Y11 2025/26 The Final Stretch

[UncomfortableSilence]

New thread to see our wonderful DC through their exams and onwards.

Come and join for chat, support and solidarity.

My son really wants a 9 in maths. He’s historically not backed himself but his confidence has grown as he’s got older. I hope he relaxes, breathes and ‘enjoys’ showing his passion for maths today

@Moneyordream thats horrible treatment for your son and added stress to you all. I hope he does amazingly and feels proud of himself
2 potential a level subjects today. Ds seemed ok and sensibly stopped revising early and had an early night. I think starting to get tired. We've gently suggested no revision tonight
He is very good at maths but is really pushing and hoping for a 9 which feels real pressure
Another day of worrying today!

@Clary she's not a big fan of physics so think engineering may be out. But is quite excited about modern languages degrees. Other subjects at the moment are biology and RE (though she keeps changing her mind) so it's a real mixed bag! German and Maths are her certainties though.

Sending love!

@clary I did just remind dd1 of this so thank you. A 6 would be great, a 7 amazing for her. Bless her heart she really doesn’t like maths at all but is signed up to do core maths in 6th form to help with the bio a level which I think is properly mature of her. Irony is she’s fine at it, she just clashed a lot with her teacher and lost confidence

dd2 had another wig out which doesn’t bode well.

dd1 just messaged me - she’s just had to step over some roadkill on her way to school and has decided this is foreshadowing of her doom. It’s not bloody English lit child. She is at least happy her hair looks great today so that’s a relief……

@Moneyordream I'm just so cross on your and your DS's behalf!

Great advice @Clary - DD improved her grade when she started doing this: Even when not sure how to work the question, if she knows what it was trying to get her to do, she's write down the formula and get a mark or 2 doing that. I hope she remembers!

We’re getting mixed reports, computer science which is supposedly a solid A level choice- he said there were no questions on hardware and he doesn’t think that they’ve been taught a lot of it, this is paper 1, which is supposedly the easier one, he thought that geography went ok. I am a bit worried about A level choices, it seems madness that they have to select them before they get their GCSE results. I suppose that there will be a fair amount of shifting around once results come out. Wondering what direction/subject DS should be heading in and if his school is just weak on CS or if he likes the idea of computing more than the actuality.

Good luck for all the maths students today. Dd was teary and stressed this morning. Just hoping for a pass as maths is difficult for her.

One stressed DD at school. She was after a 9 but needs an 8 for further maths ALevel. Hoping this paper is a good one as so far she ain't been happy with any. @Onthesofawithmydog definitely a present for the teacher that question through my daughter.

DD didn't even get a study session for maths as they only did one and it was yesterday morning during Geography so no predictions from the teacher.
Going to be another long day
🍀

@clary It was Hannah with the sweets in 2015 when my DD1 did her GCSEs. She just thought she didn't have a clue, missed it out and carried on! I suspect more able students were more thrown as they expect to be able to do most of the paper. (It wasn't intrinsically that hard, just had probability and algebra together).

Hope maths goes well today, especially any on the 3/4 borderline. I was there last year with then 20yo DD2 doing a last ditch resit. (She passed).

Long time lurker here, but grateful for this chat support at the moment with DD sitting exams.

OCR Comp Science was tricky for us too - she said some very niche questions came up. Paper 1 is usually her banker so this has thrown her. We were wondering if she hasn’t been taught properly as everything else I’ve seen seems to suggest people found it easy!

Good luck to all for maths today

Yes, I know that it's hard to recruit good CS teachers. It's a job to know if it's good/poor teaching, aptitude for the subject or a tricky paper which are factors. I guess it's just a question of supporting them, sensible revision and just waiting until we get the results at this stage.

Just been reflecting, my husband who is an academic says all students always say the questions on any exam are niche/ unusual as that means well they haven’t been on the past papers they studied which of course stands to reason. It doesn’t mean that they are necessarily hard nor that they don’t know how to do them.

He is also at a very prestigious university and categorically says that even though those he admits come with a string on grade 9 GCSEs the university consider an 8 and a 9 to be the same as any student who can get an 8 can get a 9 on a different paper.

Full on meltdown at 7.40 here, tears, hyperventilating. Geography and computer science wiped her out yesterday, but once maths is done, she's 25% though having done 6 exams this week.

I drove her to school for 'maths breakfast' but she didn't want to go in, so we had to kill 20 minutes in the local supermarket! I insisted I needed some essentials to distract her, so ended up coming away with an utterly random selection of items (ketchup, sunflower oil and bleach), plus a packet of her favorite sweets as a post-exam reward.

Edexcel non calc here for DD. Predicted an 8, capable of a 9 on a good day and wants to do it for A level. She’s been unusually positive about how exams have gone so far so I’m hoping this isn’t the one where it all goes wrong.

I’m waiting impatiently for dd to come over post maths. We’re at the same school so she’s been coming to see me after each exam. I can tell straight away by how she approaches: slow walk or skip!

I'm waiting too @36and3 although at home. First thing DD does is to message me how it went. I realised in my panic late last night I said she was doing AQA maths, but she's doing Edexcel. All the other exams are AQA except this one. I wonder why...

@cherrywhite post exam sweets sounds great!

They must be out by now???

DD started at 9.15, so finishes at 10.45.

I think our timetable is wrong just to make them be on time - it says beginning at 8.15. I will stop refreshing Reddit

haha, I was about to say, Reddit is starting to get busy. It's 50/50 complete disaster/way too easy...

Oh gawwwdddd

Edexcel higher maths was apparently Good. But this is from the only child who thought AQA combined biology higher was amazing so not sure it’s a reliable indication.

@clary your roadkill comment had me laughing!