Monday 2 December 2013

Y11 Mocks another Waste of 'Learning Time'

It has been reported this week that Year 11's will be sitting mock exams in all subjects, barring science, and are supposed to give prospective sixth form students the most up-to-date predicted grades for their applications. This is all well, except for the fact that the mock week commences the 9th of December (through to the 18th), despite the Sixth Form Application Deadline being on the 13th. This means that, in some cases, unless your subject teacher has a marking turnaround of negative values of days, you won't have those predicted grades in time for your applications. Even for those tests that take place before the deadline, do you really expect your subject teacher to be capable of marking 30+ papers, on top of normal work in the space of a few days?

The school has overcome this flaw in their plan by giving out stickers for your planners that have your subjects on them (as if you didn't know which subjects you had been studying for the past year and a half) and told you to go and collect your predicted grade from each and every one of your teachers. It perplexes me that a school that has so many systems and regimes; a place that almost seems to run on spreadsheets, cannot compile one for students so that said students can collect all their predicted grades at once, rather than having to put in the legwork. Equally, it beguiles me that they since have not cancelled the mock exams, as if somehow fake exams take president over real work towards real exams. Where is your precious 'learning time' now? 

You could argue, and trust me, they always do, that the mocks prepare you for a real exam situation, and give you an idea of how it feels. However, all of the current Year 11's have already sat a real GCSE exam, some even two, and some are already onto A Level in some subjects, so they must already know what a real exam feels like, and probably don't need a harsh reminder of the feeling every time they attempt to learn something.

Again we have a perfect example of the school wasting students' time, and being about as organised as a Communist Leadership Skills Weekend. If they wanted Year 11's to actually know what a real test feels like in Year 11, they might not have cancelled that English Language and Maths exam.


DISCLAIMER: This Hampstead Trash article has been written to critique the actions of the governing bodies of the school. This is so student readers can hear both sides of the argument, and formulate their own opinions on matters pertaining to their education.

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