Y10- 2025/2026

[CouldNotStayAway]

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

We are currently on a well-earned city break and dd is more relaxed than I’ve seen her in ages. All the stress over her Art portfolio has simmered down and she has been doing a little revision here and there before we escaped for our long weekend away.

I am extremely glad we able to afford this little holiday.

Mocks after Easter, and the first real GCSE in May (state school insists they all take religion gcse in y10).

All this talk of mocks is making me feel I've missed something somewhere with DD!

She says they have exams in late May as usual, and they are definitely not referred to as mocks in Y10. They normally have 'exam week' the week before the May half term so I assume it will be the same this year.

This school is perhaps too focussed on managing the girls' stress levels!

@LetItGoToRuin they aren't called mocks at our school either. There are end of year exams for all years, but it's only Y11 that they call them mocks. Even though they sit them in the hall from year 9 like an actual exam.

My DS has been revising much more than expected, but it’s given me an insight into how much they’ll have to revise next year. It’s so tricky to cover everything properly because there’s just so much to cover. I’m worried that he will be disheartened by the fact that he’s spent a lot of time revising but results won’t reflect that, because there just hasn’t been enough time.

After school revision sessions have started.

DS has first 'Year to Go' pre GCSE tests - mostly starting next month, but one this Friday. They run them as GCSE setting in the real exam hall, though DS won't be in that space as he has access arrangements due to his ADHD, but it means they are quite spread out due to availability. He has an early one on Friday - physics. I got him to read all the relevant sections in the revision guide over Easter and to do a worksheet that apparently has the key points they should know. DH said he'd be on it at the start of the holidays but never got involved - I'm not sure if he forgot (because of his ADHD), has given up in despair, is trying to make a point to me (unlikely) or what.

We had a school evening about it just before the holidays and DH really panicked and was all 'This will be utterly beyond DS, he won't be able to do it'. I'm a bit nervous how he'll do in these tests even if he revises OK as he won't have done anything as in depth. He'll also have to retake in September anything he falls short on, which means he will likely have to revise all summer.

I'm going to email school tonight as curriculum head said to drop him a line if we needed help with 6th form and we will because we just don't know our way around potential non-A-level options, as I may have mentioned. We know of two options that are likely, but pointers from them would help.

We've got an exam prep evening next month, no clue on what that entails and then dc1 has mocks in June. School don't seem to have covered revision techniques at all, can anyone recommend a good resource?

@RunningKatiemy DS saw someone at school who advises on study skills so maybe ask if there’s someone like that? Advice was things like active revision, flash cards, exam papers, going over things frequently etc etc. There are quite a lot of you tube videos on exam techniques.

@RunningKatie my eldest found doing past papers the best way of revising. They're usually free to access. Not saying that they should be tackling whole GCSE papers at this stage, but for example a page or two of 1 mark maths/science questions, or a single 10 mark essay question.

DC2 is not revising for end of year exams, and probably won't other than a little bit of night before revision during the exam time. This is partly because they're not a big thing and her school, and partly because she's not very studious!

@Stressystressylemonzesty - after school revision in Y10😮Is it a private school?

@Echobelly - that all sounds quite full on too, especially if there are retakes for Y10 exams in September! Good luck to your DS!

DD came home yesterday saying there has still been no word from teachers about the May exams at all. Isn't it interesting to see the range of approaches between the schools?

I could do with a really easy, intuitive online revision resource. I keep looking at things but it feels like they will take too much explaining to DS. He needs something he can work out how to use himself and will find easy to come back to.

DH keeps suggesting paper methods but I can't see DS organising that.

@LetItGoToRuin nope, standard comprehensive in one of the most deprived areas of south wales, he has 6 GCSE exams this summer.

@Stressystressylemonzesty "he has 6 GCSE exams this summer" - that explains it! I had forgotten you were in Wales!

@LetItGoToRuinthat is interesting, for some reason I had assumed it was similar across the board for grammar schools (I know mocks weren’t a y10 thing pre covid here).
DS school didn’t have official end of y9 exams (just end of topic tests) which was interesting.
his mocks start soon, and he has one actual gcse this year…he definitely needs to buckle down 😂 in the meantime I have dc supposed to be preparing for 11+ for September, that’s not going too well 😬

DD has a weeks work experience next week and then the revision will start for the year 10 mocks which are in June after the GCSEs finish
They issue a GCSE style revision guide and there is a info evening about revision coming up in the next few weeks

It's interesting what a different approach schools take to prep for GCSEs, I kind of assumed everywhere did as many bloody tests as ours did.

I'm wondering whether anyone here has had an older kid or knows of anyone who had success by basically bribing their kid to do the work and revise? eg money or something they really want for a certain result DS is so unsure of himself in most subjects and nervous of getting it wrong, and has difficulty looking ahead and seeing why and how much he needs to revise. So maybe the possibility of something he loves might be a goal he can understand and would motivate him?

Honestly I am wondering about maybe bribing him for a minimum mocks result at the end of this year? He's obsessed with Nintendo and part of me thinks he would up his game if we offered him a Switch2 for getting an (achievable but a little stretch) result at his mocks. I don't know if we'd be peaking a bit too soon to do it then, like there's a risk he might get the Switch and then lose his motivation. But it feels like at the actual GCSEs might be a bit too late and if he got to better results at mocks he'd maybe at least have learned how to revise. He does want to do better, but he can't seem to work out how. Or we could set a goal and if he doesn't get it at mocks, but does improve, we'll keep the offer open for the real thing?

DS had mocks last term in both year 9 and year 10. In the run up to both sets of exams we had an information evening at school about how to revise. They do try to get the kids to take the mocks pretty seriously. It has been useful because he’s got used to the idea of revising, he’s tried different techniques and can see which ones are working.

@Echobelly you say he wants to do better but he can’t work out how. There’s a lot of resources on the Internet about how to structure revision timetable and so on. Can you sit down with him and help him put together a plan, so that he knows when he is going to revise each day and also what he is going to do? Eg, on Tuesday night spend half an hour revising geography, topic: rivers, technique blurting. Then he doesn’t have to decide what he’s going to do, he just does the next thing.

@CouldNotStayAway DD’s grammar is not part of a group of grammars or anything like that – it’s just its own thing. There’s a boys’ grammar in the same town (the schools are not linked in any way) and they motivate their students completely differently. Teachers tell them the class order for results of every test and seem to try to incite the competitive spirit all the way. DD would be crushed by such an approach!

@Echobelly DD’s school has lots of tests, but they are in-class end-of-unit tests and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of pressure.

@Echobelly I am sure I’ve read on this forum that some parents offer financial rewards for good GCSE results. In fact, a friend of a friend was told that if she passed the 11 plus she could have a pony! Go for it, if you think it will help. My aunt told me that if I got a First in my degree, she’d take me to New York. I did actually get a First, but she either didn't mean it or forgot - I am still waiting for my lovely holiday nearly 30 years later 😀

Thanks @LetItGoToRuin - I decided to ask Copilot AI about the Switch2 idea (instructing it not to be sycophantic and to spell out the out the pitfalls, especially for a kid with ADHD) and it laid out some useful suggestions. Ultimately the suggestion was that tying reward to a grade/grades would probably create more anxiety in the long run because results are still not 100% in his control, whereas effort is - so it would be better to, say, offer a reward for a certain amount of revision, which they can control.

I think a Switch2 is too big for that, but wondering about incremental rewards, but then also how ensure we know how much revision he's actually done without it being loads of work for us to monitor?

@Echobellywe have a financial reward system, relatively small rewards for in year exams, more for mocks and more for GCSEs and it includes deductions if he does badly. It’s set up quite sensitively and in accordance with what I think he’s capable of. It’s generally helped but he still lacks motivation in subjects he really dislikes. If you don’t want to link to final grade, can you link it to progress? Ie if he scores better in the next set of exams, than the previous ones he will get a reward? Linking it to time spent revising sounds hard, unless you’re around.

Sometimes if I am around I do this and it’s effective-tonight he really didn’t want to revise biology (exam tomorrow) and I offered him a load of screen time in return for 45 minutes revision and he did it (but was revising with me). I also find that if I break down the revision in tiny chunks it can help and seems less challenging. Up until today we’ve been doing 20 minutes biology per day in exchange for 20 minutes of screen time directly after (as you can tell, he hates biology!)

Bit nervous - he has his first 'year to go' paper today. I think he'll be OK and he's always managed science papers on other rounds of tests even when he's wobbled in other subjects so I really hope he won't get overwhelmed and will have been able to complete a reasonable amount

It'll be hard to guess how he's done if he does sit it as he's not always good at judging how he's done. But if he can feel OK about it that is psychologically a good start at least.

He'll be back a bit late due to drama rehearsal, so we won't know until a bit later.

@Echobellyhow did he think it went? Hope all good

He said it was OK and sounded fairly relaxed. He will say if he think it went badly out if he didn't manage to answer anything, so that's broadly positive!

We've discussed rewards for grades, an elder sibling of dc1's friend got £250 per 9 at GCSE, dropping £50 per grade. That's not right for our family but I'm not sure what we will do.
There's been some talk of next years prom too, the cost of dresses sounds eye watering, dc1 isn't keen to go thankfully! We'll probably do a fun theatre trip or something that's more their thing instead.