redo yr 12 or continue to yr 13

That sucks

I think it would be very difficult to continue to y13 due to the difficulty of finding a school that does your exact English texts, since there's so many options as well as exam boards. You'll have to consider whether you're willing to put the time into catching up with texts, which may affect your studies since y13 gets HARD.

If you do Y12 again, I'd also suggest doing EPQ and not another A-Level, especially as History is, in my opinion, a very difficult subject due to amount of content and skill needed.

I think overall, English kinda forces you to retake y12 unless you are lucky enough to find somewhere that does exactly the same texts. But watch out for the amount of content in history

Good luck with whatever you decide!

Hi, how r yall?

my schools closing, leaving us year 12s in the dark and now I'm trying to find schools which will take me for year 13.

upon researching I've been thinking about redoing year 12 even tho my predicted grades are a*aa (and the subjects i take are eng lit, maths and chem). if i retake it then i want to do eng lit, history and maths (and either epq or econ).

I'm not sure which is best since I've not yet found a school that does my texts (poetry of the decade, the Victorians anthology, the importance of being earnest, hamlet, wuthering heights and a thousand splendid stars) so I'm rlly rlly confused and am looking for help, which option do you think is best (pls help)

THANK YOU FOR READING IF U READ

Thank you for ur reply (srsly i appreciate it i thought no one was gonna reply)

do u do history alevel (what else do u do/what levels do u do)? whats the most difficult bit of it other than the content in your opinion?
how do u revise for it as well (for my gcses for history i made flashcards but idk if they're gonna be useful if i redo yr 12)

Also i agree, although i love english i hate it in this situation but oh well.

ALSO TY FOR UR KIND WORDS ☹️

schools closing? like they just randomly shut down and told all you guys to find somewhere new? never heard that before lol

Also to what the guy said above, history is a very time-consuming subject since most people struggle with the sheer amount of content ( only heard about this with some friends, i dont take this btw) so i'd check up on the spec and topics before choosing them for y12.

What university you want to go and the grades you want to be predicted at largely determine your options. It wouldn't harm to continue to Y13 if you're satisfied with your anticipated results and you have a good university in mind, but bear in mind that the workload skyrockets

it mostly comes down to what you're most comfortable with

No problem!

I do AQA History, English Lit, and Textiles.

Not sure how much you know about A-level History but it consists of 2 courses, a breadth and depth study. So it kinda feels like 2 subjects, especially as you’ll probably study two countries (I do britain and russia) and they have 24 chapters each. I also think you should revise them differently, imo the depth study has more predictable questions. The depth study also has source questions, whilst breadth has extracts which are answered a bit differently and require some different skills.

So other than content, developing essay skills can also be challenging. You probably know with English, how it’s much more in depth at alevel than gcse. With history, the essay writing skills (i found) slowly develop across the 2 years. Since essays have no wrong answer (unlike maths and chem) I personally think those skills in general are harder. Obviously this varies and you may do fine.

With revision, I’ve gone through quite a lot of methods. I also did the flashcard thing at gcses, which I think is applicable for a level too. Over the 2 years, I’ve gone from chapter summaries, to spidergrams, to online flashcards, to handwritten thematic notes on evidence for breadth, and essay plans for depth. So its basically reducing content till you memorise as many specific dates and statistics as you can, whilst also knowing information. Then there’s obviously practicing essays. At gcse i think the essays were pretty easy if you knew content (using point evidence explanation structure) but since a level essays are more developed, they do require practice. Something that also gets revised is what points to make for essay questions, in which making essay plans is also something I do for revision.

I hope this doesn’t dissuade you though! I’m planning on doing history at uni and a level history really is interesting. Just wanted to let you know that it’s a content heavy subject, but people do manage it. At my school, people dropped out of english, but none have for history. I’m aiming for an A btw, if that gives you more perspective too. Since you’re good at English, you’d probably be good at History; writing this I realise how many similarities the two subjects have. Hope this helps and let me know if you have more questions! (i can go into even more depth)

ty soosososoososoos much for ur reply,

would u say that history is the subject u spend the most time on? also well done on aiming for an A i rlly hope u get it or even higher.
what type of school do u go to if u don't mind me asking like is it a state school or an independent (mines an independent so there's not that many ppl in my class- for english its only me ahahah so I'm r;lly scared that my grade will drop bc of the class sizes)

also r u in yr 12 or 13? (I'm assuming yr 13 AND IF SO GOOD LUCK SRSLY I HOPE U GET TO UR FIRM CHOCICE AND ACE EVERY EXAM AND EVERYTHING)

you’re welcome!!

I think probably, but to be fair I underestimated Textiles and probably should have put more time into it. I go to a state school, though it is a grammar, and my english class has 10 people after a few dropped out (2 dropped out after y12). I think class sizes depend a bit on the kind of school though, mines specialises in science, maths, and computing, so english is obviously less popular than those subjects at my school. There are two english classes though so it’s not just 10 out of the year group

you can probably tell now that i’m in y13 (unfortunately) and thank you

Good luck with finding a good school to go to!! i’m sure you’ll do great wherever you go