Year 10 - Easter holiday for a week before 2 GCSEs in the summer?

[TeamGeriatric]

Have a child in Year 10 sitting 2 GCSEs in the summer. They are pretty academically focussed and will be targetting at least a 7 in these subjects. There are 4 exams in total, 3 falling in May and one in June, we have not heard those date from school, but just did a quick Google search a minute ago. We are considering booking a week's holiday at Easter. Likely to be away last week of March and come back Easter Monday March 29th, so she would still have 6 full days of the Easter hols after we get back to study, and then have 5 or so weeks back in school before the first exam. She won't get study leave though as she's Year 10 and normal school schedule is ongoing for subjects she will sit in Year 11. Has anyone any experience of this?

Absolutely fine. The break will do her good and it’s only for one week. The only thing I would say is that schools sometimes run revision sessions in the Easter holidays. It may be worth contacting the teachers for those individual subjects to find out if they usually do this and whether they think it’s most likely to be in the first or second week. They likely won’t have the schedule yet but may be able to say roughly which will help you plan. I wouldn’t recommend it in Y11 when sitting many more GCSEs but for 2 that’s fine.

It’s only two but to be honest I wouldn’t. Dd1 is now year 12 but from year 10 we basically mapped out when all public exams and mocks are from year 10-13 and purposefully booked holidays to avoid revision time. Eg if exams were after Easter we’d go abroad in December instead; For January mocks, we’ll go away in October etc. Most of DD’s friends have done the same.

I think this would be fine for most students. The volume of study is completely different to when they are sitting 20ish exams.

I would just check when their summer mocks are. At one of our schools they do them in April, before the GCSEs start.

Your school may be different but round here study leave is a thing of the past. At both our schools students were expected to be in all their lessons, unless actually in an exam, until half term of Y11. Whether this is about keeping attendance data up, or because there is allegedly evidence that it improves exam performance, I am not sure.

Easter is early next year so it gives more time when you’re back before exams start. I’d go for it. We did in year 13 and tbh it did our highly academic and hard working son the world of good.

Sounds fine to me. We did long weekends in the Easter holidays even in Year 11.