Y10- 2025/2026

[CouldNotStayAway]

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

They expect them to sort it themselves as well! I can think of some places I can prompt him to ask. Oldest was very organised but nothing quite came through. we managed to pull some strings with a charity my family has associations with at the last minute.

DS wants to do something with animals, I may suggest he uses my profile to write a message to our synagogue Facebook group as there may be some people with connections there. I'll ask at my employer too, but not sure what they could do with a 14yo.

It must be so much harder, as office stuff will mostly be out because there's no tea making or photocopying needed and people generally need a laptop and login to a network to do anything, plus you'd be hard pressed to find someone to oversee you who is in the office 5 days a week.

Good start here. Happy with her classes, loving her Animal Care lessons which having a surprisingly larg amount of written work, been confirmed on the dance team again (I wasn't surprised, she's not the best dancer but she's the most reliable). Adjusted to the new timetable. And settled into her new out of school clubs as she has not long turned 14 so "moved up". (I'm not so happy about 9.30pm pick ups... I miss the days it was 7pm home and bed!)

Work Experience at end of Yr10 here too.

Do you have any local sanctuary's near you? We have a donkey one and one for older pets with health conditions - both have cafe's which would probably like extra hands. It might be worth him asking in there or at a vet's? Maybe he could clean the cages or towels or something? It always feels like they should be able to find kids stuff to do but actually I can see it might be a pain. We're in the middle of nowhere so anything dd does typically involves me being a taxi.

I'm not sure about sanctuaries. There's a children's farm nearby and I know kids have done work experience there in the past, so he definitely ought to contact them and probably soon. There's a few dog groomers, and quite a lot of vets, and a kennel/cattery place as well, come to think of it.

@Echobellyyour post has reminded me, DS is supposed to be organising his work experience 😬 I’ve left it to him, he can be super organised when he wants but he can also be the complete opposite too!

@Fluffycloudsfloatingintheskyits good to see you’ve made some progress, its also good that she’s been put in higher maths- and hopefully with everything in place she will excel in all subjects.

not much to report, 4 out of 5 days are later finishes; it’ll feel miserable in winter though- with it already being cold and dark ☹️
i do think year 10 and 11 will fly by, still can’t believe we’re here…only feels like yesterday when he started school.

Work Experience already being sorted here, I think it is harder these days as lots of places won't take under 16s for insurance reasons. Worth trying local libraries if that's of any interest, they are a good bet. I know when mine were at primary a lot of old pupils came back for their work experience. Guess it's a familiar place at least.

All fine so far here, DS happy with subjects and generally with teachers, quite a few he doesn’t have many friends in his groups which he is a bit annoyed by but ok.

Haven’t heard about when work experience is yet but think it may be early year 11. Eldest at a different school had it at the end of year 10 and had to sort his own which was hard as many won’t take under 16s. He did it in the local leisure centre in the end which he enjoyed.

We have to sort work experience but no dates or actual mention from school yet, I just know because of friends with older dc.
I'm going to book dc1 into my work as a back-up but encourage her to think about what she'd like to do and organise herself.

DS has work experience in the first half of spring term and they were supposed to get it sorted out last term. I think a lot of people haven’t done it yet as there is a lot of messaging about it at the moment.

@TickingAlongNicely DD is doing triple science. She says it's a fairly even mix of boys and girls. I think there are a few classes doing TS though, so it's probably easier to balance out the groups.

We have a Yr10 evening coming up for parents. Unless things have changed since last year, DD said they usually do work experience towards the end of Yr10. Hopefully they'll tell us a bit more soon.

DD’s school doesn’t do work experience in Year 10 any more so we don’t have that stress. It only happens in Year 12.

DD’s already feeling the pressure to do well. We went to a “Parent Partnership” evening this week where the head really stressed how performance at GCSE shapes your future life. I actually don’t buy that too much but he was convincing so DD is now stressed despite being in Set 1 for everything.

Thank you starting this thread!

Is anyone else in a 11-16 area... and are you thinking about colleges yet? Open Days are starting and I was wandering if its worth having a look this year in preparation. They go through college courses with them in Yr9 to make sure they don't drop subjects they will need for potential courses, but don't look at the individual colleges in the same way.

Not in any specific 11-16 area but dd will move schools for college we think. I do think they should have a taster hour for subjects not commonly taught at GCSE in advance, as I think several subjects would interest her that aren't on her radar.

Depressingly this weekend she told me their History dept teaches "The rise of technology 1980-2000" for A' Level History. I said at least I should be able to help her with the homework... 😳

What specification does the school do? If you do knoe. Just out of interest as it must be new, as I don't think any of the main three (AQA, Edexcel,OCR) do that but could be mistaken.

Plus 20 years even for a history death study is quite short. They have to do around 200 - 300 years across the whole A-level (rough Gove/Ofquel guidelines). So NEA has to cover 100 years give or take, breath study around 100 as well, and depth studies vary around 30-40 years so that seems a little too short.

It seems like a good and useful topic to do though, really examines the extent and pace of change.

@TheLivelyViper DD may have got the years slightly wrong but that was the gist of it - the GCSE is with AQA but not sure if they do a different one for A' Level. This was just from a chat in their lesson so nothing shown to parents about it yet. I think it would age a few of us!

I think my year 10 DS will probably stay at his school sixth form, but my eldest has just started at sixth form college. We went to an open day there in the spring of his year 10 - it was helpful in terms of starting to think about what he wanted to do, and then revisiting in autumn of year 11 to confirm he definitely wanted to go there.

@TickingAlongNicely we're in an 11-16 area. It's not clear what path DC1 will want to take, so we've not looked at open days yet. She may take A-Levels, for which there are three colleges sixth form colleges she's likely to consider (based on DC1's experience), although one is rubbish for music which she would definitely take. However I think it's slightly more likely she will want to do a vocational course in catering, and it's a different set of colleges that offer these courses.

We've got through the first four weeks at school with no detentions or notifications home, so it's an improvement on Y9 so far .

We are also in an 11-16 school and most kids go onto the nearby 6th form..
DD knows she wants fo peruse dance so will do a BTEC advanced in dance as well as 2 ALevels but not sure in what subjects yet

We're in an 11-16 area which is totally new for me as i just stayed at school for A levels, as did all my friends. We went to the local 6th form college open evening last week and DD really enjoyed looking round (it's actually where DH went 35 years ago) She was impressed with A level Drama, Classical Civilization, English Lang and Lit and liked History, French and RS so a few decisions to be made over the next two years. Her favourite part was not looking at Maths, Science or sport and knowing she'll never have to do them again!

Mine doesn't want to stay at the same school so we'll be looking around. The colleges here mostly don't do A Levels so will see what Btecs they have and check out other schools for A Levels. Not doing any in person visits this year though, think we need another year of narrowing down ideas.

Nice to hear lots of updates! DD seems to be ticking along happily so far. Surprisingly, homework hasn’t ramped up at all yet – unless she is supposed to be doing general revision/consolidation which she’s not mentioned🤔

It’s nice that their timetable is now just their GCSE subjects (and PE and personal development) although DD has a few double lessons – the day with double English and double maths is a low point, though there is always a break/lunch splitting her double lessons. Friday morning is ‘languages’ morning for her too, with either double French and Spanish, or double Spanish and French. She was a bit worried last week when they had two speaking tests back to back on the same topics!

Has anyone noticed a jump in the difficulty of any subjects? DD has really noticed it in music where they’ve gone from quite general lessons (to be accessible to the non-musicians) to higher level stuff (as they all had to be at least at grade 4 on an instrument to be accepted to do music.) She’s enjoying it so far, but it did take her by surprise!

It seems they don’t do proper work experience at DD’s school – in Y10 they have a ‘virtual work experience day’ which sounds like a cop-out to me, but we’ll see…

On the subject of 6th form, at present DD thinks she’ll want to stay at her current school, but I am keen for her to see a few more options. It’s quite normal here for people to move schools for 6th form (grammar area) but DH thinks it’s weird to consider it, because it wasn’t the thing where he grew up... We’ll see. Such decisions feel like a long way off, but the time will fly.

Do your DCs know what subjects they want to study post-16? DD is very keen on languages, but there is that feeling that languages are something AI does pretty well… DD is an all-rounder so we’re encouraging her to keep her options option…

@LetItGoToRuin I think dd has had much more homework - every subject every week and a few tests, although 3 new teachers so suspect that's also to help them guage what they need to go over etc.

So far she wants to do A'Levels in History, Computer Science, Politics and English but she has also mentioned Psychology and Philosophy...so who knows. Tbf a couple of years ago it was more STEM based so I will wait a bit longer. Makes finding somewhere to do A' Levels hard though as many places don't do such a varied selection.

At the moment DD wants to do a T-Level in Animal Care... but I'm worried she's selling herself short as she only needs 4s in Maths and English and a Pass/Merit in Btec Animal Care for that... but she's predicted 6s/7s in everything except English. But we'll see... after all top grades in T Level are supposed to be equivalent to top grades in A level.