess, as I know with my others that no path is the same. I might need reminding of this as the year progresses...!

I've never heard of this method @Cocoaone !

Glad to see lots of people joining the group. Dd is desperate to get her timetable now to see which teachers she has!

She's very hardworking, ie I never have to ask her to do her homework etc (unlike dd2 which will be a whole different ball game!) and she's got a clear ambition so I just hope she continues to apply herself.

She does a sport out of school which is currently 5 training sessions a week, though I'm going to ask that she drops one session this season.

Thanks for this thread. I’ve just had my eldest get his gcse results this week, now starting all over again with my second!

My DS options are Computer Science, Construction, PE and French alongside Maths. English and Dual Science. I say French was an option but he wasn’t allowed to drop it!

He is also doing a sport outside of school, 3 times a week at the moment which might go up to 4. PE have also told us he needs to add on another team sport and an individual sport for his gcse! Not sure how we’re going to fit it all in with my eldest and youngest going to their own hobbies too!

I hear you with the sport - it's never ending, isn't it. DD currently trains 3 times a week plus senior matches on Saturdays. Haven't even factored in Junior and school stuff yet, though school are really understanding and don't make her train as she's doing plenty outside of school.

And dropping the French - they don't generally like them to drop a subject at the end of Y10 at her school, but we put a strong argument forward and thankfully they accepted it.

Thanks so much for starting this thread - I feel completely clueless so it’s great to read what others are doing. DD is taking the usual English, maths, science (double although I wish she’d taken triple as it’s one of her strongest subjects) with history, geography, French and design technology which was a random last-minute decision when filling in her form.

We’re looking at an English tutor as she’s doing nowhere near as well (in terms of predicted grades) as she is with history etc, and her school haven’t been helpful at all in terms of guidance. Any recommendations on how to identify a good tutor would be appreciated!

True, can’t quite believe how much time the commitment to sport takes up. Totally forgot about the fact that school matches will be on a Saturday, with club matches being on a Sunday which will take up the weekend!! Then the training through the week!

His school have been unyielding about the French, telling me it’s compulsory despite other schools letting kids drop it. Although he hates it, he’s good at it!! He’s resigned himself to doing it now.

Hello to you all.

DD about to start Year 10 and her options are Psychology, French, History and RE. She is has some tentative ideas about what she wants to do but nothing firm. Her sister starts university next month and DD has learnt a lot from big sister's journey. DD seems very laid back but is figuring it all out and beavering away behind closed doors. During my many arguments about A level revision (lack of) with her sister, DD set up a timetable and stuck to it for her end of year exams and did very well. She's eagerly awaiting her timetable. Good luck to them!

I've got my DS's timetable. He's only got one supervised study this year compared to three last year, so he's going to be annoyed about having more homework to do after school. However, he has three HPQ lessons, so if we can get that finished quickly he might free up some time towards the end of the year.

Interesting point about starting English tutoring now. I'd been thinking I might find a tutor for Year 11 as the school doesn't get stellar English results, but maybe it needs to be sooner.

@Cocoaone would she be able to retake biology maybe privately? Y9 seems very early to do it and a shame that it affects her future career. Dd1's school (grammar) also does sciences over 3 years but that's because they need 3 years to complete the course.

DD's school (independent) started the English and maths courses in y9. So far she's covered Inspector Calls (she loved it!) and a whole heap of poems. She'll be doing 3 lessons of maths and 2 of further maths each week I think.

Possibly @Stowickthevast. I'm not sure if they also have to redo practicals? She was only given a target grade of 5 to 6, so it's not like she massively underachieved.
At her school they just do one science a year, so last year she just had biology lessons. This year,l she'll just have chemistry, so they condense the whole syllabus into one year.

Mine loves an Inspector Calls too. I've got tickets to take her & dc2 to see it next spring in Birmingham, I've always liked it as well & it'll be nice to have an evening out with them.

The only thing dc1 knows about her timetable is that by lunchtime Tuesday she'll have had 5 hours of maths (between normal & FM&S).

It's interesting to see the mix of compulsory & non compulsory RE. It's compulsory again at our school (starting with dc1 cohort) for the first time since it became an academy (standalone not MAT) over a decade ago.

Oh great shout I'm also looking at maybe buying tickets @BernardsarenotalwaysSaints but wonder if it'll be a school trip. I did it too for gcse many moons ago!

Joining you, dc2 is starting this year. DC1 just finished, but they are very different children, dc2 is not really motivated, not terribly academic, I’m very worried he’ll miss grades for 6th form, he is capable, but needs to pull his finger out. Doing art, ICT, history and food. Moved him to a local indie school last year as he was getting bullied and expectations at local state were nil, he was getting very good at entertaining the other kids in bottom set, not really embracing learning. He has adhd and dyslexia and really wants to coast.. Has just properly hit puberty and I feel it’s going to be a bumpy road..

I've got Inspector Calls tickets for Cardiff in Feb half term. I figured it would be a good re-cap.

@Cocoaone I've never heard of a school splitting the science up like that. DS is reasonably bright and I hope he'll get an 8 or so for biology, but there is no way on this earth he'd have been ready to take it last June. He has no idea yet about how to go about squeezing the marks out of exam questions- nor, to be honest, the maturity to care.

I sat down with the school's online subject guides and a spreadsheet on Friday night to work out how to get DS to learn by accident for the next 2 years. I've informed DH that we're going to Iceland next summer "for his 40th" and have started convincing him that he really wants to go to Borneo at Easter. I'll calm down once DS is actually back at school and convinces me that he's actually going to put some work in.

😂

At this rate I'll be sitting the GCSEs myself 😁

Just been part of an interesting conversation between DS1 (just finished y11, really good results but perhaps a bit short of what he could have got), and DS2 (just about to start y10) - his key bits of retrospective advice were 1) make sure / prove to yourself that you understand the content as you go and 2) revise properly / create good revision materials for topic tests as you go - or for the end of a topic if there isn’t a test. As maybe 2/3 of the GCSE content is covered in y10.

i did have to hold my peace, as it’s the same advice I gave DS1 at the same stage!

Definitely good advice! DC1 thankfully did put the work in in year 10, a few weeks before the first exams we had a sudden bereavement which affected my family and another in her friend group, also in that group one had a sibling become ill at about the same time and another lost a dgp, thankfully they all got through the exams and all got the grades they needed for their post-16 choices, but if they’d been relying on last minute revision it may have been different!

I guess equally a disruption in year 10 can be overcome later in the course.