Year 11 - 2024/2025: And relax! Support Thread for the summer holidays.

[QueenMabby]

New thread to carry us all through the summer as we transition from dealing with stressed teens to dealing with bored teens!

Really stressed because I did the admissions for the courses so am getting lots of emails. I think we applied to five, because four of them are back up options with different strengths and weaknesses. I hope she gets the grades for her first choice, for so many reasons, but I’ve just added “less complicated admin” to the list. Each place assumes you will be accepting them and only them but we might need to accept a few and be in two or more places at once.

I've asked dd what she intends to tell the 6th form she's now not going to...
It has become clear she intends to "ghost" them 🙄
So, I'll be getting in touch with them...
Dd only has tomorrow and Tuesday free prior to results day...I've offered a day out but she's "going to let me know.." 😃
Sometimes being a mum to my dc is like trying to spend time with a boy that's not interested!! 🤣

I'd wait till after results to do this, just in case, unless she's positive she's not doing A-levels if it's just about subjects get in contact after results day, just in case to have another option I'd say.

@TheLivelyViper
I will wait until Thursday, but I'm going to update them on the day so they arent expecting her.
Dd definitely won't go there...she hated the taster day :(

Fair enough, taster days can be a lot though, new place, new people and new teachers and trying to do a simple enough lesson and you haven't done school in a while so they'll never feel perfect and I'd consider that. But if she's sure, then that's a good thing because she shouldn't go to an environment where she doesn't vibe with it, in theat case you could let them know earlier seeing as it's more of a definite choice. I was just saying if it's more 50-50 keep your options open, but this seems different.

Ha!
Vibe...you sound like dd 😃
Yes, she's sure.
I blame myself that she didn't have a plan b, but...it's been a tough few months.
I had hoped I was being overly cautious...😔
She's just so done with "school" iyswim?

We don’t have to do anything, Ds just needs to turn up at school on the 3rd.
My older 2 did 6th form there too. They will do a normal school day to start, 8.50am until 4.40pm. with a 2 week timetable. They get extra subjects to start with like pe (encouraged to go outside and do sport rather than an actual lesson) after a few weeks we can write to give permission for them to come home early if they have a free afternoon, the older dc’s had a couple of free afternoons. To start with, as most rely on the school buses, not many go home early. But as they learn to drive they start taking themselves. Ds1 is may born. So most were going home by then as they could drive. He had to hope I was free to collect him or just get on the school bus. Ds2 is November born so was one of the earlier test passers. Ds3 is March. So he will be later learning too. He has a group with 3 best mates, they are all September birthdays, so will be driving before Ds is even 17. At least the other lad in the village going to 6th form is younger, so Ds won’t be the only 6th former on the bus.
For the older 2 by year 13 they seemed to spend less time in school. Though always up to lunchtime.
Not long until results now. Ds actually said he’s looking forwards to going back to school. He has always said he’s not looking forward to it. So that’s good. He said he’ll be glad to be learning stuff he wants to know.

@icanbewhatiwant
Yes, it makes a huge difference to be learning your favourite subjects...amd only 3 or 4 at A level, not 9 or 10!

Have I missed something @Whoooo – has your DD changed her mind about A-levels or just that particular sixth form?

@SuperTrooper1111
Total change!
Dd has had a very tough few months mh wise so I didn't push the plan b (which perhaps I should have..)
Main goal was getting her through her gcses (she did have a blip at may half term, sadly)
She was adament she wanted to go to a 6th form in a nearby town and liked it when she had her interview...but then they dropped her favourite subject (lots of post 16 provisions ate doing this locally to me..) and I think on thd taster day she realised that it was "just an extension of X" (her secondary school)
Shes 17 soon and desperate for more diversity and grown up environment.
So shes now planning on a 2 year extended btec diploma at an FE college in a big city near us.
I think its the right decision for her, but time will tell..
It's been really interesting as my older dd did the "trad route" of 3 x A levels, but she would have loved to stay on at her secondary school if they had a 6th form.
Its been a bit of a whirlwind few weeks!

She sounds a lot like my DD in terms of having had her fill of a school setting! Even if DD's school had a sixth form she wouldn't have stayed on and she very much is looking forward to being in a college environment. I think it will help her anxiety not to feel so micromanaged. As you say, only time will tell but I think it sounds like your DD knows her own mind and she can still earn enough UCAS points for uni if she wants to go, plus she'll also have a two-year head start on her subject.

My nerves are ramping up now! DS is (luckily!) like DH- not concerned or worried about it because it’s all done now, nothing can be changed so why worry? (How I wish I could be the same- I could definitely ace an A level in pointless worry in all areas of my life!!)

He thinks they went well overall, some better than others of course. He needs quite high grades for his grammar’s 6th form. He thinks it should all be fine, so I’m just hoping there’s no horrible shock on Thursday morning. All of his friends are planning on staying. They should all be fine, one has a very spiky profile and will definitely get 8/9s in his A level subjects, but the number of points overall to get into 6th form will be the challenge. I have my fingers and toes crossed for all of them. They are a wonderful bunch of 8 boys who get on so well I really hope they can stay together.

We don’t have a plan B in place. The semi local colleges don’t do the 3 A levels he wants to do- well they do maths and history, but not physics, his favourite subject. And tbh, whilst they aren’t THAT far away, we live semi rurally so they’d be a 20/30 min car ride away, no buses and he’s 15, birthday end of August, so not driving any time soon, so practically it would be very difficult to get him there, his younger brother to primary school and DH and I to work in the morning. So I’m very much hoping plan A works. 🤞

We get results on the go4schools app at 9, and then can go in at 930 to see the grade slips with scores and boundaries. I think walking at 9 will be a challenge, as he rarely sees the morning now unless I wake him.

@Sunnyafternooning It sounds like your DS has the right attitude of what will be will be. I wish my DD's results came through on an app first but the school has already logged all Y11 parents out of the app it uses – you'd have thought they'd have waited until the results were done. DD wants me to drive her to school even though it's only a 20 min walk – I'll sit outside in the car while she goes in. I am getting SO nervous now.

So with ours, results are uploaded onto the students bit of the app, but not the parents version. We can still log in, but they won’t display results.

It was the same format for his older brother too, altho GCSEs were Covid and A levels shortly after so everything was on the app. No slips of course for his GCSES and we weren’t given the option for a levels!

He’d been predicted ABC but got BBB on the day. He met his first choice uni offer of BBB. Obviously we were delighted with the 3rd B. But it was frustrating not to know how close the B that was predicted to be an A was. I had to email the school trying to find out if it was worth looking at again… there was a bit of a delay (understandable as I’m sure they were busy dealing with any of them that missed their uni offers), and was just told that he was too far away from the grade boundary to pursue it further. DS1 was just so relieved to get his first choice he didn’t want a fuss made so we left it. He got sent his certificates but I don’t think we ever saw the slips with his marks and boundaries at all.

@SuperTrooper1111
Thank you, interesting that your dd is similar :)
I've felt I let dd down by not insisting on a plan b tbh, but she really wasn't in the headspace to deal with it.
We live in a small town with no real diversity and dd is gay, so has always felt very out of place here, I think.
She's having a relaxing day today before next week! 😬

Dd has to go in person to collect unless she'd requested to get them via email.
She's said she wants to come out and open them with us, then go back in and steal to her teachers and friends...we'll see!

speak to

Our results go on the student portal at 8am and school is open at 8am too to pick up the dreaded brown envelope. Results are on the parent part of the portal at 9 I think. School has quite a culture of going in for the results. There’s tea and coffee and pastries. Lots of teachers there etc etc. it’s quite a social occasion. Dd is very excited and also in mortal dread. Thursday can’t come quick enough!

My DD her A for OCR FSMQ. I emailed the school and they sent it over. They had planned to wait until GCSEs but that would have driven DD to distraction knowing the results were available. She found the exam much harder than she had expected and she assumed the grade boundaries would be higher than the previous year, so she was predicting herself a B. But the grade boundaries were MUCH lower. We don’t know her percentage, hopefully that might come next week. She needed the grade for her A-Level choices and so she was really happy.

She will get the rest of her results by email. Part of me feels like it is a shame they don’t get to be with their friends when they find out their results, but the public disappointment for those who do less well feels more problematic than missing out on the group celebration at that ‘reveal’ moment. So my guess is that removing that group moment is perhaps better overall.

The school won’t send the results to us!?! My DD has said she won’t give them to us straight away 😩🤦‍♀️ That is going to be hard, so I’m hoping she changes her mind!!!

@phyllidafosset- that’s an amazing result. Well done your dd!

@phyllidafosset
Congrats to your dd 👏

I think the nerves are kicking in for dd

You haven't let her down at all! She has a plan B and one that she seems really happy with. Letting her down would be making her do A-levels at a place she knows she won't be happy attending.

@phyllidafosset Congrats to your daughter! That's a brilliant result and bodes well for the rest. I wish we could get our DD's results by email. The school favours the high achievers on results day and overlooks the SEN kids like mine who will be ecstatic just to pass. This is a bit outing but last year they hired a photo booth and attached the numbers 8 and 9 to the outside – meaning any pupil who didn't get those grades couldn't have an official picture taken! Imagine if you were predicted 8s and then got 7s – still brilliant grades – so were banned from the photo booth! Lots of parents complained so hopefully they'll be less thoughtless this year.

@phyllidafosset congrats to her. DD2 will also get hers online. She logs on to a 'portal' where she can see them but we can't with our parents login. They can go in and she's making us go - but I wonder if they don't go well whether she'll change her mind. Nerves definitely kicking in here.

@SuperTrooper1111 that photobooth sounds AWFUL.