Holiday Revision

As a teacher you are constantly banging on about the importance of steady revision over the holiday period to your charges. Most, as we all know, will ignore your advice and try and cram in a little revision on the morning of the exam. Waste of time - you might as well do yourself a fry up instead.

Then there's the revision sessions put on by the schools. It is an expectation that teachers will stay after school on one day per week and do an extra lesson - unpaid. You obviously not obliged, but it is severely frowned upon if you don't do it. I don't mind being frowned upon, but plenty do.

There's also the revision sessions put on during the holidays - Easter and Summer Half Term. These do tend to be paid as they are during holiday time, and I tend to do those as I'm being paid for my time. And let's face it, you don't get much (if anything) for free nowadays.

The way we tend to run our revision sessions is to "invite" a select band of students along - they are the ones who have target grades that are now well beyond them due to their inability to actually try in class. Letters are sent home and reply slips grudgingly brought back in by disgruntles students whose delusional parents still believe that little Johnny is going to be a top draw lawyer, or a Premier League footballer needing an education to fall back on in case he gets a career threatening injury.

Inevitably the sessions are pretty pointless, with the students just there because they know that their games console will be confiscated if they not. They have also come to the realisation that even a pass is probably beyond them, let alone their target grade of A* (which the majority seem to have now). I had one member of my class try to persuade me to move them from higher tier (which they were perfectly capable of doing) to foundation tier, where the highest they can get is a C grade. This is less than a week before the exam. I refused for the following reasons:

1. It costs the school an extra £25 that it can't really afford, not that that's a major issue.
2. Ultimately they have been idle, and when offered help refused it with the comment "My mum's tutoring me". They even went on holiday over the last revision session they were invited to attend.
3. They did in class (i.e. with help) a foundation paper and totally messed it up by making silly mistakes due to not concentrating. Since you need to get around 70% to 80% for a C on the foundation paper, that doesn't leave much scope for silly mistakes. The higher tier will allow them to make silly mistakes because you can get a C grade with around 35% (yes, you did read that correctly).
4. Why should I rush around making a massive effort to change their tier of entry when they have made absolutely no effort whatsoever in 2 years? Get used to reaping what you sow pal!

Each revision day costs a school around £350 per subject, which includes printing the letters, posting letters home, and then paying two members of a department to be there for 5 hours or so. After the latest waste of my life, I said that it was pointless to my colleague and they replied with this:

"We have to do these sessions because it ticks another box, and when they all fail and try to blame us, we can just say that we offered these revision sessions." Sad, but true and wisely said.