Year 11 and 'the final push'

We are now into the finishing straight for Year 11 students – 8 weeks left until the summer term and the exam season!

I firmly believe that Year 11 students can really improve their final outcomes with an extra push over these final months but they now need to be ramping up their work rate at school and at home. This is a message I gave to colleagues last week. Last week I met with key staff members at the Academy to look at the progress of every single Year 11 student. This is a key period for these students, when every effort must be made by us, by them and by their parents and carers. It is our expectation that by this stage they should all be doing at least 2 hours of school work per night, in preparation for their examinations – this is normal in many schools at this time and is needed if they are to do as well as their peers elsewhere in the country.

I know it can be difficult to support your child at home when they say they have no homelearning, and their planner is blank. However, in addition to formal homelearning there is plenty of work and revision to get on with, for students in all year groups, through our website and through MyMaths, Method Maths and SAM Learning, all of which your child has a username and password to access. For those who are taking French, they should all have their Rosetta Stone usernames and passwords. If you child does not have these, please let their teacher know and they will make sure they are sent through to you. It is inconceivable, therefore, that any student in Year 11 cannot average 2 hours of productive learning every day through until their exams, or that any student in the Academy has no learning to do on any school night.

Nowadays the focus for entry to Level 3/A Level courses, in Sixth Forms and Colleges, is for students to have a B grade in the subject they wish to study, where they are studying it at GCSE. The idea that a student can progress onto a Level 3/A Level course with a handful of grade Cs is now outdated. The effort made between now and June will set their course for the remainder of their education and working lives.