Y10- 2025/2026

[CouldNotStayAway]

Hi all! Thought I’d start a new thread for the upcoming new academic year!

It’s almost the end of term! How does everyone feel Y10 has gone?

DD seems to have had a good year, with solid friendships and no dramas. Academically she seems to be doing well (report pending!) but the ‘end of year’ exams (in May) were a useful wake-up call in terms of how much revision to do for each subject, and how best to do it.

She’s losing four teachers at the end of this year which is not ideal mid-way through the GCSE course, though in each case she knows who the replacement(s) will be and she thinks it should be fine.

Is anyone’s DC planning on doing any studying over the summer holidays? Just after her end-of-year exams, DD regretted not keeping all the maths and science units previously studied ticking over and expressed an intention to work through them all in the holidays. I fear those good intentions may not translate into positive action! I will gently encourage but the drive must come from her really.

I was going to ask the same question about revision as my son is really resisting. He also has a ton of coursework to do for DT and even that is an argument. I’ll keep pushing to do a little each day. Unfortunately the DT is on the computer and he keeps procrastinating (moving to other websites).

Glad it’s all gone well for her! Having so many teachers change is a bit frustrating, but hopefully the new ones will be good.

DS isn’t super academic, but I’m really pleased with how his first set of mocks have gone, with all his grades being between 4 and 7, particularly science where he got 6-5 having previous had 4s as his most likely grade, and he’d struggled in year 9 with a teacher he didn’t really learn anything from. Despite a few things going on a couple of months ago that could have really thrown him, he seems to have found some motivation to try and achieve his best next year. He’s intending to work on his DT NEA over the summer, and in my ideal world he’d keep up a little bit of work, especially maths where he didn’t do quite as well as he should have done, but I am a realist!

My DD has had a good year 10.. had most of her mocks back and are all 7-9s (6 in Biology)

She is pretty resistant with revision too.. I just cant see her say in her room doing hours of revision as well as homework on the new content..

she is so lucky to have the brains she has but doesn't seek to have the work ethic so will ok well but could do very well

My DD is also talking about making revision materials for the sciences - she talks a good talk - I just hope she does it

Year 10 has flown by, but mocks in Feb sort of seem a long time ago. ( they did yr 11 mocks then year 10 mocks straight after).
We are in Wales so one maths paper, one English paper and 3 science papers (one for each) have already been taken. We get results day 2 years in a row!
The next maths exam is in November and we have had a message to say there will be maths work online over the summer. They are encouraged to do it to reinforce what they have learnt so far, in the topics for the next exam.
Some other subjects have asked them to finish things that have bern started over the summer too.
Scary to think by thus time next year, hlthry will have finished GCSEs.

DD has also had a good year 10- better really than expected as for the first time ever she seems to have a group of friends where she feels one of the group rather than an outsider in a group which has done wonders for her mental health. Academic wise she continues to do really well, she scored all 7-9 in her mocks, passed her music exam with distinction and won the headteacher's academic award, she has worked really hard though (is a perfectionist who is very hard on herself) so does deserve it. I think with Y11 she needs to keep outside interests and hopefully friendships going as otherwise I could see her burning out before the exams get here or getting completely demoralised by one bad result- it feels quite a fine line between academic success and metal wellbeing sometimes.

Can’t believe how fast y10 has flown by!

mocks went well, work experience was ‘fun’ according to DS. He’s talked about trying to do some work over a few weeks during the holidays. I think the gcse astronomy was a bit of a wake up call as to how things can change when it comes to the actual exam (found one paper a lot harder compared to past papers he’d used).

Hope everyone has a lovely summer break!

Our children seem quite similar! My son got all 7s and 8s in mocks apart from one 4 in music (!) and whenever he works hard he does well, but is resistant to working and tend to do the minimum . He did take the mocks seriously but tends to only work under pressure and leaves things to the last minute and doesn’t do enough. Hence I can’t imagine him revising over the summer.

I agree! Ill be amazed if she revises

Mocks weren't great, but the ones he took were OK all things considered.

Obviously no marks for English Lang and Lit as he couldn't sit either. On the other hand, quite encouraged he got 4s in maths and history, even though he wobbled in the exams he says, but he'd not managed to write anything in history other history tests this year, so that's really encouraging. And basically he will pass maths and that's all he needs to do. But I think he can get a 5 or maybe even a 6 in the real thing.

Got a 6 in psychology, which is a pretty great so we want to tell him, however he revised psychology, do that for everything else. 44 in science which means he only goes in for Foundation, which is a bit of a shame as I thought maybe he could make a 6, but this caps it at 55. OTOH, I feel pretty confident he can get 55 with an easier exam and it might be better than doing Higher and maybe only getting 44. Only a 3 in drama written exam, but I think he wasn't really sure what to expect from it and it was his first drama paper.

He only needs 5 grade 4s for the Btech he really wants to do, but I'm hopeful he can manage 5 subjects at 5 or more, if you imagine him going 1 grade up for each, which is respectable. I'm just resigned that he may have to retake Eng Lang with his Btech.

ive not posted on this thread for a while but my daughter has made it to the end of Y10 still in school which is an achievement after a Y9 which had so many suspensions and detentions I thought she would be in a PRU by now.

it hasn’t been smooth sailing but it’s a lot better - she takes her medication most of the time and the teachers have also learn to recognise when she hasn’t.

the MH lead that started supporting us end of Y9 has been amazing - she was the first person that actually saw the ADHD that I was convinced she had even when the other teachers thought she was naughty.

She is also pretty sure she has ASD (as was suggested by the ADHD) assessor so she is doing a new referral for that to CAMHS and I am not having to battle and fight for it to be done.

Mock results weren’t too bad - 57% in the higher maths paper which compared to the 14% she got not that long ago is amazing.

it just makes me sad that she didn’t get the support earlier to have got all of this resolved before the GCSE years. I truly think if the MH lead had been involved sooner we would have.

@Echobelly that does sound like really encouraging results, and hopefully more than on track for what he needs. Do they make a decision already on higher vs foundation? At DS’s school they said the final decision wouldn’t be until closer to the time.

@Fluffycloudsfloatinginthesky well done to her on getting through year 10, and it’s great she finally has some support.

Well done @Fluffycloudsfloatinginthesky 's DD for clinging on through all those challenges.

@LetItGoToRuin sadly DC2 has informed us that she will not be revising over the summer. It's a shame as DC1 is back from uni, and would be an enormous help to DC2 with revision, but hey-ho. To be fair she's not here all that much over the summer between our holidays and an orchestra tour.

Mocks were a mixed bag - she's really struggling with maths this year. I am confident she will get a pass and not need to resit but she's working several grades below what she's been predicted. She's vaguely on or around target for most other stuff, and wildly got 8s for English lang/lit which I think is impressive for a kid who hasn't read a book since year six .

Big choices to make for next year - most of her friends will be going on to A levels at a particular 6th form, because it's just what most people do. I think catering college would be a far better fit as food is her real passion at school, but it's hard to do something different.

Summer holidays yayyy! Dd has tidied her room and vowed to do loads of schoolwork this summer - but day 1 she already bailed on her plan to do some chemistry notes and spent the whole day reading and sleeping.

I have told her that every day that passes without any revision, she’s cooking family dinner and picking my son up from his holiday club - that might focus the mind!

I’m so proud of my DD, who hadn’t taken any incentive to organise herself and learn how to properly revise up until Y10. I was so worried!

She really knuckled down, devised her own systems and methods, and in the end was helping others to revise too.

She got mostly 9s, a couple of 8s and a random 6 in English Lit but she realised what went wrong there and got on to amending her revision notes immediately.

She broke up at the beginning of July and took a break whilst we were away on holiday but has been keeping up with things regularly, so should be in a good place come September.

I feel really bad making DS work over the holidays, but he will have to retake both English exams a week or two after he gets back and as a minimum it would be good if he could at least not panic and write something in them. Even if he could just get 20% it would be something.

He is getting a break at summer camp for two weeks now, but I think when he gets back I want to sit down with him and start annotating his English Lit texts, which I don't think he's done at all.

@Fluffycloudsfloatingintheskyi remember reading your previous posts, sounds like she’s doing so well; I’m glad she finally got the support needed (shame it took so long). Hopefully y11 will be smooth sailing :)

@Echobellyhope he has a lovely time at the summer camp, and hopefully will do really well in his exams. It’s hard not to feel bad but I think quite a lot of dc might be doing a little bit here and there (hopefully in my house too 😬)

DS has said he doesn’t think he did as well as he would have liked in his gcse astronomy- but we’ll find out in a few weeks.

He told us he'd ideally like to do 20 mins a day maximum and we've had to say it's just not enough. We're asking him to do just over an hour if work plus half an hour reading (this is DH's fixation, I can't seem to explain to him that DS does read and many of his peers cannot be made to read at all!) And have explained this still leaves loads of time to do fun things.

The problem is that open ended writing tasks which is what he needs most, can end up taking half a day to get out a paragraph 😥

@Echobelly same issue here, a lot to catchup on but no understanding from my 15yr old about how to actually study and he is refusing my offers of help!
am dreading Yr 11

The main issue is English. Even though he is bright and articulate, he can't seem to write a word - it's a not uncommon problem with ADHD.

He also really doesn't seem to grasp analysing a text at all - I watched a playback of one of his tutor session and he just can't understand how you can potentially write several sentences about the meaning of two lines of text. It was something that came quite naturally to me and I totally get it doesn't at all to a lot of kids, but it means I have no idea how to explain the concept to him.

I suppose the worst case scenario, which I can live with, is he does Functional Skills for English. Because the dumb thing is he got a 4 in History at the end of the year and a 6 in Psychology, which shows he can write more than functionally, but unfortunately he has to jump through the hoops of English to prove he can write

Hope the holidays have been going well for everyone (with some studying for all those who planned on doing some work).

Results day tomorrow, DS took one GCSE this year, think he’s a little nervous about tomorrow…can’t believe we’re nearing the end of the holidays too 😬

@CouldNotStayAway do you fancy setting up a new thread for our Y11s? Or I might have missed it!

Good luck all with Y11. Got a big change here, due to ill health basically writing off Y10 my DC is starting at a new school and restarting Y10 again. New GCSE options, much smaller school with specialist staff. Hoping things work out well. Particularly wishing those of you with kids facing additional challenges lots of luck for the year ahead.

Best of luck to you and your DC

we start year 11 tomorrow.. so far DD is making all the right noises about locking in, now or ever. Etc etc

but we haven't had a year go smoothly yet so Im ready to buckle in!