Year 11 - 2024/2025: Half way, half baked, half term!

[QueenMabby]

Continuation of the year 11 support thread. Go!

@agoodfriendofthethree that's fab, thank you! It's a new Senco so she may not have realised the details. Ds2 is a funny little thing- everything goes into his head but between the physical limitations and the ASD it doesn't always come out. Then he'll surprise you by giving you an extended discussion on the tactics and politics of the Pelponessian War because he decided to research military tactics to help him win on x box games His reports swing wildly between Developing and Very Secure. Except coding which is always top marks.

Interesting to hear about the issues around getting an allowance for laptops. Dd2 is hypermobile, but not diagnosed with hypermobility or EDS. Whereas dd1, myself and my mother are all hEDS and ds1 has always had a laptop, as he is ND and very hypermobile, but they refused to diagnose him, insisting it’s due to his ASD. I think because dd2 has always been fitter/stronger, her hypermobility has been less of a problem for her, until now.

School didn’t mention any issues re her handwriting until just before the exams started, which was too late. Two of her teachers then started saying she will lose points as when she tries to write fast enough to fit everything in for exams her handwriting becomes illegible. Dd has also now told me that it really hurts and she can’t write as much as she wants to. She is predicted 9’s in English Lit and History, but is fretting she’ll scrape a 6, as she just can’t get everything down on paper fast enough and maintain legibility.

I will be straight onto sorting her being allowed to use a laptop for her A’Levels, but feel awful that it’s too late for her GCSE’s.

She’s the first of my three to have a ‘normal’ GCSE experience. Ds1 is ND and complex, so did reduced subjects and had a lot of accommodations. Dd1 only took Maths and English after becoming housebound due to illness during her teens and then her GCSE year was 2020, so there were no exams anyway.

@BobBobBobbing as others have said, if it's normal classroom practice for a student to use a laptop, that is an arrangement that can continue for exams.

After an injury that caused nerve damage (on top of already hypermobile joints), DC2 started Y10 using a laptop for all lessons. Because DC2 needed a laptop anyway for homework, we used the DSA information about specifications to help us identify a suitable device along with advice from a physio about a mouse and keyboard. For DC2, having a vertical mouse and a low profile keyboard is important so as to reduce wrist strain and twisting. It has meant getting a Surface Pro rather than a standard* laptop but we wrote to the SENCo, shared the recommendations and said we'd provide the kit and asked if she'd let teachers etc. know. The school has been brilliant at not just accommodating the laptop use but individual teachers decided to email the lesson presentations so DC2 could edit those instead of typing things out, one helped DC2 come up with a file labelling system and another gets DC2 to email work for marking instead of printing it.

As a result, going into GCSEs there's plenty of evidence that it's DC2's normal way of working... which is just as well because when the injury flared to the extent DC2 was unable to even type (and decided to do one of their exams by hand, with their non-dominant hand), the school has been able to put in a back-up plan quite quickly.

*the exam laptop set up for DC2 is a duplicate of this, provided by us rather than the school. The exam machine has been configured by the IT team and has lived at school for the past 18 months.

He should think about Ancient History A level... half the syllabus is the Peloponnesian War 😂

French today for dd.

Poor girl is absolutely shattered. Her school keep them full-time till half-term and anyone that takes a day off is banned from attending prom! She’s going in for revision sessions starting at 7.30 am on exam days, staying after school for extra sessions and then beating herself up for not getting enough done in the evenings. So many of her friends are falling apart mentally/emotionally/physically at this point and the school just keeps piling on more pressure.

I had a panicked text and missed call after she arrived at school this morning, to say she had somehow managed to forget her tie! Cue me jumping in the car and shooting up there to get it to her before the exam. Luckily I saw one of her classmates from French just walking up, so was able to give it to her to pass on.

Day of study leave today with just some revision for Physics tomorrow and nothing else. We are planning to watch The Princess Bride.

DD has no exams today but is in school. No study leave here but I’ve said I would support if she doesn’t feel like she needs to go in. I think she’s looking forward to a normal day! Eng lit yesterday and she was happy enough with it - chose Storm on the Island to compare to Exposure which hasn’t been mentioned on here but a few of her friends did it including “the really clever ones” so should be ok. She did run over with her AIC question by about 10 minutes but caught up a bit with the compare poem and rushed the unseen but did 3 paragraphs - said her conclusion was “crap” 🤣

With regards to AIC, she always planned to do the character and was hoping for Sheila but she thinks Gerald is the worse character so opted for power instead. Didn’t have much to say about the table but reckons she waffled enough. We shall see - she is hoping for a 7 at the very least.

Physics tomorrow so spent last night doing notes off a video which she will go over tonight. Might ask her about calculations, although every time I ask her a pointed GCSE question, she asks if I’ve been on the internet again!

That seems very mean of school - and counterproductive.

Ours says they should be in school, but are taking a very relaxed attitude to it if individual kids seem stressed or better off revising at home. DD is choosing based on what is on offer for particular subjects and whether she needs the teacher or peace and quiet.

One of the staff also has a secret drawer in their office with spare ties, lanyards and kitkats for the stressed out who forget things and lends them out on the quiet (they will be getting a very big thank you box of choc at the end of year from me!)

Does your DD have a locker where she could leave an emergency kit with spares? I know mine has left the house with head elsewhere and forgotten more things in last 10 days than she has in last 2 years.

@Dagnabit my DD did the same poems as your child. She is tracking a high mark in English so fingers crossed! She liked the paper. Day off today thank god!

We've pushed back against this staying in school rule (and trust me, I have always abided by the school rules and taught DS the same).
Some teachers are allowing them to revise for their next exam, some are giving out past papers for their own subject, while others are teaching a full on lesson.
There's no consistency.
Monday he had an exam in the morning, straight into double English and then an exam in the afternoon.
1/2 the kids aren't coming in at all. I don't think DS will mind if he's banned from Prom, he's not that bothered about it.

Exposure and London here too! Thought DS was the only one! He linked to psychological conflict apparently but he seemed OK about it. Hoping examiners like the change of comparison from Remains!

Yeay!
I wonder if it makes a difference to an examiner if they have checked 10(0) scripts with the same poem and then get a different one? I am hoping the "breath of fresh air" feeling carries a few marks!

DS has French this morning. He is still in school full time on normal timetable and we had an email yesterday reiterating that they must be in until half term. He’s getting an earlier train than usual to make sure he isn’t late if there are any train issues, and sometimes staying for after school sessions, so it does all feel a bit much

@OhCrumbsWhereNow No, unfortunately she doesn’t have a locker this year. I have paid for one in previous years, but dd never used hers, as she said they are located too far away from the main building to be useful during the school day.

She is finding it so hard to revise in class and would definitely be better off at home. She finds the before and after school sessions more useful, as only the pupils that are committed attend those, whereas in a full class there is always noise and disruption.

They have had lots of pupils sobbing in exams, a few walk out mid-exam and several refuse to attend them at all. If they don’t turn up, a member of the SLT actually drives to their house to confront them! Yesterday they had a sobbing pupil, still in their pj’s, walked in to an exam a few minutes late by a member of the SLT! How on earth do they think that pupil is going to pass in that state? Not to mention the disruption to the other candidates.

Their methods clearly aren’t working, but they have a new senior management team member who has been ridiculously punitive all year and that has resulted in a large number choosing not to apply to attend their Sixth Form next year. The thing is, this is a state school with an easy, well supported cohort that has always performed really well. They don’t have the serious issues that some of my friends who are teachers have to deal with, the pupils are generally (with the usual odd exception) well behaved and achieve well. There was never a need to start treating them all so punitively.

It is so unlike dd to forget things. I have never had to take something in for her before, it’s all down to the stress they’ve put them under. Heaven knows these exams are stressful enough, without school making it worse.

@SilverSnaffles
I'm so sorry - they really don't need this additional stress.

Can you have a word with SLT or HoY?

Crikey, it sounds worse than DS's school.
His has the same 'be in school' rule in place, but they are not enforcing it (well, not so far as I can see - I am yet to find out whether DS won't be allowed to go to Prom).
They've been banging on about healthy study techniques and looking after their own wellbeing all year and then they are not allowing the student to put them into practice. If they mark 1/2 the year 11s with unauthorised absences ofsted are going to lose their minds!

@OhCrumbsWhereNow Lots have tried, but basically been told to back off. Unfortunately the power lies with the ‘rule maker’ and I’m hearing it’s not good for staff there either now, so they are less willing to bend rules or overlook minor things these days too. Such a shame, it used to be a lovely school, now it’s all frankly ridiculous, petty rules and punishments.

Hoping dd will have time to regroup and recover a bit over half-term. She has something fun planned with her best friend this weekend and I honestly think they both need some down-time before diving back into revision next week.

DS is also revising Physcis here. He did a paper yesterday and we marked it and he did a walk through online of the questions he got wrong. He's doing another past paper today and DH will go through it this evening and target areas for improvement. I think this afternoon has to be English Language as he's border line with that and he needs to do the best he can to get over the line. I'm working from home today to keep an eye on him as left to his own devices all day he will achieve very little.
DS's school has had them on study leave since the 7th of May. He would have been better off at school tbh as they would have been doing targeted revision and especially for English it would have been beneficial for him as the mark schemes seem to be bit of a dark art.

@somethinggoodisgonnahappen definitely the conflict with nature is a major theme in exposure - we had spent lots of time revising from this angle as dd's tutor (retired English teacher) has apparently been predicting nature as a theme for the last few years but it has not yet come up!

Study leave here starts on Friday. I agree there should be some flexibility though. Think our school are turning a bit of a blind eye - apparently several teachers raising eyebrows at the number registered off with 'migraines' and similar last week day before history exam.

Those that have DCs who fare better at home when studying, are they home alone or is it with parental support?
My DS needs the support as he finds it difficult to plan and focus (suspected ADHD).
But when I was doing GCSEs and A/Ls I was better off studying at home as I did better on my own and needed no support.

I wfh (in an office in the garden). I'm around, but supporting him by making cups of tea, that's all. He sometimes wants to share what he's been doing so I think he does need affirmation, but other than that he's worked out his own revision methods.

I think schools running revision classes and pupils being able to either attend or study at home, depending what suits them, is the best way of doing things. That’s what ds1’s school did. Neither way is going to suit everyone and it allows them to manage their energy and stress levels as well as their revision.

I’m sure keeping them all there has enabled them to keep track of the very few pupils who may not bother otherwise, but that has come at the expense of the rest of the year group. Surely it would be better to focus their resources on helping those that need it?

I hadn't even realised that some schools kept them at school through the exams - no wonder they're exhausted. When I did my GCSE/A levels we had study leave and DS is the same. It was only when chatting to some teacher friends that they seems shocked that he'd been allowed to go on study leave so early. A couple of subjects have run revision sessions/days, but otherwise they've been left to their own devices and told 'you know where we are if you need us'. It seems to work for him (I suppose we'll not really know until results day) because he tends to work in bursts - 30-60 min on a subject and then some playstation/movie break and then moves on to another subject. He's been pretty self-sufficient and has got on with it - only thing he's asked for help with is history. The sheer volume of material he has to learn has overwhelmed him and its not really where his skillset lies, so we've learnt that together, chatting through the events and consider exam style questions/answers - I knew so much about the history of medicine that I think I could have sat the paper myself!

@SilverSnaffles I agree. That would be the best compromise. We would have sent in DS for any English revision sessions and kept him at home for everything else as we can support him in the other subjects.
@rosemarble Neither DH and I can work from home so I have to take annual leave to support DS at home, although I can work the odd day at home like I'm doing today. He also works on his own, but likes to have me or DH around to ask things occasionally or tell us stuff he's learnt and talk about it, which he really appreciates.

@DataColour yes, it's nice I'm here (even nicer if he clears up after himself after cooking!). They need you in very different ways when they're older.
He's going to the gym at lunch time and I'll pop into town. My job is very flexible which at times like this I'm very thankful for (I do feel I've earned it though!).