Letter to Parents/Carers, May 2010
Dear Year 12 Parent/Carer and Student,
The public examinations begin during May and should be completed by the middle of June. In order to support preparation for these examinations, The Exam Period will be conducted as follows:
- Study leave will nominally run from Monday, 17th May to Friday 11th of June for all of those sitting AS papers; this will include the scheduled half term.
- Teachers are likely to request that students attend revision sessions prior to their examination; both learning communities will be providing this extra support. These will be scheduled at the normal timetabled periods and students will be informed before the exam period. Students will be expected to attend such lessons, unless they have a scheduled examination.
- Those students entered for Applied A-level examinations will be notified by their teachers of those lessons they will be expected to attend during the study leave period.
- All A2 courses begin on Monday 14th of June.
It is important that if you are currently studying four AS levels you continue to attend lessons for all four subjects. Although many of you are likely to have a firm idea about which subject you would like to drop in year 13, you cannot be certain of this. Upon receipt of exam results in August, study will be in a more informed position to choose Year 13 subjects.
You need to be aware that, in order to progress to A2 in any subject from September 2010, you must have attended all lessons in the June-July period in that subject. A2 teaching and learning takes place in all subjects during this period and any student who has not attended lessons will be unable to progress to A2, regardless of their AS result.
All year 12 students were asked at the end of last term to indicate the subject they were most likely to drop in year 13. We have based our curriculum blocks and teaching groups on these indications, taking into account those students who made firm choices and those who made less certain choices or who said that at that point in the year it was impossible to decide. We are confident that the year 13 curriculum will enable you to continue to A2 with the subjects you indicated as your choices.
Look closely at the teaching groups. You may find, in a few cases, that you will need to change learning community for a particular subject in order to be able to continue to A2. Whilst we would prefer it if everyone could continue with their existing teaching groups and/or existing teachers, this is not always possible. Group sizes change so much from year 12 to year 13 with the drop, for most students, from four to three subjects, that we are forced to make groups economically viable by collapsing and merging in some cases. We may have to make further changes over the next few weeks, but these are likely to involve only a very small number of students and we will inform you of these, where relevant, when you return to lessons in June.
I hope that you will be reassured that you will be able to follow your chosen A2 path. If, having looked at the teaching groups, you feel that there may be problems with your choices, then you should contact Mrs O'Connor or Mr Houghton and arrange to meet with them in order to discuss this issue. You can do this at any time in the two weeks before the June return, or you can wait until you are back in school in the week beginning the 14th of June.
Students who have decided not to return for Year 13 will need to inform Mr Houghton or Mrs O'Connor as soon as possible, and their official leaving date will be the date of their last exam. These students will not be expected to return after the exam period.
Please do not arrange holidays for the period after the AS examinations since A2 courses, and information relating to Year 13, will be taught until the end of term.
Finally the Post 16 team, and all of your teachers, would like to wish you luck with your AS examinations, and we look forward to seeing you all in June.
Yours sincerely,
Marian Curran
Director
Please Note: Revision timetables are posted on the Cotham and the North Bristol Post 16 Centre websites, please check for updates.
