Year 11 - 2024-2025 Support Thread

[QueenMabby]

Hi
A continuation for those of us with DCs going into year 11 - GCSEs are looming!

@datacolour thanks parent evening went well. Teachers are overall quite happy..I 🙏 she gets 8 in maths & computing so she can go to the 6th form she wants to go to...as it is a very good one. DD school is a feeder school but for computing requirements are quite high.

We get 5 mns per teacher for parents evening.

I know what you are all saying ref Camhs appointment, however , appointment hasn't really been confirmed as DD was going to get 6/7 sessions for her anxiety. She has had 3 think. @datacolour good luck with Adhd assessment...DD has also just been diagnosed...private counsellor who offered to do her assessment as Camhs waiting list are years away..
On a negative side...waiting for AA as car broke down on the way to Spanish.

Yes, it was. In fact, my daughter only dropped one intervention in the end (RE, which she regularly gets grade 9s for homework in) and then head of year told her she can drop History if she wants, as she's doing well in that anyway. Weird.

So she's now concentrating on Spanish, Maths and Science which got changed from a lunchtime to an after school last week.

We have lunchtime clinics but they're voluntary.
From memory - ds had an intervention session for Spanish but it was very relaxed and just called a "club".

We get mocks results in about a week. DD's Latin teacher has says that she thinks they'll all be happy with their Latin results and that they've done better than the other class which seems to have sparked the most joy in dd - her sense of competition is fierce!

They've just started their last piece of course work in English (iGCSE) which is a comparative essay and have started their last history topic.

Quite a few subjects are looking to have everything completed by Easter although as usual the MFLs will be going right up to the last day!

Dribs and drabs of mock results starting to come in here today. 9 for drama, 8 for music (appraising only), and an overall 8-7 for combined science, totally dragged down by chemistry. At least she's learning where she needs to put the work in.

Wish they'd given them to her on Friday when she was coming home though - much harder to help her keep it all in perspective from far away.

@minisnowballs it sounds like she doesn't really need to do much extra work if she's getting those grades!!
Was she disappointed then?

@aliceinanwonderland For chemistry, yes... where she got a 6.5 - the combined science is an average of the 3 and she clearly hadn't done enough revision on that!

She's also really worried about maths - so we're really waiting on that one. Would have been better to take them all at once.

@minisnowballs - those a great results! It is difficult to get them piecemeal though - one slightly disappointing grade all by itself seems bigger somehow than when it's in amongst a load of grades they're thrilled about!

Dd has been at our local Council offices today playing cello at the holocaust memorial service. It's her last performance of her cello piece before her music scholarship audition tomorrow so I'm hoping it went well.

@minisnowballs those are great results! Chemistry is hard (and I have a degree in it) but I'm sure with some more work it's definitely improvable. Good luck with the Maths.

What's everyone's DCs doing with regards to revision? I've bought some CPG workbooks for DS to get him to try and revise bit by bit. He doesn't do well in just revising looking at flashcards or revision guides but will do questions, so that's his way I guess. Also they have a handy topic list and you can tick off topic by topic. We'll probably do that till it's all done and move on to past papers which he did do some of for the mocks. Marking the work also takes time and going though wrong answers. He can be quite dismissive when he gets things wrong and thinks he knows best, which isn't a great trait for revising.
He's going to go to extra music listening paper interventions after school. His whole class didn't do that well in that paper, so I think they are all doing them.

@QueenMabby good luck for your DD's music scholarship audition tomorrow. I'm sure she'll smash it!

yes @QueenMabby - good luck - I'm sure she'll absolutely smash it! I think the listening paper in music is really hard @DataColour so great they are going to work on that more.

On the science, DD2 is in a weird set which is all musicians - they do their combined science in less time and use the extra periods for practising. As a result I don't think they've got quite as far through the syllabus - DD2 said there was one section they hadn't covered yet but everyone else had in chemistry so maybe she'll improve when she's done the lot.

DD2 seems to use a lot of seneca and she likes making flashcards. Topic checklists seem to be helping as well.

I cannot get my DC to make flashcards or anything proactive like that. We bought CPG question cards which were used a bit for mocks revision (after I nagged). Also the school have provided a huge amount of revision material online. Which I do appreciate, but it was also very tedious to "police"* whether DC were actually revising or just messing about on the internet. I'm tempted to buy the CPG workbooks just to make them do some offline work.

*And I feel that I really shouldn't have to "police" this because they should be mature enough to understand why they need to revise and prepare.

We have the CPG books for all subjects, but I can't actually get DS1 to sit down with a book and pen and do any work offline - but he will do online questions (for some subjects) no problem.

We have 4 weeks to the next (2nd and final) set of mocks - the timetable came out last week and the school seems to have changed plans and now it will be a full set of exams for science and maths (so three maths papers and six science papers), opposed to the two maths and three science papers that he was expecting. Still only one Language and one Literature paper for English though.

Data I've offered so much stuff to ds2 buts he's refused everything. I can't see that he does any revision at all, but he insists lots of passed papers have been done.

@Poisoningpigeons - I feel I shouldn't have to police any of them, but even with the A-Levels I'm having to at least nudge them (one of them isn't mine, so I feel extra responsible as mum is in Kyiv and I don't want to let her down!). DD1 needed more handholding than I remember needing myself for GCSE, but maybe I'm wrongly remembering myself as totally organised and on it!

Just opened a letter from school complaining that DD’s attendance is only 89.55%. Given how bad her OCD is, I think she (and I) should get a round of applause for her continuing to go to school at all. Also, so far she’s got 4 9s and an 8 in her Mocks (finished last week), so they can quote attendance/performance statistics at me all they like.

@ChannelLightVessel - wow, she is doing amazingly. I should imagine it's just an auto-generated letter, but I agree they are very annoying!

Well done to her on both getting to school and getting those results!

Thank you @minisnowballs Meanwhile, CAMHS is saying it’s at least two months to her initial assessment (she had one before, but they’ve clearly started again from the beginning).

@ChannelLightVessel well done to your DD. Amazing results!

@ChannelLightVessel - that is frustrating re CAHMs.... they do seem so slow.

Still waiting on the dreaded maths here. But History 8, English Lit 8, English Lang 7. Teachers allegedly telling everyone they'll go up two grades which seems punchy to me, but maybe they give particularly hard mocks or are taking coursework into account or something. Or maybe they're just trying not to depress the kids too much.

DS's school says they go up an average of 1.5 grades. I guess some go down as well as up.
Good point about the coursework. My DS only got a 5 for Music, but that was only the listening paper which is 1/3, but he's already got full marks for performance and composition is looking good, but not included in the mocks. Also the PE was only based on the written paper.

Yes, I'd expect DD's performance to get decent marks, but she isn't recording til after half term. She finds the dictation part of listening hard.

HoY, (who I really actually dislike), has emailed back in response, that timetable for March mocks 2 hasn't yet been confirmed. (I wasn't actually asking about that, but how can that not yet be ready?)

Nor has timetable for actual May exams. This is the bit I was actually asking for. All my friends locally have theirs and have had it for some time. Have you lot all got yours?

I asked about contingency date of June 25th. He says that hasn't yet been confirmed. I thought that date was already a given.

The only date he did confirm was prom night!

@ChannelLightVessel - well done to your dd on her mocks results. They're amazing - even more so due to her MH struggles. Cahms is a nightmare. I have a friend with two dc under cahms and dealing with them seems like a job in itself! I hope the appointment for her assessment comes through soon.

@minisnowballs - great results for your dd too - particularly as her music teachers all seem to behave as if she's not taking any GCSE's at all!

@DataColour - coursework can have a huge impact. My ds got a 6 in his eng lit mock but a 9 in the real thing becomes his coursework was so good!

@Oblomov24 - that's a very frustrating response. The exam dates are all published so you can see them on the relevant exam board's websites - you'll need to look for each subject but all subject are done at the same time regardless of exam board - Biology for example is on 13 May for everyone but the number of papers etc may depend on the exam board.

Dd had a rather dicey music scholarship audition earlier this week. She was a bit down about it as she'd practiced so hard. She just gets really nervous and her fingers get twiddly! Performing arts audition up next so fingers crossed.

Thanks everyone for your support.
We haven’t had the GCSE exam timetable yet either. I’ve been reassuring DD that the real exams are much more spread out than the Mocks, but it would be nice to be able to confirm that. As she’s doing Latin, I suspect she will be one of the last to finish.

If you know the exam boards, you can look up the exams individually (look at AQA, Edexcel, etc. websites directly). School not confirmed ours yet but I've already made a timetable for my own personal use (DS only interested in end date).
Until we hear from the school though, I wouldn't be booking holidays/dentists, etc. as I am not sure if all are finalised.
(Note: I have no intention of booking holidays/dentist, etc. during the exam period)