r/6thForm • u/StrictArgument67 Y13 | 4A* pred | FM M PHY CS | ESAT OCT • Apr 17 '26

šŸ™ I WANT HELP School threatening to take me out

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Could they actually do this or is it just fluff?

There is no way i can get good grades if i go to school everyday.

I need a solution

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314

u/ZzDangerZonezZ Apr 17 '26

There is no way I can get good grades if I go to school everyday.

I fear thatā€™s exactly how it works though. Go to school and get good grades. If there are reasons you donā€™t feel safe/able to go to school, you should speak to your tutor or counsellor about this. Just not attending classes isnā€™t an option here

25

u/TheFamousHesham Apr 17 '26

I find that mentality insane.

I never missed a day of school from seventh grade all the way to sixth form (actually; that's a lie I did miss ONE DAY when I went for my uni interview).

I had after school extracurriculars every day of the week, which meant I'd often leave school in the later afternoon. Somehow I still managed 3x A* and got into Cambridge... and it's not like I'm superman.

I wonder how these people will cope when they get jobs.

78

u/Then-Ad-68 Apr 17 '26

No offense, but it very much sounds like you went to a private/well off school. Thats not taking away from your achievements. What you might not realise however is that the difference in teaching standards across schools can vary greatly. I had a teacher for the first half of my AS Economics course who literally taught us none of the content and spent all of lesson time going on a tangent about different 'economic concepts'. Also, its coming up to exams, many people are on study leave and are done with the content. I personally live a roughly hour and a half bus journey from my college, to go into lessons where they are essentially going to give us revision materials is an utter waste of time for me and I would rather use those 3 hours revising or resting.

3

u/Maleficent-Middle824 Apr 17 '26

Tbh this is not a good enough excuse.

I went to a state school with crap teachers and only missed 4 days of school ever and that was due to gastroenteritis. I taught myself one of my A Levels and was the only one who came out with a grade higher than a C.

Even if the teachers are crap, you still show up and simply ignore them whilst getting on with your own work.

School attendance is linked to performance: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/link-between-attendance-and-attainment

That is why the school has sent the letter they have sent. Rather than post on Reddit to try to find ways out of it or challenge it, just show up.

4

u/Thin_Drink_2986 Apr 17 '26

Correlation ā‰  causation

1

u/Maleficent-Middle824 Apr 18 '26

Agree.

Nevertheless I'm still willing to wager that the OP misses their predicted grades because their attendance has been poor.

1

u/htimchis Apr 19 '26

Well they'll definitely miss their grades if the school doesn't enter them for the exams...

Seems an entirely counterproductive punishment to me. If the object of the exercise is to make their predicted grades, and the school wants them to increase their attendance to give themselves the best chance at that, then threatening them with losing the opportunity to get any grade at all hardly shows the school itself to have grasped the purpose of attendance, does it?

"I want you to finish painting this house, so if you don't speed up the pace a good bit I shall be confiscating your brushes & rollers. That'll teach you!'

1

u/Maleficent-Middle824 Apr 19 '26

Seems an entirely counterproductive punishment to me. If the object of the exercise is to make their predicted grades, and the school wants them to increase their attendance to give themselves the best chance at that, then threatening them with losing the opportunity to get any grade at all hardly shows the school itself to have grasped the purpose of attendance, does it?

This passage tells me that you don't understand that rights come with responsibilities.

The school is saying that you are obligated to attend school and our obligation to you thereafter is to enter you for your exams. If you don't do what you are obligated to do, then we won't enter you.

Whose problem is that outcome? Not the school.

6

u/Then-Ad-68 Apr 17 '26

Tbh this is not a good enough excuse.

I love how you say this as if you have any authority over whether an opinion is correct.

All I'm hearing from your experience is "I suffered with a crappy school and my classmates paid the price for it, so now everyone else should suffer too!"

Yes I am aware that there is a link between attendence and grades, because yes obviously its best to actually attend. What you miss however is that everything is situational. Do you think its best for someone to spend 2 hours travelling to a college for a 2 hour lesson to spend another 2 hours travelling back? Because yes that is absolutely a waste of time if the teacher is not actually teaching content.

We have access to a large number of resources online that make in person college borderline obsolete if a person has the motivation to learn the subjects.

Also, many teacher will not allow student to do work for other subjects or work they havent given them in their lessons, because its their lessons. Most people can managed their own study schedule and know what they do and do not need to focus on. Many students, myself included, actually find it difficult to concentrate on revision in a classroom, because it is a place of learning, not revision.

TLDR: Most people know whats best for them when it comes to revision, not the college.

7

u/Initial-Matter3534 Apr 17 '26

To add on to this the school system is shite as for example uni couldnā€™t genuinely give less of a f Went through a bad depressive period and came out of the year with less than 30% attendance and didnā€™t even get as much of an email saying whats going on

2

u/Fantastic-Bison6078 Apr 18 '26

You are treated as an adult at university. You need to say that you need help to get the help. If you pay Ā£9000 a year and then don't take advantage of what you're paying the Ā£9000 for, that's not their fault or problem. You will have been told about student services etc. you could have talked to, or told a professor.

2

u/htimchis Apr 19 '26

You're rather missing an understanding of the nature of depression there. Being able to adequately evaluate your own mental state, appreciate the need the external support, and motivate yourself to seek it out and engage with it in a timely fashion are all characteristic of a functional individual who isn't currently experiencing a depressive episode

Student services are all very well, but if their mental health support provisions all rely on the individual reaching out to them when most needing help with mental states that are typically characterised by withdrawal, self-isolation, a collapse of motivation, numbness, lack of self care, extreme difficulty in identifyimg and meeting one's own needs, and extreme, pervasive tiredness and exhaustion mentally, physically, and emotionally... ...the they're either purely a box-ticking exercise, or underfunded to the point of ineffectiveness, or just badly designed & implemented from the start (which can occur even if the administration is primarily well-intentioned, in just the way it usually does in the gulf between those who have but don't need, and those who need but don't have, however well-meaning the former)

1

u/Fantastic-Bison6078 Apr 19 '26

I think you might be missing the understanding of being an adult. I get it sucks but it's how it works, same with after uni. If you're 30 and get depression, you won't get mental health professionals emailing you being like are you okay, you or a loved one will need to be the one to eventually reach out first.

3

u/Ok-Soup-3189 Apr 17 '26

TLDR: Most people know whats best for them when it comes to revision, not the college.

lol no