Vodka

Glad to hear you got it sorted and you can now sort out your holiday.

Hi de hi

I know you are a teacher and I respect you for that because it is not a job I would entertain in a million years - It's bad enough having three kids at home let alone working in a school full of the wonderful little creatures. However , your comments about the teacher who may not have had time to call due to classes all day and also the head of year who may have been teaching all day; teachers at your school may return calls as soon as they get the opportunity but what excuses have you got for my sons teacher who I had an appointment with two weeks ago - she cancelled that morning (a Friday) and she told me she would call me on the Monday to re-arrange it. As of yet I'm still waiting for the call and whenever I phone the school and explain what happened they say they will give her the message and get her to call me to make the appointment.
Think my son may have left school by the time she returns my call . Also with regard to work being sent home. When my eldest son was at secondary school he had a bad accident during a PE lesson (which was the fault of the school) he was off school for almost four months due to surgery on his leg. When it first happened the school said they would send him work home so that he did not fall behind (he was in year 10) and they would also arrange home tuition for him through the education dept. at the town hall. Guess what? After many many phone calls from myself to the school for work, and many many phone calls to the education dept. regarding home tuition he still received nothing from them for the four months.There are many similar stories I could tell you about all three of my children and their schools but I would be here for the next week. So please; although your school may be a good one don't assume that all schools are. Luckily all three of my children are very bright (they don't get it from me ), they all managed to get level 7 in their year nine SAT's and the two that have taken their GCSE's have both got all grade A* - C but I don't credit their school for this. I credit my husband who sat with them night after night explaining and going through things that they didn't understand in class because of the teachers foreign accent or because the teacher simply ignored their resuest for something to be explained again. You may ask why I kept my kids at this school if it is so bad, believe me it is the best of a bad bunch where I live.

Regards Jackie

I can't speak for other schools although I know some where it is policy that teachers do not call parents but someone further up the management chain should do so.

On the subject of triple science vs Double. It sounds as if the exam scheduled for that day only applies to those pupils doing 3 sciences and not to your child who is doing 'double'. In my school we don't do triple as we are too small to logistically timetable it.

Gav came home with a letter on friday telling him all about 2 exams he is sitting in November.. the first being a science one on 9th November and the second being a maths on on 23rd november...the problem is.. we fly to Gran Can on the 9th November and of course, we fly back on 23rd November so he will miss both..

I will just have to talk to the school..and i find it irritating that we booked this months ago and try to avoid things like known exam times and then this is sprung on us..and November is not a traditional exam time surely..it will get soon that there will be no time free of exams..

Surely schools are allowed to hold exams any time during term-time, as the expectation is that children will be in school.

I would imagine it is quite difficult for schools, teachers, school governors and examining bodies to schedule the multitude of examinations our children are having to take these days, without having to give months and months of notice to those that wish to take kids out of school for holidays. When there are 13 weeks of scheduled school holidays that people can book anyway.

unfortunately doepsmc... not all of us can take holidays when the schools are off..i would love it if we could, but since Rob and I both have very demanding jobs.. there is no chance of getting holidays when the kids are off..especially the august one...

the other thing is i had to book this holiday months and months in advance...the school has given just 2 weeks notice..of which one of them is half term...

Gav has a good attendance record..and we thought we were doing the right thing by staying away from the traditional june period when kids have exams..and there is no way on the planet we would have taken this holiday at this time if we had known that Gav would have exams in the period we are away.. ( we chose not to go in may as he was doing year 9 sats...the thought never even occured that there would be exams in November)

If they are external exams then the school has no choice in when they are set. We get the dates at the start of the new year (September). Sometimes for convenience schools will have their internal exams, mocks etc around the same time.

what will you do Val?? Will she get the opportunity to resit them in year 11?? what a horrendous situation

unfortunately Val in years 10 and 11 no time is a good time. they seem to have Coursework dealines and exams each term and its going to be
s o d s law that one of these will be at the time you are going. I have always taken my children out for a week or 2 even at secondary school , usually for a week after the may half term but something just made me not so sure in year 10 and fortunately im glad i didnt book anything last year. years 7/8/9 i think your still pretty safe with other than Sats time and the schools internal exams. I know thats not going to help you now Val but really hope you get this sorted.
lyn

Val

Don't beat yourself up about it, you will never win over the schools; even when their wrong their right. The question you have to ask is, if as Hi de Hi states the schools receive notification of exams when they return in September why are the parents of those taking exams not informed in a newsletter or yearly calendar at the start of that term. Wether we had booked a holiday or not I would still want to know in advance when my kids had exams in order to make sure they were revising. Is that not simply called communication. Like I said in a previous post I had an appointment with my sons school to speak about us moving to Tenerife and to ask if when the time comes they could give him a few weeks work as he will miss a couple of weeks school by the time we move and he starts his new school. They have already agreed to this but wanted to see me in person to discuss it further. The teacher phoned to cancel the appointment that she made as something urgent came up. She told me she would call me to re-arrange the appointment in a couple of days, that was nearly three weeks ago and I'm still waiting. I would seriously consider home tuition if I were staying in this Country.

Regards Jackie

I agree with that Jackie. Wouldnt it be nice if all schools could do a sort of calander at the start of the school year to let us know when exams are going to be. not sure they could do it with coursework dealines tho . im not talking about the main exams i dont think any of us that are going to book a holiday in term term would be that stupid, i mean these smaller modular exams like the science ones. maybe thats the problem here we always get plenty of warning about the bigger exams but there never seems to be any warning about the smaller . As you say Jackie it would be nice to know not just for holidays but for the simple reason for us to know when they should be revising. The only way i ever find out about these exams is by going through my boys bags on a regular basis and finding the crumpled candidate enrolement form. thats boys for you

Gav is just a typical lad.. i only found the letter about the exams screwed up in his trouser pocket as i checked them before slinging them in the wash ( he has a habit of stuffing everything in his pockets and then just dumping his clothes in the wash)...

From what i can gather, the science is a modular one and i don't think it is that important. The maths one, i think he would be ok if he missed it.. i am certain he would be able to make up the grade, especially since he was top of the whole year group in exam results for the Sats..so i am not worried.

it would have been great if a list of exams were given out at the start of term, but since it is Gav's school and it is a complete shambles, i expect that nobody even thought about communication. The school had the nerve to ring me last Wednesday and complain he wasn't in school. I reminded them that he never attends school on a wednesday as he works in the local sports centre on a scheme that they set up as part of his NVQ. ( he is studying BTEC's and NVQ's as well as GCSE's) and he has one day a week actually working an apprenticeship rather than attending school..( this scheme is about the best thing the school does)... perish the thought that someone actually knows what they are doing there!!!

We are going to take our holidays ( naturally) and i am going to contact the school next week to see if he can sit them upon return.. and also ask if they will provide me with a list of future exam dates...

Im sure you will get it sorted Val. the Science modular will count as 5% of his GCSE and he should be able to resit it in year 11 although somebody did mention that things may have changed this year for those starting year 10 this year. not sure what the maths one is my son didnt do any maths exams last year in year 10 . well not to my knowledge unless I missed that particular crumpled piece of paper. just 1 piece of coursework but have a feeling again there is a new maths GCSE syllabus this year

good luck

lyn

Val & Lyn

My sons school does give out a calendar at the beginning of the new school year but they seem more interested in this political correctness malarky by printing every birth date of various Sikh Gurus, Confucius' birthday and every Saints day under the sun as well as all the Hindu, Jewish, Muslim and Christian dates with any meaning. Take these out of the calendar and they could have saved themselves a fortune in paper, the calendar would have only been one small sheet of paper instead of a 5 page booklet. I am sure anyone from the above mentioned denominations know when they have specials holiday etc to celebrate. I think schools have gone mad with this type of thing and should perhaps concentrate on the more important things like educating our children and more importantly informing us when they have exams; after all WE NEED OUR HOLIDAYS

Regards Jackie

Val, what a bummer!!!
Like you, I have taken into account that my daughter is thriving in all of her subjects, has good attendence and has all of the other necessary usual criteria. Like my daughters school has said to us, it's not 'ideal' that she will have to take resits, but it isn't I crisis.
Also, like you, it isn't possible for us to take our 'valued' family holidays during the allocated school leave and there is no way that I would have booked a holiday if I had any idea that it would clash with important dates.
Like Jackie has said, I'm not going to beat myself up over the decision that I have made, (though God knows it will cause some tutting)! However, before the critics comment, I have my own personal reasons for making my decision and I shouldn't have to justify my reasons, it should just be accepted.
Have a fantastic holiday, not that I'm jealous or anything

After reconsidering our holiday to tie in with daugters g.c.s.e,s. We decided to book a pre christmas break instead. Guess what? she came home with a letter stating the mocks are from the 11-15 dec. The last day of our hol is the 11, typical eh!!As they havn't yet got a timetable for that week, im not sure wether my daughter has a mock exam that day.
Does anyone know if the mocks can be resat and do the results/marks go towards their final results?

ah Jackie lets hope she doesnt have one that day. my son also has them the last 2 days before they break up for chrismas and for a few days as soon as they go back. im really not sure if they can re-sit them . but if its only 1 i dont see why not its not as if they are external exams. I would of thought they are used by the school to decide what leval paper they will sit in the actual GCSE somebody did tell me that the mocks can be used to go towards their mark if there is a problem which the actual GCSE i.e they are ill. not sure how true that is tho maybe someone else could fill us in on that.

lyn

i am starting to be of the opinion that the schools are now applying more and more pressure on kids through exams..they seem to be all year round now. When i was at school we had exams in the May/June period apart from the mocks for O levels which were done in the November. If you did well, they put you in for O levels, if you didn't you did CSE's..

pressure starts as soon as kids turn 7 with all these SATs..7.. and Gav was only 6 when he did his..and those results are only important to the school for league tables and stuff...and then we go through it all again at 11. I thought they might be a little more important as they would be used as an indicator as to what set the child would be streamed in at secondary school...i was wrong again. They were all lumped together regardless..and of course, Gav did them again this year when he was 14.. and i thought it would be helpful with regards to his GCSE's..but hey ho... i am wrong again...it made not one jot of difference. He got really high SATs results, had his picture took with a few other kids for the local rag so the school could brag and that was it. He is still doing the same coursework for his GCSE's ( although i must admit, he is doing BTEC and NVQ in some subjects rather than GCSE) as kids that barely achieved the desired level.

I will be glad when he leaves school (we were counting last night, he has 5 terms left and then he is done..or maybe 4 and abit terms)..

I second that,Kids are under far too much pressure now, and as you state, val and rob, its just one long round of sats, internal exams etc.and at the end of the day the kids are under pressure to get good sats results to make the school look good, and move them up the local league table.
If I had my way, I would like to see european school ways introduced. They start school at 6 or 7?and go through till their 18(some eastern european countries choose their vocation when their 16 and study just for that) I dont know about your son, val, but my daughter only has 7 months at school and she is still undecided what to do. Due to a cock up in time tables she was unable to do a language, as it clashed with her leisure and tourism course, surely the two go hand in hand, especially if you want to work in the travel industry!!!
After tears and tantrums with coursework deadlines having to be met, we are all ready for some r&r in GC soon

Thanks lyn westie for your helpful reply. Fingers crossed ehx, and if the 11th clashes, then we may just have a flight delay or tummy bug. nudge nudge..wink wink

Hi

How many kids really know what they want to do when they choose their options?

My eldest son decided he wanted to be an accountant. He has always been good at maths so chose Accounting as one of his options. Although he got a good GCSE grade in it, he decided that he could not do that as a job for the rest of his life. He then got a job in a Gym where they put him on training courses to enable him to get his NVQ level 3 as well as various other courses he needed and he is now a very successful Personal Trainer.

Just goes to show, he wanted to be an accountant at 14/15 and at 17 he was qualified in something totally different. There is too much pressure on kids even by the careers advisers about what they want to do when they leave school. Fair enough give them advice but don't make it a matter of life or death that they should know what they want to do in two or possibly four years time if the stay on until 6th form. My daughter who has just left school to attend college visited the careers adviser in school who asked various questions about what she liked, what she was good at etc and came up with the idea that she should go into one of the forces. I am pretty sure my daughter would not have told her that she likes dicipline and fighting Where do they get these ideas from?

Regards Jackie