Y11 2025-26 Results Day and Next Steps

[UncomfortableSilence]

We can use this thread to continue our discussions for now.

DD sorted her A level choices today without any fuss in the end. Head of sixth form apparently was happy to sign her up to what she wanted - 4 A levels with the plan to quickly drop one - including 1 she was a few marks off the required grade. She had sent an email in advance stating her case though. DD had requested 2 scripts a week ago but not come through yet, hopefully will be quick now school is back open.

DTs started sixth form today, back at their secondary school. Looks like not many stayed on and everyone went to the college instead. Not sure how these rural school sixth forms will compete. Lots of schools have already closed their sixth forms soon there will be no alternative to the college.

Some state non selective comps near us have small 6th forms as they demand very high entry grades eg all 7+
So most kids can’t stay on at own schools.
Those school then brag about how many As they get at A level etc and how academically excellent they are.
Nuts.
DD is going to a big fantastic outstanding college with endless enrichment and lots additional support. Equally great results across a broader spectrum and much better overall offer imo

@ifonlytheydlistenour sixth form requires minimal grades to get in but I concur that there are many positives to the big college.

i agree that comparing a levels across institutions does not always show if the cohort achieving the results has been selected or is a comprehensive intake.

Ultimately kids are all so different and some thrive in small settings and find huge ones terrifying, others vv. Dd got a place at a massively oversubscribed college with 2000 kids in across the two year groups- that’s far more than her school from age 2-18! She had a huge wobble about it and decided to stay at her school sixth form where there will be 70ish kids in the year group and that’s absolutely fine. She doesn’t start until Monday and just needs to get going now I think.

DD’s first day today (just induction I think - the actual lessons don’t start until next week). She’s really nervous - I went in to wake her and she said she’d hardly slept. I’m sure she will be fine when she gets there - hopefully. She doesn’t know anyone which makes it scarier and I think she’s worried about missing the bus too.

Good luck to all the starters!

DS got some of his teacher details last night and is delighted that he has the same English teacher. History teacher he doesn't know very well. He is still umming and ahhing between Psychology and RE for the 4th choice. He really wants to do philosophy but they don't offer it except for within RE. Really hoping he manages to have a sensible conversation with someone at today's induction.

My daughter did RE A Level and never once was it called that by anyone except on exam documents. It was always just called ‘Philosophy’, as that’s essentially what it is.

My DS starts tomorrow, in our area schools don’t have 6th forms really as there are 3 very big sixth form colleges, one super academic, one more mixed, one with very applied. Schools have tried to compete but so many had sixth forms but closed as students all left to go to one of the colleges. If you want a small sixth form here, and not to do the IB you go private.

Lovely to see everyone starting to move on now and begin the next steps. Really hope once they are all settled they are very happy.

DD had her induction day yesterday, day off today, and full timetable from tomorrow. She was so ready to go back and seemed very happy last night. She’s at my school and it was very strange seeing her there. She went to an all girls school and my school is all boys until the mixed sixth form and she already said she liked the dynamic of it. She too has Wednesday afternoon games for one period, I’m all for it, they get to choose what they would like to do, it’s only in Y12, and a bit of exercise is good for them even though DD was the ultimate PE hater. They also have one lesson of general RE a week (compulsory in Catholic schools) she loved the ethics in GCSE RE and enjoyed the debates so she doesn’t mind this.

We are still deliberating over her English Lit but most likely will go for a review now. It does look like several pages haven’t even been acknowledged, I’ve had some advice although disappointingly her school haven’t been particularly helpful.

Oh that's interesting thank you! I've encouraged him to speak to the head of sixth form today so let's see

DS is at an all boys school with girls in the sixth form - this morning we spotted two girls from his primary school going in. I am hoping he lets me in on the romance gossip!

DD starts back tomorrow, her school accepted her on her chosen A-Levels despite the disappointing English Language result.

I'm stunned to see the grade uplifts for the AQA English Lit remarks! We'd decided not to go for an English Language remark as she only scraped a 4 (had consistently scored a 6 all through Y10 and Y11, so it was a shock).

However, I'm now up in the air again trying to decide what to do. It's 8 marks to a 5. The English teacher has looked at it and says that in some areas the marks are low, but she agrees with the marking in others. We've had the warning that the marks could go down, which has scared us as we can't afford for the mark to go down as she'd then 'fail' it. Are there any online marking tools that might give an idea?

@FlyingPandas Can congratulations on your ds winning a prize.

DD had her first day seems lots got to stay on even ones who hadnt met the grades so not sute if numbers are down. Think about 100 to 125 kids.
DD does not need to do PE after all as it clashes with further maths.

Ds had induction yesterday and first lessons today.
I told him he didn't need to go in until lunchtime and he said what about form? I explained that is gone. He's autistic and always used to go in early to get settled for the day before form even started. Somehow we need to work out a new routine for him.

In the end he went in early because we couldn't get Teams to work on his laptop and all the subjects have set up Teams channels. So I said to go and see if he could find someone to help.

@cherrywhite that is a hard decision, especially when your hearing about people have big marks up. Are you able to get anothet teachet to look at it for 2nd opinion ?

DD is not to happy about school rules joys of staying on at school 6th form. No late starts got to be there at 8.45 regsrdless of first lesson time and earliest they can leave is 2.20pm.

I also agree about about college 6th form having better extras. Not much on offer at school 6th form.

We only have 2 state schools with sixth forms in our city. One has dire results, the other pretty good. But class sizes can be tiny ( you can see how many people took each subject in government data).

@JTro do you mind sharing where the 30 marks came from - were sections missed or just marked harshly. We are in similar position but school wont look at it. Got 6 and usually works at an 8 and got 9s in everything else except Spanish 1 mark off. Is there any service where I can pay someone to review it before sending it off as school wont help. Such an unfair system as schools vary so much in the help offered.

We did not consult with the school (they are useless anyway in this regards as we got score breakdown only the next day), we came home and applied for ROM for both Eng Lit papers as Grade 6 is very very unusual for my DD. All marks were added under " Error in Academic Judgement". I tried to look at the sections but can't figure out which sections were corrected. If you see that you DC result is very unusual, I would apply for the ROM. She's got 15 more marks in each paper

Righ, just looked again. Paper 1 marks were added on A1 and A7. Paper 2 marks were added on A7, B27, C28.1

The reason marks can go up such a lot (as I understand it – correct me if I am wrong @MrsHamlet) is that the review, rather than looking for extra marks, is checking that an answer was graded in the right band.

In my subject (MFL) this could make a big difference – for example in GCSE German writing the mark for communication on one essay could move from level 4 to level 5 if that was thought to be a fairer application of the MS – which could be the difference between 10 marks and 15 marks for that essay (slightly extreme example but still). I think it's similar in English.

Less likely for the mark to change in MFL listening or reading btw as no questions are graded in the same way. Speaking as @spanishboundary is hoping to show, I think, is a different matter.

Sorry I haven’t read the whole thread so apols if I have missed if you already knew this - but if it’s AQA, your dd has missed the final 8-mark question (C28.2, the unseen poetry comparison), or if she did the question, the mark has not been recorded. I’m an English teacher btw.

Thank you for explanation, but I'm still confused:) I can see only questions where marks were added, so don't know about C28.2, but C28.1 was corrected.

As a teacher, would you have any logical explanation how this could be - 30 marks were missing from the original marking. Second day in a row I'm thinking how is that possible???

Oh sorry - the perils of not actually reading the thread! As a pp said earlier today, the ‘error in examiner judgement’ or whatever it said will refer to the paper being given inaccurate levels/bands. So, briefly, if the first examiner had awarded a candidate at Level 3 for all the main AOs on a 30 marker question, and the reviewer gave it Level 5 for all the AOs, due to the way the marks are distributed/weighted, the mark for that question would go from 15/30 to 25/30. Across a whole Lit Paper you can see how such a big jump in marks could occur. Not good at all on the exam board’s part that the marks were so much lower first time round!

@clary you are correct as always :)