Year 11 - 2024-2025 Support Thread

[QueenMabby]

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

My DD is doing igcses and they start in April and finish mid June!

DD1 did GCSEs last year. She’s did go up 1 or 2 grades in everything, but she did a huge amount of work (8 hours a day when on study leave). Her friends who took a more leisurely approach only improved by 1 grade or stayed the same. DD2 is unlikely to do a huge amount of revision so we are not assuming big jumps in grades.

If she's OCR for Latin then here are the dates. Spanish is later in June so Latin not the last one this year.

And the final one here - 6 for maths. So not a disaster, but she's not delighted... it's tricky for her to find time to go to maths clinics etc as they all clash with ensembles. Think we'll be putting in an hourly call to maths teacher grandma to improve that one.

I know I could look up all the different exam boards. But why should I?
Haven't the dates been released for ages? When were they actually released please? What date?

Why on earth haven't my school produced a document, excel, pdf, link to each child's own school account, whatever. With all my ds2's details. It can't be hard to produce a timetable for each child:

Oblomov's ds2 :

Date Exam boards subject time

8th May AQA or Edexcal Spanish 9.30am

I mean how hard can it be?

That is frustrating. We got full list of dates September I think it was. No idea why they wouldn’t give you a list as they must have a list

We got a full list of all subjects school does so no need to personalize even. For DS’ GCSE last year we got the printed entry slip nearer the time @Oblomov24

@Oblomov24 knows when room is 🙄🙄
I hadn’t seen the timetable but asked DD and school have posted on their intranet the subject list and dates (not individual’s but all the ones school do) From this she’s taken her subjects and made her own timetable. Apparently this was a good while ago. The contingency dates have been known for ages. Pretty sure it’s Wed 25th June but please google & double check.

Don't look it up if you don't want to.

One of the issues our school is dealing with is students with clashing exams. Something needs to be put in place for that and maybe they are not ready. Our school has also not decided who is doing higher or foundation subjects, so while they take place at the same time, they obviously don't want to give the wrong info on exam length or type to anyone.

Ok fair enough, I get re clashing. And whether child is doing higher or foundation.

Agreed 25th June as contingency was decided ages ago. HoY says he'll need to check and confirm. Confirm what? It's a given!

I spend my whole life chasing people for things. School for timetables, consultant to send blood test request form to GP, chasing Gp for vit d higher dose, so I can get my iv transfusion.

Fed up of chasing people.

We haven't had any dates given at all. I've complied the dates for my own diary. Luckily, most of DS's exams are AQA (which I had to check by going on to the schools website and going through the curriculum individually). Also, all of them do the higher paper, so I would have thought even easier to compile a list for each student.

@Oblomov24 The provisional timetables for this year's exams were released last June - I think it was mid- June, so a whole year in advance. This is certainly true for AQA and Edexcel as I looked at the websites in order to check this year's contingency date, plus get a rough idea of what DS1's exam timetable would be like.

Looking at the AQA website, there is already a confirmed timetable available for the Nov 25 and Jan 26 exam sessions available.

We've not given out the exam timetables yet because we give out personalised ones rather than an overall one. That includes tier of entry which isn't yet confirmed.

Can I join you all? I asked a teacher friend about if mock grades would go up, and she said they will often go up by one grade if they do some revision, and can go up two grades if revision is well organised and focused. But she also said ‘you don’t need to start revising before February half term, whatever your school says’ which blew my mind because I hadn’t imagined DD starting revising then.

Welcome @phyllidafosset ! I am hoping you're right for the maths at least. I've arranged for DD2 to have zoom meetings with her grandma during some of her prep times for the next few months - hoping that will get her confidence up a bit.

With DD1, they had so many sets of mocks it felt like they were always flipping revising, but it seems to be fewer for DD2...

@Oblomov24 I made Chat GPT make my dd2's exam date timetable - but she is doing some really weird boards so I'm not sure she's got it right.

@minisnowballs thank you :) My DD has only one set of mocks. I know that many others have a lot more. I guess the many mocks is to get them focused on revising! My DD has not been focused (so far). Hoping for some intense motivation and focus to kick in any day now.

For the timetable, we have just been sent DDs, although I actually charted them out myself in the summer. I only did because we were checking to see about a clash for one particular exam. It was actually useful in terms of thinking about work events/meetings. I have already declined some stuff because I knew roughly when stuff was happening. I haven't compared with the actual one to see if it is the same or not! I didn't tell DD I had done it, because I didn't want to stress her out.

Parents evening for DS next Thursday. Face to face this time, although still only 5 min slots. It'll be interesting to see how they monitor them and how chaotic it will be with 150 year 11s and their parents. Although haven't decided whether DS will be going with us, so far he hasn't attended the online ones, but might be useful this time to have him there, so we are not relaying stuff to him later.

I do feel bad chasing stuff up with teachers, as they are so overworked. My DH is a teacher and he doesn't even get to go to the toilet most days!

DD was in tears last night after her art lesson yesterday, she's feeling so overwhelmed and discouraged about it :( The teacher who left at the end of year 10 seemed very encouraging (if rather disorganised) but this new teacher has marked her down two grades so it's now her worst predicted grade and it's such a shame. The teacher said DD needs to do 1 hour more on a piece she was feeling quite happy with and change loads of other things which is so much work she is really struggling. She was even saying "I hate art" last night.

She was also dreading Physics this afternoon as she hates her Physics teacher. At least it is nearly half term! Though mocks 2 are at the beginning of March so I'm sure DD will have loads to do.

I am going to an information evening for parents at the school tonight about helping your child with exam stress - hopefully it will be useful.

@IThinkImAMathmoMum your poor DD - the pressure does seem immense at this stage - i think the teachers get it put onto them and then pass it on. Art always seems like one of the worst at this point, but on the plus side it will be over before the rest of the exams. Shame the other teacher left.

Do pass on any good tips on the managing of stress! We had a very quick video call with DD2 last night - she was on decent form but it still scares me how quickly it could tip.

She was saying that everyone had had to hand their music compositions in this week to be checked for progress - she got 'sufficient progress' (apparently it went up to 'excellent') but she said lots of people were graded 'significantly behind'. 'Sufficient' doesn't sound like a shining endorsement to me, but at least it is better than nothing.

Sad to report I didn't find the information evening that helpful. Most of the advice seemed to consist of talk to your child and ask them what would help them which I already do. One thing I did find interesting was that they pointed out that your child has been thinking about GCSEs for at least two years (likely longer) which taken as a proportion of their age is a very long time! They said that telling children that GCSEs don't matter is not helpful because they do matter. Also that it is the teachers job to help your child get the best grades they can get (is it?) so when several parents said that the school was a source of stress they said "but that is our job and we have to do that" so no criticism allowed. Sigh.

Can I ask, can anyone recommend some good resources for English Language GCSE? My DD’s school haven’t focused on it that much, and she struggled with the style of prompts that they get given (e.g. ‘think of a time you felt inspired and write a story based on that). Thanks!

We’ve been focusing on effort not the results. The school suggests 10 hours a week, so as long as that is done, we’ve told DD2 not to worry about the results.

My ds used the CGP guides which were helpful. For creative writing, just lots of practice.

Absolutely - I've told DS if he has worked that is all he needs to worry about. Whatever happens we can work with it...what matters is doing your best.