Cottenham Through aspiration and endeavour, we flourish
Cottenham Through aspiration and endeavour, we flourish
Dear Parents/Carers of Year 11,
As we welcome your child back to CVC for their final full term at school, our key priority is to give as much support as we can offer to ensuring your child has every opportunity to be successful in their preparation towards their final GCSE exams. We are very proud of the mature and conscientious attitudes we have seen from the Year 11 cohort this year and all indications, including high attendance figures, demonstrate that this cohort are working well towards a strong set of outcomes this summer 2025. This update has also been recorded in a video format, should you prefer this to a letter. https://youtu.be/Pk1mhnEvI6o
The method used to award GCSE grades is take the marks of the all the students across the country who took the exam and rank these in order of the marks, then award the grades based on where the students sit in this rank, for example, the top 2.5% (approx.) would be awarded a grade 9. This means that as a school, we need to ensure that our Year 11 students are competitive against the standards of other students nationally, to support the award of the highest grades for our students.
As we move closer to the exam period, we are adding some additional changes to the way we work as a school to further improve the support that we give our Year 11 students. This will include:
- An additional 100 minutes a fortnight of English, by allocating tutor times to the English team.
- An additional 30 minutes per week of Sparx maths homework practice, to help with regular practising of key concepts.
- The offer of some Period 6 revision sessions after-school, with some additional offer of transport support for those who live in Willingham and Waterbeach.
- The use of more online quizzing platforms to support regular revision.
- The sharing of a knowledge organisers folder to help support revision.
- More computer spaces for those who wish to study during lunchtimes and after-school.
We are committed to providing additional support to this year group, starting now, and continuing until the GCSE exams in May. More specific information about each of these strands will be detailed in a forthcoming booklet for parents, which will include a Year 11 mock timetable for February/March, details about homework set this half term and a revision guide to help support the process at home. We will share this information with students in assembly and tutor times.
At the start of the academic year, we offered to all Year 11 parents the opportunity to purchase revision guides for all subject areas at a discounted price to ordering directly, should you be in the position that your child has lost or misplaced any resources and you would like to obtain a copy, please email reception with a list of the subjects you are looking for and we will try to support quickly where we can.
Yours sincerely,
Zoe Andrews, Principal