Y10- 2025/2026

[CouldNotStayAway]

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

My daughter has started on her adhd meds, she had first review today and they need to be increased but they seemed happy.

she also got accepted for work experience at her old primary - she used AI to help her write the email! It was only her second email she sent which was great, I was expecting more of a struggle to get a place.

@LetItGoToRuingreat to hear from you. Languages seems like a great choice, but it’s such a difficult decision to make already. DS will be studying maths, further maths, physics - that’s what he thinks at the moment, but time will tell. He’ll be staying on at the school sixth form, he’s happy to not have to look around at other options 😂
I thought he would have a lot more workload, especially with one gcse this year, but he seems pretty relaxed 🤷🏽‍♀️

@Fluffycloudsfloatingintheskythat’s great to hear! I’m so glad it’s all worked out; I know you had a long road to get to this point, hopefully it’ll be more smooth sailing now.

hope everyone else dc are doing well.

Following on from my last post, DC has had some good and realistic work experience ideas so I'm pleased about that. One is to see if he can do it at Capel Manor, where potentially he might go to study an animal care course if GCSEs are not so great, so that would work on a few levels. Plus he can get there easily from my parent's house, so could stay with them while he's doing it.

Parent's chat this evening, thankfully they have worked out how to do it online, which is so much better, 5 minutes each, if you need longer you make an appointment, means everyone can speak to the teachers they need to. Last one was pointless, well not quite, but when you get a family talking to maths or english for 20+ minutes you end up missing your slots. This is much better.

I am not expecting to need more than 5 minutes, he seems ok. Came home yesterday "I got 31 out of 31 in the physics test" - excellent that's good going into parent's chat. Yeah it should be fine.

Ours wants to do Law at uni, he has a plan he wants to become a KC, he was intent on doing a maths degree first and then studying for law afterwards. "how many years do you need funding for higher education?" (early retirement age disappears over the horizon) - but he's slowly shifting to wanting to do law "I think at LSE" (early retirement still absent presumed missing), so he has wanted to do further maths, physics and chemistry for a'level but piped up this weekend and said that he might do further maths, physics and politics. Who knows?

He knows the 6th form he wants to go to, it has a mock up "court room" which he clearly wants to get his hands on! And at that moment all he is concerned about is drama "it will help with being in court" plus it's fun. He's quite good to be fair, confidence he does not lack.

But we have spoken to his teachers for a while, he is one of those students that you or the school never need to contact each other about apart from to sign permission slips to do out of hours "team sport fixtures".

But you never know he might need some more directed parental nagging. Will see later on.

Well here we are almost half a term of y10 completed!
Dd has radically changed her view of some subjects based on luck with teachers - good luck for Spanish and chemistry and bad luck for maths.

She told me today she wished her school offered Classical Civilisation instead of History because American history is pretty dull (agree!).

Art is living up to its terrifying reputation - workload is immense and dd is definitely in a love/hate relationship with the subject but half term is the cut-off to dump-and-switch options and she had decided to stick it out. It seems to have the best community of all the subjects - a lot of lunchtimes are being spent sketching and rummaging on the art supplies cupboard!

I never thought she’d be interested in art, it’s a total surprise. I’m planning a Christmas visit to London as she has never been to an art museum or gallery. Where shall I take her?!

Tate Modern perhaps? But you can probably fit a couple in if you are just doing galleries, or one and shopping or a museum. If she like Classical history the British museum.

@AnnieAverage which art is she interested in? A few are more modern and others a bit more renaissance, if you will. I love V&A as it mixes art with History, and if she likes Classics that might be a good choice. I bet there would be something American in there to help her with visualising the History of a time too? DD has swerved American History but we did the Vietnam war for my GCSE's and that was pretty horrific so possibly not as dull.

We're in need of a break I think. She seems to have done test after test for the last 2 weeks.

Off to the Science show at ExCel tomorrow so up in London later for the night. Anyone else on here going? I was hoping it would give her career ideas as she was into STEM when I booked it a while back, but now she's moved on to Psychology and Politics it seems. I can't keep up!

DD is off to Spain tomorrow with school. No looking forward to the 4am drop off or the 2am pick up on Wednesday

DD is very much looking forward to half term- she's found the ramping up of homework over the weeks quite hard work although she seems to be keeping up ok (just moaning a lot!) She has a lot of rehearsals for the school play and came home saying her flute teacher thinks she can do her grade 6 after Christmas which is good but I need to make sure she doesn't get overloaded, otherwise it's too stressful for everyone!

We are looking forward to a break too.. DD has coped ok and is doing ok with the homework although 3 tests on Monday seems a little harsh!

@jeansgenie The Science Show sounds fab, although sadly it wouldn't be DC2's cup of tea. Hope you have a lovely time.

Not too much homework here (urban state comp) but outside of school music is increasing to fill all of the available time, like @brackengirl by the sound of things. She's currently doing music stuff on Fridays 4-7, Saturdays 8.45-16.30 and Sundays 12-3. She's keen, and says she'd only be bed rotting otherwise, but I do wonder how managable it will be next year.

Worrying a bit about work experience. Apparently this is compulsory, but we have to sort a placement out ourselves . Neither H nor I know anyone who can offer anything (all my friends are public sector with lots of red tape around that kind of thing). DC2 isn't wildly enthusiastic about much either, which doesn't help.

My best advice is cold emailing, if it's someone specific don't get too stalkerish but just detail some cool projects they've done and why (very important) you like that work or are interested in it. Don't just do their 2/3 most fecent things from the website cause that looks like you haven't done that much work, do some things across a few years.
Even the same for the general organisation - many places will say yes to just about anyone but they don't advertise this on the website. So just be brave the worst they'll say is no. Plus you only need 1 yes. I had no contacts, neither do my parents for anything at all, so I just emailed a lot, but put effort into them and it worked.

AI can be helpful with this but make sure you tell it to, fact check everything and not make anything up.

Also even in places with red tape, if you email the right people they often ignore it, rather than emailing the organisation as a whole. The council can be great as well for good local gov experience. Also websites like Springpod and Futures For All (previously Speakers for Schools) they have apps/website with loads of details on work experience programmes, so I highly recommend those. Also SMF have good programmes and Sutton Trust as well.

I went with DS to school post 16 options evening - it's mostly for Y11 but I'm glad we went as we established DS just doesn't quite understand what 6th form is and what he's looking for. We also established he should know by this time next year what he might want to study. I can see so far that Drama is probably a good idea as he's strong at that, I think he might manage a 7 at GCSE, and probably biology as he's quite good at science, and he has some interest in working with animals. Third one is harder - perhaps ideally something vocational to do with the 'working with animals' stuff? Drama/something vocational would be a limiting factor on where offers both post-16 - found out one possible local 6th form doesn't have drama, for example.

So I think I/DS need to look into the 3rd subject vocational options by the end of this school year so he can ponder over summer.

Good evening all,

Just caught up whilst waiting for the Y10 to cycle home, think he is talking in the car park, not much I can do about that!

He had an almost full set of "mocks" real ones, to see where they are. He hasn't told me any results yet but they are sort of irrelevant, he is much more vocal about his drama play and sporting extras!

No mention of work experience here, not sure it matters, no one has asked about our Y12s Y10 work experience, but if he has to do it we will find something I am sure. He already has a part time job and does green volunteering once a month. We shall see.

So steady here not much information yet, will ask about results when he decides to cycle home.

Hope everyone as calm as can be.

Theres a T Level in Animal Care, equivalent to 3 A levels.

We are limping towards christmas - DD is shattered and the ASD mask is slipping!

she had a 30 mark english assessment tomorrow and a triple science physics test - happy friday!!!!

My son also has physics and English tests tomorrow..and hasn’t done nearly enough revision. Happy days! Does everyone have predicted gcse grades? We don’t have anything yet and no mention of them. Is that something that happens next year?

Weve been getting them from Yr7 in every report. The "target" from SATs and the grade projected from their current level.

Then the teachers give you a completely different one based on opinion rather than Statistics.

We have done the revision homework but my DD really stuggles to do any of her own revision

she has target grades - most of them are from year 7 and havent changed but she had a new Business studies and PE target grade

Yes so does my son. I’ve sat with him every night this week doing the English. He’s too distracted otherwise. He’s done some physics papers but doesn’t spend long enough understanding where he went wrong, so I’m not sure how useful it is.

not sure anyone remembers my previous posts but I had a school meeting last week to tell me how well my dd was doing this term…….that would be because she is now diagnosed adhd and medicated and she’s not just naughty then as you were telling me for nearly 18 months…..

Sort of, his parent's chat, in all subjects, said he should be aiming for the A grades, in everything and if he fails it will somehow be our fault! Not quite sure how they worked that one out.

You can sort of tell, I think, but it's totally possible to bring grades up 3 from Y11 November mocks to real thing. At the moment our Y10 gets within the top 3 marks of most of his tests across the board, he is doing the three sciences separately, is in top maths and english, so us and his teachers, and himself are expecting decent grades from him. All he cares about is afterschool sport clubs and drama! Neither of which he wants to do for Alevel or a career. All we are doing at the moment is keeping an eye on him and checking his marks don't take a tumble.

Our eldest did a small set of final mocks in March just before the May when he sat the real exams. His marks were very decent, we said, that is great progress from your November mocks but now they mean nothing, no mark, good or bad you get previous to the real exams means anything really. We found it helped to keep that in mind, no dwelling on past mistakes, learn from them, no relaxing on past victories, you need to do all that again. And he did two more months of lessons and revision and some of his final grades were lower, but enough to get him into the 6th form first choice college.

It's really useful, just the familiarity of the papers helps.
And it's good to know how much revision you need to do for what grade.
Doing this already is really helpful. We haven't seen any revision what Y10, does yet. So we don't know if he's currently coasting or working.

Weve had Parents Evening and reports in the past week, so we know how she's doing.
Apparently the application fir Extra Time will be looked at in January but the English teacher thinks it will be awarded, they managed to get lots of evidence that it benefits her.
Had Mock coursework in her Btec, and that was one mark of full marks which the teacher was very pleased with.

wow @Fluffycloudsfloatinginthesky - what a bittersweet update. So glad that things are going well for your DD, but it's a real shame that it's taken so long for her needs to be understood.

Parents evening here was reasonably positive. DC2 informed us she was "locking in" for year 10, and certainly the feedback from the teachers was that she's been dicking about less. The child who never reads even informs me that she's really enjoying Othello (although Jekyll and Hyde and Leave Taking are still a struggle). She has quite a range of grade predictions, some I think over optimistically based on unexpectedly good Y6 SATS performance. Still no nearer to even thinking about post-16 plans.