Failing midway through year 12. Please help

Don't give up. Reach out to your teachers and explain what you've written here. Say you want to go to uni but that you're struggling. Ask if they can help you develop a plan of action that will allow you to catch up. Also, modify your expectations. Whilst you may not achieve AAB, your year is still salvageable. The teachers will appreciate you being proactive and taking ownership of the situation. Also, by setting forth a plan to catch up, you'll hold yourself accountable and will be more likely to stick to the plan. Use COVID as a reason for the additional stress and not performing as well as you'd hope. Teachers will hopefully be compassionate, as this is a very unusual, once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.

I hope this helps. Good luck.

-Trained as a teacher

Don't give up.

I was in a similar boat. I wanted to do veterinary at university. I did fairly well at GCSE's not top of my class but decent. The first month of A levels was fine and then it went down hill. I took bio, Chem and geography. Geography was fine as I am quite good at it and enjoy it.
I struggled with biology because of how much there was to learn. The course itself wasn't too hard I just felt like I was drowning in the amount there was to learn.
My main issue was chemistry. I couldn't get through a lesson without sobbing (very disruptive to the class). I was actively told to give up on veterinary and to consider dropping chemistry. I was getting E's and U's and I need to get predicted an A to even apply to uni.

So first things first. Before you start really sorting things out. Complete all outstanding homework and all work from this week. Do this throughout the week and the weekend. Don't worry about other work just focus on catching up on work if you have anything outstanding.

Then look at your revision notes. Are you just rewriting your class notes neatly (which is what I did). Don't do that. It takes too much time and didn't help me. My advice would be to go through your notes or a textbook and make a list of what sections of a topic you understand, dont understand or need to work on. Talk to your teachers about how best to revise. My chemistry teacher suggested I get an A4 or A3 piece of paper and fill it with the most important facts that I needed to learn on each course and just go over that and keep making the list smaller and smaller until I felt confident. Then do past papers and revisions questions.

Go to your teachers. Ask them what they think you should be doing. I had weekly lunchtime sessions with all of my science teachers to help me get where I need to be.

Look at what course you want to do. If you are really struggling dont aim higher than the minimum requirements. That will just pile on too much stress. I'm going to presume that your uni course needs AAB. Just do what you need to get that. Right now you dont need to be getting AAB. You need to work towards getting BBC towards the end of the year. It is reasonable to presume you will go up a grade in every subject in a year with hard work. Then apply.

Use the summer to consolidate all of your year 12 stuff and make revision notes and stuff then to get ready for year 13.

The main point of all this waffle is that you need to make sure you dont have outstanding work, set realistic goals and talk to your teachers.

Don't give up!

I’m almost 6 months into year 12 now and still can’t get the hang of things.
I want to go to uni & I used to aim for AAB but i feel so hopeless now. When I do my best I still end up failing and it’s making me so anxious and stressed.
I don’t want to have to retake year 12, does anyone know how i can pick it up with 4-5 months to go before the end of this academic year? Or should i just give up right now?

WE'RE ON THE SAME BOAT. I'm in year 12 and I have almost 5-6 months of work to catch up on (basically everything from september).
1) clearly your revision technique is not working. DITCH THE NOTES we don't have time for that anymore especially biology & chemistry. this is what I recommend: re read over classnotes/powerpoints -> go to the specification and see what exactly you need to learn -> go to physicsmathstutor, youtube, textbook, student forum resources AND just try to understand it as best as you can. then at the end say a summary of everything you've gone over out loud. Then answer practise question NOT PAST PAPERS. the next day come back to the topic and try ACTIVE RECALL (search it up if you do not know) make a note of anything you struggled to recall/explain and go over it once again. then try practise questions & exam questions without looking at your notes. Mark your questions in a different colour and store in file/folder. Keep doing exam questions from wherever you can find do lots and lots and lots. Keep doing active recall, first one day later, then 2 days, then 4 days, then a week. After you have finished the topic, then consider making mindmaps/diagrams rather than written out notes.

2) TIME MANAGEMENT: We have so much to catch up on. I recommend spending 60% of your time catching and keeping up with present work by teachers and the rest of the time learning the old topics.

3) stay motivated, don't burn yourself out let yourself have breaks watch youtube be lazy as long as you're doing even 1 hour a day it is better than nothing

I’m almost 6 months into year 12 now and still can’t get the hang of things.
I want to go to uni & I used to aim for AAB but i feel so hopeless now. When I do my best I still end up failing and it’s making me so anxious and stressed.
I don’t want to have to retake year 12, does anyone know how i can pick it up with 4-5 months to go before the end of this academic year? Or should i just give up right now?

I'm taking biology, chemistry, maths and I originally wanted A*AA because I wanted to do dentistry but I don't think that's going to be the case especially because I did not really try on end of unit tests etc so I'm just PRAYING for AAA

Wow good luck! what are you getting now?

i got As and Bs for chem & maths but Cs & Ds for bio

Thank you so much! This has given me so much motivation.
I feel like i’m the only one stuck in this situation & knowing that someone else was here once too and managed to get out of it really helps to soothe the panic.
BBC by the end of this year is around what I was aiming for but I didn’t make that clear in the post, AAB was what I wanted for the end of year 13. I’ll look at other unis of course, but sometimes you see a course so perfect you don’t want to consider anything else.
Do you think a BBC is realistic goal by the end of this year? I’m averaging around Cs & Ds right now but maybe if i work really hard I might be able to get that up to Bs & Cs instead.

I’m glad it motivated you! I ended up getting into vet school and I’m starting uni in April so it’s definitely possible to turn it around. It’s definitely possible. If you keep on top of your work and try to get lunchtime sessions with your teachers then it’s possible. I went from a U student to a D student in about 4 months. Admittedly it was over summer but it is still possible. I find that going from C’s to B’s is one of the easiest jumps because the basic understanding is probably already there.

Make a plan with your teachers about how they think you can do it and just work really hard. I used to get stressed in lessons a lot and it’s not worth it. So work hard but avoid stress. I would stop listening in lessons because it was more productive for me to go over certain stuff either teachers at the end of lessons.

So it’s definitely possible but don’t work yourself up over it. You can persuade teachers to predict you higher grades if you make a good argument and show an improvement so it’s totally possible. Just get to a stage where they give you the predictions you need then work super hard over summer and year 13.

You’ll be great!

That’s amazing! Thank you so much and congratulations! What did you end up getting in your a levels in the end if you don’t mind me asking? & how much work did you do a day so I have something to base my own study time off of?