Supporting your child

There are so many exciting opportunities in Sixth Form. It is a real chance for students to study explore new subjects and get involved in a wide range of extra-curricular activities, such as sports and enrichment, leadership programme, not to mention making new friends. So even before they start, it’s worth talking to them about throwing themselves into school life and making the most of the opportunities available to them.

Once they have joined us, there are a number of key ways to support your child is:

• Promoting proactive study habits

In Year 12 the students are expected to complete 20 hours of independent study per week. This increases to 30 hours in Year 13 and will enable your child to be successful in their studies. The students must use their private study period and study periods effectively to manage their workload.  

• Subject folders

Each student is advised to have a folder per subject to ensure that their work is kept organised. Dividers in the folders can also be used to separate topics.

• Weekly revision

Setting up a weekly revision schedule as early as possible will help your child to prepare for their half termly assessments, mock examination and official examinations. This prevents cramming of revision which is proven to be ineffective. The revision schedule can include quizzing your child on a section or topic using their own revision resources, completing timed past exam questions by progressing from smaller marked or simpler questions to larger marked or more challenging questions, using WAGOLLs to help them self-assess their answers and downloading the examiners reports for each Summer examination series.

• RAG rating

Your child can start to RAG rate each topic or subtopic that they are studying. This allows them to prioritise their revision as the subject identified in red need to be prioritised. Your child can then progress to those in orange or yellow and then to those in green.

• Unifrog

This is an online platform that is available to our students from the start of their Sixth Form journey which advises them on the courses or career pathway they would most suitable for, providing them access to Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) enabling their university or apprenticeship application to stand out and also previous work experience contacts.

• Post 18 pathways

Your child will be encouraged to research both university courses and apprenticeship vacancies to ensure that they have a Plan A and B. All students receive further information on the structure of courses and apprenticeships at our Post 18 launch event in the Summer. We encourage students to start visiting the university open days earlier to ensure that they have their preferred choice of five when they start their application. We would recommend that this is arranged for a weekend if possible.