ac-studies

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I cannot wait. I cannot wait for GCSE's to be over, so I can live my life how I want too. I will be able to read for pleasure and not because I need to memorise it for a test, I can finally start to make an indent in my 'to-read' pile. I cannot wait until I can sit and do absolutely nothing without feeling guilty that I'm not revising. I cannot wait to start college, to study subjects I actually want to do, and to start fresh at a new school. I cannot wait to be a person living, instead of a student only just surviving.

But for now, I guess I will just keep working until my final exam on the 16th of June. And then, only then will I be free once more.

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GOOD LUCK ON YOUR FINALS GOOD LUCK ON YOUR GCSES GOOD LUCK ON YOUR A LEVELS GOOD LUCK ON YOUR ORAL EXAMS GOOD LUCK ON YOUR PRESENTATIONS GOOD LUCK TO ANYONE WHO NEEDS IT

THIS IS IT GUYS GOOD LUCK

I HOPE YOU GUYS GET EVERYTHING YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING SO HARD FOR

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GCSE Students or Parents of GCSE Students:

We should be priority. Enough said. You may have younger children or maybe older children, but right now, for the next 2 months, your 15/16 year olds should be your main priority.

This may seem like the wrong thing to say because your younger children may not be old enough to do things for themselves or need serious attention for a certain medical reason but if you have a child perfectly capable of playing quietly by themselves, then tell them to do it. If your 16 year old is trying to revise quietly and want to be left alone, they should have the right to. They should also have the right to take a break, whether that’s taking a nap, playing on a console, having a bubble bath, going to see friends, or even just watching a movie. They deserve the right. When you were taking your big exams did you have breaks? Were you left alone to work with silence? My god I bet you were. For the next two months, your 16 year old is going to be the most stressed they ever will be and for that you should help them. Whether that’s occupying the younger ones or letting them take breaks every now and then, please do it. As someone who has not revised as much as they should have, there are many other teenagers working their asses off to get a good grade at the end of these exams. On the 24th of August why do you think they will be so happy? I believe its because they know they have put their all into their work and have tried their best. This could have been for multiple reasons, the main two being that they wanted to do well for college and their future. The other maybe being to make their parents proud. But what about those who may have tried their hardest but didn’t do as well? They will be the most disappointed in themselves, purely because they have tried their best for something that didn’t have a good outcome. What do you think they’ll be most disappointed with, the fact they let themselves down, or the fact they’ve let their parents down? It’ll be their parents they have let down most and the main parents reply would be “well you should’ve tried harder”, most of these students couldn’t have tried harder if they wanted to.

Exam season is probably the worst time to ever see a 15/16 year old. This is because along with the pressure put on at home, the also have pressure put onto them by the school. Schools these days don’t want the best for you, they want the best for the school because good grades means good teaching, right? Wrong. Most of the good grades come out of the school is the effort that the students have put in. I’m sorry to all the teachers out there but it is definitely the students who have got themselves those grades. And along with both of these academic pressures put onto them, they also have the pressures of the people around them and who is higher up in the social ladder or who has the better Nikes. These social pressures have one of the biggest impacts on students these days because they feel that they need to meet the social criteria placed to be able to fit in anywhere. I think that’s sick. Why are these pressures even in place? Because of the medias impact, teenagers feel the need to look their best to be their best, which is completely ludicrous. Why should I feel the need to look amazing when I could be trying more to learn 90 million quotes for my English language exams.

Writing this I know that there will be many 15/16 year olds who will agree with me because they know how hard it all is. I also know there will be some parents who also agree because they understand being a teenager in this day and age is really frigging hard. Those other parents might read this and say to their child “I’m so glad you don’t think like that and have that kind of bad attitude. I’m glad you get your head down and know you’ll do us proud on results day”, when in reality, their child is one of the ones finding it difficult to keep up on revision so that they can make his or hers parents proud, and they’ll be the ones disappointed results day because the know they tried their best but because of distractions whilst revising, they didn’t do as well as they wanted to. Their parents will also be the ones to say “well you should have tried harder" because instead of seeing how their child was struggling, they were too focussed on the impossible standards they wanted their child to reach.

The point of this wasn’t to ramble on about why I’m a moody teenager with a bad attitude. It was to show parents that their child may be finding things hard and could do with some parental help instead of criticism. Help your children, don’t pressure them into needing good grades just because you feel this generation doesn’t try hard enough.

Be a parent, not another pressure.

[ac-studies]

Well done to everyone who received their gcse's today and got the results they wanted and needed!

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Tuesday 22nd August 2017 Reading my favourite novel by J.M.Barrie and keeping hydrated before I go back to school.

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Just the school necessities for my last year of high school, as well as my new school uniform for yr11 👔

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Revision prep for Year 11 :)

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Hi! I hope your having a good day/night so far and that you do well on your revision just remember there are so many people willing to help you and support you. Don't get to stressed make sure to stay hydrated and eat breakfast lunch and dinner and always remember to have a day to yourself to look after your mental and physical health i just wanted to send this because a lot of these revision and study blogs don't get enough reminders like this. You are so inspirational and amazing -Rory :)

Thank you so much, it's true we don't always look after ourselves as well as we should. It's so nice to have people ask how you are sometimes so once again thank you so much! ☺️

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hi! i am a year 10 student too and i just wanted to say that your blog is really motivating thank you!! :) i've just created a studyblr myself (@studyingwithlauren) and its really inspiring to see other people my age working so hard!

Hi Lauren! Thank you so much, I’d happily follow you I also love seeing people my age in the same country as me working hard for their qualifications. I wish you all the best in your GCSEs! ❤️

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Do you have school-aged children? I am a teacher. I’ve been a teacher for nearly twelve years. I’ve seen a huge number of education changes happen during this time, but I am worried about what is happening in education right now - and I am not sure that the general public are aware of the extent of the difficulties we face. Let me start by saying that I am not concerned about my pay. I don’t want more money. I am not asking for your concern about my wages. What I am concerned about are the cuts that the Conservative government are making to education - huge, life-changing cuts that are having a detrimental effect on the mental health and well-being of a massive number of children and young people. This is going to be long, but if you have children, please bear with me and read to the end. 1. The new GCSE system Michael Gove started his annihilation of the A*-G GCSE system back in 2010, and this year we see the first string of examinations take place. “More rigour” was the battle cry. However, did you know that the new GCSE English Literature exam - including the poetry exam, requiring study of an anthology of 15 poems - is closed-book? This means that no student will be given a copy of the text in their exam - not even SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) students, many of which have recall and memory problems. The GCSE English Language exam uses extracts from heritage texts that carry a reading age of approximately 17. The average reading age of a GCSE-level student is 14. So why are we asking our students to read and analyse texts that are aimed at someone with a reading age 3 years above their own? Some of my students have a reading age of 9. They cannot in any way access the papers. In addition to this, the papers are up to 2hrs and 15mins long, often with a high number of questions - the Edexcel GCSE English Language paper 2 is equivalent to a mark a minute. I am seeing students who want to succeed breaking down as they simply cannot fit it all in - to understand and then interpret a text in such a small amount of time is extremely difficult for some students, and so what we are seeing is an increasing number of students switching off from their education as they simply write themselves off as ‘stupid’. You can see the Edexcel GCSE papers for English language here: https://qualifications.pearson.com/content/dam/pdf/GCSE/English%20Language/2015/specification-and-sample-assesment/GCSE-English-Lang-SAMs.pdf I can only speak for English as it is my subject, but what I know is in existence across the whole curriculum is this: the Conservative government and Ofqual have released a new 9-1 grading system - but have only just, one month before GCSE exams commence, launched any real model of what each grade looks like. For the last two years, teachers have been working to help students achieve grades without knowing what those grades look like. We were told that a 9 was an “A**”, reserved for the top 3% of the country, and we were told that a “good pass” would be a 5 and equivalent to a high C/low B, and that a 1 would be equivalent to a G, but that’s it. Last month, they even changed that - making the new “good pass” a 4 for students - but to add insult to injury, kept the “good pass” at a 5 for schools when being graded for league tables. Confused yet? Imagine working in it. We still don’t know how the new GCSEs are going to be graded. We probably won’t know for sure until after the exams. The Conservative government are talking about “rigour” whilst simultaneously asking us to teach a system that has such little “rigour” that nobody even knows what a student needs to do to achieve a 9 grade. Schools are in disarray as they know one thing to be true - if their GCSE results are bad, Ofsted will swoop in, prepared to announce them as “requiring improvement”. This will happen despite the fact that even though we have repeatedly asked for clearer guidance and clarification on exactly what we can do to help students achieve the best they can, we have not been given anything. Nothing at all. The goalposts are *still* moving, even now - and some of your children are sitting these exams in less than a month. We are risking entering a time where the Key Stage 4 curriculum consists of teaching to the test and not much else. This goes against everything that most teachers stand for. Teaching to the test is boring. It doesn’t help students to love their subjects; it kills any enthusiasm they ever had. Last week, I had a 90-minute discussion with my GCSE English group about whether Hyde (from Stevenson’s story) was really a person. It ended with the students asserting that Hyde was never a person; he was not even a personality - Hyde was simply an excuse. These GCSE students - aged 15 - critically evaluated the novel and its interpretations, deciding that Jekyll and Hyde is actually a story about choice, rather than split personalities or hidden evil. It was incredible. I walked away worried that I’d wasted an hour and a half of exam practice. This should not be happening. 2. Excessive Testing at Ages 7 and 11 I am going to give my professional opinion on this, as someone who works at the chalkface: these exams are completely arbitrary and do not test the skills required for success at GCSE and in adult life. This year, I had a cohort of Year 7 students arrive at my school having not written a proper story for over a year. They knew what a fronted adverbial was, and how to spot an internal clause, and even what a preposition was - but when I set them a task to write a story, they broke down and cried. They cried. I asked them to write a story - something that should be incredibly enjoyable and an adventure, regardless of your level of ability or need - and they couldn’t do it. They knew the nuts and bolts, sure - but had no idea how to put them together in any meaningful way. They had ideas, but no confidence. My year 7 cohort had some of the highest SATs scores we could have hoped for - many of them with scaled scores of 115 and higher (scaled scores go from 80-120, with 100 as an 'average’), but their first creative writing piece was a huge failure, and I felt like a failure. We’ve since done a huge amount of work on story writing and creative motivation to develop their confidence and bring their marks up, but this has taken time from us that could have been used to develop their analytical skills, to develop their use of imagery and tone, to help them become more critical thinkers. I should not be teaching students how to piece a story together at secondary school. I completely agree that students need to leave primary school 'secondary ready’. However, I do not think that testing students’ ability to identify grammatical items over their ability to compose a creative piece is the best way to do it. It only increases student anxieties when they arrive at secondary school only to find that they have no idea how to approach their secondary-level subjects. I have a firm belief that testing students does not make them better learners. What should be happening is this: teachers should be being given the freedom to develop their students’ motivation, creativity, critical thinking, enthusiasm and, most of all, their passion. Students with passion always, always succeed. This Conservative government seem to think that “rigour” means taking education decisions out of the hands of teachers. Michael Gove - a journalist - started this course of action. He criticised us when we told him it would not work, and pressed ahead regardless. Multiple studies have shown that the mental health of children is suffering under this government. This has been known as far back as 2015: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/over-focus-on-exams-causing-mental-health-problems-and-self-harm-among-pupils-study-finds-10368815.html with 90% of teachers agreeing that SATs preparation is harming students’ mental health: https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/nine-10-teachers-believe-sats-preparation-harms-childrens-mental 3. Grammar Schools We do not need grammar schools. We don’t. If we increase funding to all state schools to a level reflective of needs, allow teachers to develop a ‘grammar curriculum’ (lots of extra-curricular, increase independence of teachers), give schools ‘grammar resources and invest in better pastoral care (decent behaviour interventions that selective grammars don’t need) then we won’t need grammar schools. Don’t let Theresa May fool you. The Conservative government say that working class students need a decent chance to succeed, and so she wants to build grammar schools above investing in local state-run facilities? Riiiiight. It’s a clear fact that house prices in catchment areas are higher. It’s a clear fact that middle-class families usually spend on tutoring and so more middle-class children get into grammar schools. Why do we need to build more schools when we can just give more money to existing ones? It’s easy to improve a school. Stop cutting funding and invest in decent support services. Which leads me to… 4. Cuts to Funding When I entered teaching in 2005, most classes had a learning support assistant (you may know them as a TA). These people were incredibly important - they worked with SEND students, BESD (behavioural, social and emotional difficulties) students, assisted with students who had been absent or were having trouble accessing the curriculum and they did this on minimal pay, with minimal complaint. I once taught a class where two girls, twins, had complex SEND needs, spoke no English, could speak Arabic and German but couldn’t read it, and had no social skills. My TA was incredible, and she developed a whole scheme of picture-based activities for them to help them become happy, capable members of society. This government have cut spending on education to the point where these TAs are rare, or simply don’t exist. Now, teachers are asked to develop the progress and achievement of these students alone. If your child is dyslexic, they no longer have the ‘luxury’ of a TAs attention or time – instead, it is their teacher’s job to accommodate them. Believe me, this is something we want to do. If we had the ability, we’d break off a little bit of ourselves and sit with them as much as we could. However, the average class size is 30, and this is impossible. We are told we are failing when our most vulnerable students do not achieve, but when you have 30 students, it’s not always easy to give every vulnerable student the time you wish to give. TAs allowed every student to progress and achieve as they allowed the class teacher time to develop clear schemes of work that could be worked on separately to the class, alongside the main learning. Now, dyslexic students are at the hands of often newly-qualified teachers who are still developing their differentiation skills and do not always have the time or resources to make good things happen. This is a direct result of funding cuts. This isn’t just about SEND students, either. The excessive cuts to education mean that many schools are now in a situation where they are considering making cuts in the curriculum and getting rid of specific subjects, usually the arts: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/education-schools-struggling-financially-axing-gcse-a-level-courses-cutting-class-trips-headteachers-a7620931.html Students today are being denied the opportunity to access the arts – the subjects that make them well-rounded thinkers, evaluative learners and creative, motivated individuals. I find it hard to stomach that due to excessive Conservative cuts, students are going to miss out on drama class, or art class, or music. That they may never know the joy of a school play, or what it feels like to be told to make their own song, or to find their groove when looking at characters in Shakespeare. Why the arts? Well, because they don’t add “rigour” – the new E-Bacc asks schools to focus on students getting English, maths, science, a language and a humanities subject – there is no requirement for arts. When you’re a cash-strapped school and you face a poor Ofsted report if your results are bad, why would you waste time and money on a qualification that, to the government, doesn’t count? These decisions are being made every damn day, because the government have headteachers over a barrel. You must succeed. You must get above average pass rates (which is in itself ridiculous; there will always be half below average). You must push out students with E-Baccs. If you don’t, we will academise you. Are we here to provide exam factories that churn out identikit students? We’ve already seen a cut in vocational qualifications and a rise in mandatory GCSE resits in English and Maths. Therefore, if your daughter has her heart set on becoming a mechanic, she may not have the opportunity to even access a course until she is 18 – in the past, she could have done this at age 14, by choosing a vocational mechanic course as an ‘option’ – but hey-ho, these have been cut. Instead, she will have to do the same GCSEs as everyone else, and if she can’t get that “good pass” in English, well, then she’ll just have to resit. And if she doesn’t get the “good pass” the next time, well, she’ll just have to resit again. Until she is old enough to walk away. Why are we putting our students through this? Why aren’t we nurturing a child’s natural enthusiasm? I taught a GCSE class back in 2009. It was a ‘bottom set’ class; they made my life hell but overall, were decent kids who just hated English, one of only two subjects they did at school as the rest of the time they were out doing vocational courses. They mainly got Ds in English, despite my best efforts. One own his own garage now. One runs her own hairdressing business. One builds motorbikes. One runs his own farm. Nowadays, these students wouldn’t stand a chance. Cuts also affect the level of pastoral support that exists in schools. The best schools invest clearly in the wellbeing of their students by providing them with mentors, non-teaching year leaders, behaviour liaison officers and pastoral teams. Remember ‘Educating Essex’? Those ladies in the office who worked with the kids to get them back into class and enjoying education? Those are the important people. Those are the ones we are losing. To end this massive rant, I want to point you towards the amazing-yet-horrifying website ‘School Cuts’ – www.schoolcuts.org.uk. It allows you to look at any school in the country and see the level of cuts, with a calculation of how many teachers it is equivalent to. I don’t think many people in the UK really understand what we are up against here. Here are a few figures that mean something to me: Hove Park School, Brighton & Hove: -£940,335 in cuts – equivalent to 25 teachers or -£659 per pupil The Burgess Hill Academy (formerly Oakmeeds Community College), Sussex: -£273,426 / 7 teachers / -£340 per pupil Bridgemary Community School, Gosport: -£421,065 / 12 teachers / -£797 per pupil Sir Thomas Boteler CofE High School, Warrington: -£132,685 / 4 teachers / -£211 per pupil Durrington High School, Worthing: -£474,491 / 13 teachers / -£274 per pupil This is horrifying. These cuts mean that your children are absolutely not getting the education they need or deserve – all thanks to apparently “unavoidable” cuts made by a government who have already cut corporation tax, can afford themselves an 11% pay rise, can reduce inheritance tax and make allowances for the very rich. I know that you may not like the leaders of the other parties very much. I understand that Brexit plays a part. However, students are arriving to school hungry, and we no longer have the funds to provide for them. We are being forced by this government to pressure students through a horrific, class-led system that discriminates against anyone with educational needs and that none of us agree with - and changes to strike laws mean that we can’t even protest it the way we want to. Brexit is happening, for now. Don’t be blinded by May. She wants you to be blinkered and she wants you to ignore the massive demolition of education. Don’t give her what she wants. A vote for the Conservative government is a vote that gives them a mandate to ruin the lives of young people today - unless Conservative voters work with us to stop these cuts. I urge you – please look at the schoolcuts website, please take in just how much is being cut from your local area and PLEASE look at the other parties’ policies on education. Challenge your Conservative MP. Ask them to fight for change too. This is an issue that does not need to be red or blue! Teachers should control education. Not politicians. If your school is striking this term, please understand that we never want to deprive anyone of education. Strikes are always a last resort and always happen when we are not being listened to. The media will try to spin it and tell you we are all selfish misers who want better pay. We don’t. We want an end to a broken and corrupt system that exploits children and benefits the rich - that is all. Support your local schools, help out where you can - and vote for a party who will bring the humanity back to education.

Okay, I know I haven’t posted in a while and this post is incredibly long. However for the last week I have been studying and preparing for my mock exams, around 5 hours each night. Want to know why I’m studying for so long for MOCKS because everything we need to learn is incredibly long, we have to learn a Shakespeare play plus a 19th century novella and everything else. I am a dyslexic student and the closed-book exams are ridiculous, ever heard the quote “you can’t judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree” this is what they are doing. This status is making its way around Facebook after a teacher called Rebecca Bradley posted it highlighting what’s going on. It’s seriously messed up and needs to change not just the GCSE’s but budgeting. (via studyingbrit)

To my GCSE followers!

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I'm new to this blog and I wanted to ask if you have any year ten mocks to come? Or if you know when you're getting them.

In my school the only Mock Exam that we know of/are well prepared for is the 3 mock science exams in May. Biology - 2nd May 2017 (morning).Chemistry - 3rd May 2017 (morning).Physics - 4th May 2017 (morning). These are external exams which will be done in the exam hall and has to be sent off for marking. Which means your Exam board will mark them, not your teachers.This is all I know at the moment but I’ll update when I know more :)

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Tuesday 11th April 2017, 12:46pm Today I printed out an exam schedule I'm not sure who made it but props to them! At the moment I haven't written down many of my upcoming exams but here are a few who are asking when we are doing Year 10 Mocks.

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hi! i'm a new studyblr account, and i was wondering when you should seriously start considering options for gcse? i'm in year eight, and have a brief idea of what i want to take but i was wondering if you knew when you have to definitely know what you want to take? thanks (:

Hi :) I started considering my gcse options either late year 8 or the beginning of year 9 as now my school starts doing gcse at the winter term of year 9. So I definitely suggest that you discover what options your school have available around that time. You can always talk to you're teachers if you're not sure yet or previous students such as a sibling or friends in older year groups. I believe that the sooner you know what you want to do the better so that you can research on future coursework and be more prepared.Welcome to the studyblr community and good luck in future exams! 💛

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Saturday 1st April 3017, 3:23PM I have 2 weeks off school for the Easter holiday and have assessment week the week we come back so I guess I’ll use this time wisely and revise.

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Monday 13th February 2017 I’m back from my school trip to Belgium and France and I apologise if I haven’t replied to any messages or posted but I’m back now :)

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i'm a relatively new year 10 studyblr and i just wanted to say hey what's up! Xx (@writinglikeyourerunningoutoftime)

Hey! I hope you enjoy being apart of the study community and I've followed you. 😊

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i'm in fifth year for gcses and i just want to tell you revise as much as you possibly can for forth year because fifth year gets 2000% worse (more exams+more controlled assessments+a-level choices)

Thank you for the advice! I am revising extremely hard as I have heard that fifth year is difficult from many students and teachers :) Good luck in your GCSEs!