Year 11 - 2024-2025 Support Thread

[QueenMabby]

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

Ugh, it's like pulling teeth isn't it. I too have just found the info I need to put plans in place. They didn't reply to my emails so had to find it myself. Can't believe I'm the only one who needed this info at this point.

That is pretty poor. DD found hers on the exam board website initially but school gave them a print out last week. She had one of them wrong - a different spec or something. She’s delighted as thought she had one on her birthday but doesn’t! She starts 12th May & last one 17th June. They go on study leave Tuesday 6th May so 4 days off school prior.

DD has less than a week off too before her first exam.

Back in my day I think we had longer but I may be mistaken.

its Probably a good thing for non-studious types.

Our last day is the day before DD’s first exam (German). DS had nearly a full
week between last day and his first exam!

I’m not sure if we get our marks for coursework. Presumably they have to be moderated so can change?

We haven’t even been told when they finish. We suspect they stay in till May half term but don’t know for sure yet.

If it's a specification regulated by JCQ, the school have to give the candidates the unmoderated marks and share with them the process for in centre appeals.

We don't give anyone study leave.

Here they have for some reason given only the children access to the exam timetable - it appears on their school portal but not the parent one. fine except many of the children are boarding and mine really isn't that interested in telling me when her exams are.

Huge panic at the weekend when she informed me she had a non-calculator paper for maths 'but had never done one'. Turns out she doesn't (IGCSE doesn't, it appears) - I guess this is the sort of thing that happens when you change schools and are a bit dippy.

Drama monologue and duologue in today, composition tomorrow - grade 8 bassoon yesterday. Then I think it really is just the real things!

We haven't been given DS's timetable yet but I have got the dates from the exam boards websites.
Not sure about study leave - we've been given hardly any information. There was an email yesterday about hoodies and year books, but no information on revision techniques or study leave etc.
DS has been attending intervention classes for biology, english and RE. and finding them helpful. He's usually too tired for much work in the evenings although he does manage an hour or so after cajoling.
He's keeping up with his piano lessons and practise, but will probably cut down on his sports clubs soon as he's already doing quite a lot of sports in school due to core PE and GCSE PE, so he already gets a fair amount of exercise.

He didn't get an offer to the 6th form we thought was his preferred choice. No idea why he was rejected, as some of his friends with lower predicted grades have had offers from there.
He's fine about it apparently as now his main group of friends have decided to go to another one (which DS has had an offer for), equally as good, but a bit further away. But he'll be fine there.

There is a Year 11 celebration assembly on the important dates list we were sent for Year 11, so I am presuming this is their last day in school!

Ours go back after exams only for a week or so for various activities. The last day of that is yr11 celebration assembly - they finish at 2pm so it must be a long assembly!

I’ve just realised that I don’t know results day. Should Google that and pop it in the diary.

Ahh I remember now! Thursday 21st August. The start of Reading festival too. Any of
yours doing festivals?

Just seen that parents are meant to accompany students on our results day.

I was hoping to wait in the car!

Donna Ds2 asked about Reading festival yesterday.

Are tickets still available? DD got hers the day they were released 🙄🙄🙄 priorities!! She’s not doing the camping though - she’s a full weekend ticket but just going in each day. Luckily for me she hates camping so it was easy to put my foot down.

My kids' school has no study leave at all. It's full of people who won't revise if they aren't in school. They are expected in school at 8.30am daily and teachers do revision lessons tailored around exams (so if it's English Lit the next day they will be revising that). I think they might be allowed home after an exam but not had info on that.

I think the distraction of phones might be too much for some on study leave.

DD's exams go on for 5 weeks, that's a long time to keep up the momentum to focus. Again, I don't remember it going on for so long in the 90s.

And it's a shame that some subjects have a paper before and after half-term. Would be nice to have gotten a complete subject out of the way by the Whitsun break.

Aww have English lit which will be finished by half term. Them just one of the language papers to go after half
term

AQA

English is always done early in the timetable as the papers take so long to mark.
dd will have German over with by the half term break but doesn’t start Spanish until after half term!

It does all seem to go on forever. DD will have drama out of the way on day one however, so at least that's one down. After half term she'll only have maths and science left.

So different to DD1, where we had a ridiculous five day break before she took a half hour exam in 'latin culture'. She better have got full marks on that one given how much time she had to revise it and the fact is was a total doddle.

Sorry to rehash old posts, but a while ago I recall somebody recommended a source for past papers? I don't know how much school will be providing in terms of physical past papers - although they have heaps of revision material online. I've been thinking that I would like DC to practice actual exams on actual paper with an actual pen. That is, after all, how they will actually be sitting the exam.

You can get bundles of actual papers off Amazon - I decided this was far easier than finding and printing them!

Do you mean you buy practice papers or actual papers? I'd like to get hold of some computer science ones (OCR) but I can only find practice papers.