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.

I personally think we need some sort of mums celebration when this is over. After all, we’re all basically doing our GCSE’s again!! I hope I do better than I did 22 years ago!!

I just hope DS2 doesn’t make the mistakes I did … at the mo it’s looking pretty likely .. he’s as bored as I was and now there is gaming and smart phones which there wasn’t back in the day

I'm worried about my DS too. He's our eldest so first time we're going through it.
He's extremely defensive whenever I mention revision and swears he is doing some every day.
He scraped 5's pretty much across the board in his mocks (lower in PE and music) with little revision so he is a little cocky that he will do much better in the real thing.

He has only applied to one sixth form as they all wanted the same grades and that's the one he is set in going ro.
He needs 6's in pretty much everything which im worried about.
I'm not sure how I feel about the grading system.
In the old system a B sounds great but a 6 doesn't sound that good when there's a 9 up for grabs.

I've got 3 younger children and next year my DD is doing her GCSE's.
I'm not sure im going to survive!

I never did that as a child and my DS isn't doing that much. I think it's possible some kids are but also by this point every lesson he's doing is revision in every subject. Some kids will need to do more than others for sure but I think actually demanding your kid does that much will probably be counter productive in some cases (certainly with my stubborn DS).

As predicted, DS's French speaking exam today was "fine" and he "can't remember" any of the questions. He's currently asleep. Roll on PE moderation tomorrow.

DD isn’t doing 24 hours/week. She does do 1.5-2.5h on week nights (including after school sessions on some days and maths tutor). Has Friday night off. Does 3 hours per day at the weekend, sometimes 4. She could not focus for 6 hours a day at the weekend, no way. She’d burn out before the exams even started. They are all different but that’s what suits her.

Just found this thread and it's exactly what I needed! I'm finding things tricky at the moment to get balance between ensuring DD does revision and doesn't get too overwhelmed. Also under the Art mountain at the moment that a lot of you are dealing with. Hopefully on track ish with that but exam not until 5/6 May so I just hope too much revision time isn't lost.

I worry a lot about whether she'll get the marks to get into 6th form. She's great at the subjects she wants to do (Sciencey subjects predicted mixtures of 7/8/9s) but it's English Language that will be a struggle. So hard to help her with that and the thought of not being able to do A Levels and having to retake is awful (for her, I know things will be ok in the end). That seems really harsh when she doesn't want to study any essay subjects and she is clearly literate and quite bright. She has had confidence massively knocked in poor mock results in English Language (3!) and freaks out when trying to do past paper questions at home now.

Good to see others aren't spending all evening revising with no breaks. I was very conscientious at school so find it hard to know what is normal!

I think my DD is doing about the same as yours MayasJamas

One of my teachers gave me a good tip when revising which I've shared with my DS but he's disinterested.

Write down when you start, to the minute. As soon as you find your mind wandering. Stop, write down the time, walk away. Do something else then come back to it.

To start with you will only concentrate for 10 mins tops but it will be 10 quality minutes. Then you'll find the time naturally builds.

Don't feel guilty about the short time, most people might spend an hour but only actually revise for a tiny proportion of that. Then they spend their rest time feeling guilty about revision rather than concentrating on that.

I still use this tool now when I'm working from home which I do a lot especially when I feel like I'm being unproductive. It was only recently I picked it up again but I probably tripled my productivity with it.

But of course anything his mum recommends is automatically dismissed. 🙄

DS is doing similar to some of your DC: 1.5 ish hours on a school evening, another 3 maybe up to 4 on each weekend day but not more than that, definitely not 6 hours.

I try to get my DC to follow the recommendations given by my eldest DC‘S lovely deputy head, who used to say to Y11, do 3 half hour slots on a school night, and aim for 6 half hour slots on each weekend day. (He was very witty and funny and showed a PowerPoint breaking each day down into half hour slots to show Y11 just how many slots they had in a typical weekday afternoon and weekend day, and point out how many hours they’d still have for themselves even after doing revision slots. He also recommended copious bribery with chocolate which obviously went down a storm with DC!).

That always seemed a sensible balance to me, obviously some will do more, some less, it’s just that tricky balance between doing enough and not burning out.

I never did GCSEs @36and3 so I feel I'm doing them at the same time and should get some sort of honorary award 😂
Well done to your son for his speaking exam @Wincher
@Tebheag that's expecting a lot of them on top of school hours. DD does probably about that, although I don't know whether her concentration is 100% for the whole duration. She's still super stressed, I dread her crashing at the time she should be peaking... There's little point telling her to relax, because she is only "relaxed" when she is revising and feel in control. I feel rather than a set number of hours, advice on how to divide their time would be more useful. DD does long stretches on each subjects rather than say 3 x1hour.
I agree about the new grading system @Jmaho . My DD feels a 6 is a failure and in her mind a 7 is a B, and only a 9 would be an A.
@FlyingPandas it sounds sensible, would that be different topics for every 30 min slots?
DD was getting a little overwhelmed doing long stretches, so we did this one day to try and keep it fun: We pretended each period of study was a "waiting in the queue" at Disneyland. We used one of the random spinning wheel apps with all of the attractions, picked one at random, check the queue time on the disney app, she studied for this set amount of time (typically 30min to 50min), then we watched a "on board" video of the ride on YouTube, before "heading" to another attraction. It was silly but lightened her mood and helped switching things around a little.

What a brilliant technique @Caddycat !

I agree with the grading system. Dd thinks anything below a 7 is “pointless”. Madness.

And then having done the number system we now jump ship immediately back to letter grades for alevel?!

Interested in the 30 min slots - DS2 has naturally adjusted to that himself . Now I am helping with anthology poems I can see him fade around then so am cramming each poem into 30 mins

PE moderation today was "fine" except for another boy breaking his ankle! Terrible timing - I hope he gets full marks.

Oh no @NotDarkGothicMama poor boy, what awful timing. Hope he's okay.

@Caddycat I love that idea! Tbh my DS doesn't seem to be too stressed but it is a tricky time for Y11 and you're right, you want them to peak at the right moment!

Re the 30 minute thing I don't think it matters whether it's one subject per 30 minutes or 3 separate sets of 30 minutes on the same subject - I think the idea is that apparently humans can generally only focus effectively for 30 minutes at a time - so after 30 minutes, even if they're still technically working, they're in theory not actually working effectively or absorbing information. So the key is to take a short break in between those 30 minute slots. Key being a short break though and not one of DS's epic 'just going to the loo' type hour long breaks!

I also agree re the 789 grading thing. Originally I think the idea of it was to identify the true top performers for courses like medicine and vet med. But inevitably then some students just want to chase 'the best' grade and see anything else as failure, even when it's anything but.

Poor boy @NotDarkGothicMama hope it doesn’t affect the rest of his exams too much.

Anyone know what the minimum break time for your brain to recover actually is? Here minimising breaks as they are also either practically nonexistent or really really really long in a “I just got distracted, sorry” way. The art of a quick 5 min break has definitely not been mastered here! So going for a change of subjects as then there’s then hunting out different books/notes/questions etc which is like a really small break (kind of hopefully?). Plus thinking about different stuff - eg maths to English. Also swapping between past paper questions and quizzing.

@NotDarkGothicMama poor kid really hope it don't effect his exams.

DD got coursework back today full marks. Anyone know how it works with coursework checks by invidulaters (sorry feeling brain dead can't spell.) DD classmate told her she asked for 39 marks so hers would not be checked as they would pick DDs instead as she got higher so would likely get marked down.
Starting to see why this girl has no friends these days as always mean.

I think DDs classmate talks BS

@Littletreefrog I did wonder this kid is a head prefect and all the teachers favourite always get awards etc.
Was not nice coming home to find DD in tears after having the girl go on at her about it.

On a good note just been informed they finished another subject syllabus today.

All syllabus complete here, so school now doing revision in every lesson. Even pshe and P.E lessons have been repurposed to revision. School now confirmed no exam leave which is whatever suspected from previous year.

DTs doing 1-2 hrs per week night revision and a bit more at weekends. A few remaining sports fixtures to play then there going to not start second sport again till after exams. Not done any exams yet first is French speaking next week and then we’ll all be on the conveyor belt of exams. We’ve got 47 exams between the 2 of them!

well done to all the DCs already completing art, DT, mfl and PE exams and NEAs.

in non revision news.
they’ve started decorating their leavers shirts. In my day people just wrote on it but it seems you need to embellish it these days with your name and the year as a minimum. We are rubbish at art hence not doing it for gcse so it’s proving a nice break and distraction for them trying to be creative.
in other news I’ve realised I’ve not sorted any shoes for the prom outfits and they’ve delegated that to me! So now to order some wedges I think as they need some height due to dress length and have never worn heels before. Other suggestions welcome..

A lot of the kids just wear new trainers to prom. My DD is with dress. Leavers shirts defo gone into diff realm!

@Tebheagtotally mean girl behaviour I’d say

@Tebheag this is rubbish. Tell your DD that the moderator takes a sample from the class, and if he thinks the marks aren't right, he will moderate all of the coursework, including the classmate's. So if your DD is marked down, it's more than likely classmate will be as well.

DD shot down my suggestion of trainers with a prom dress. Have got some Vinted shoes on their way. DD asked for a small heel, we went for one that was not too skinny, but she does dance so has some practice in heeled shoes.