Wednesday evening and the following Saturday morning, the same meeting twice, so a parent from another island can reach one of them.
The meetings about subject combinations for grades eleven and twelve are on Wednesday of next week at eight in the evening, and again on the Saturday morning after it at nine. They are the same meeting and you need only come to one.
Why twice. About a third of our grade ten families live on another island and cannot reach a weekday evening meeting. Holding it once and posting a summary was what this school used to do, and the summary was read by almost nobody. Two meetings cost us an hour and get four times the attendance.
What will be covered. The four combinations, which are physical sciences with mathematics, life sciences, business and accounting, and humanities with languages. What each one leads to and, more importantly, what each one closes off, because the combination chosen at sixteen decides what can be applied for at eighteen and most families do not learn that until it is too late to change.
The careers teacher will be there for both meetings with the current requirements, rechecked this year, for the courses our students most often go on to. Requirements move, and we will not read out something from two years ago.
What we will say plainly, so that nobody hears it for the first time in the room. This school will not take a student into a combination the assessment says they are not ready for. Two years of failing is a worse outcome than a year spent repairing grade ten mathematics, and where that is the position we will say so to the family in person, with the paper in front of us, and offer the alternative.
What to bring. The last two reports and any questions in writing, because a written question always gets a better answer than one asked in a full hall.
After the meetings, any family may ask for a conversation with the form teacher, and we will offer one to every family whose student is borderline rather than waiting to be asked. Combination forms are due at the end of the following month, and a form handed in on the last afternoon without any of this having happened is the one thing we would ask families to avoid.
