Help with Re-Sit fees - A Level

JPR

My son did not do so well at AS Level last summer. Decided to re-sit these plus carry on with A2 course.

He is facing (well, us I guess) a bill for over £100 in re-sit exam fees for January. No mention of this back in September but it could put many parents and students off.
Anyone know of any specific financial help for this sort of expense.

Karnam

where is he taking these? my school sixth form encouraged resitting modules at a/s level and never charged a fee!!

JPR

Hastings in East Sussex. I will try to find out if it is school policy or county council.

gizmoleeds

My college charged, but the fee was set by the exam boards and is usually around £12.50 - so is he resitting 8 exams? :eek:

The fee is there becasue that is what the school is charged. It is to discourage students resitting just for the sake of it in case they get a better grade.

Savvy_Sue

My son resat one or two modules and we had to pay. But I think it was in his 6th form handbook.

If it's going to cause you hardship I'd say it was worth talking to the school: they are probably keen for him to improve his grades, BUT they may say that they pay the original entry fees, not for resits. If there were good reasons for him not doing so well - illness, difficult family stuff etc - then they may be friendlier about it. Less likely if it was just a case of him not realising how hard he'd got to work at AS level ...

megsykins

My school sixth form allowed the first re-sit free, after that, the student / parents had to pay the exam board's charges.
The college I worked at had different rules for over and under 19s (due to different funding from LEA) if I remember, under 19s only had to pay the exam board charge and over 19s had a £5 admin charge from the college on top.
The college had a hardship fund which could be applied to for any justifiable reason; this would be a good reason and a grant to cover the charges would usually be approved.

The charges from the exam boards aren't massive though.

pavlovs_dog

megsykins wrote:

My school sixth form allowed the first re-sit free, after that, the student / parents had to pay the exam board's charges.

this was the same at my school too.

in a way, i think its fair cop. compulsary education finishes at 16, if you are sitting a levels its because you have CHOSEN to be there. if you do badly in exams becuase you cannot be bothered to work hard enough, why should the school use their resources to fund you? if you mess up at uni and have to resit, its you that has to foot the bill, why should 6th form be any different it that respect? it is there as a deterrent to the people who attempt to cruise their way to the final year without really lifting a finger.

its a bit different if you are from a poor background in an affluent feeder area and would be denied the chance to improve your grade because you cant afford to pay, or have done badly for medical/family reasons.


i re-sat a few A Level modules, one or two to get the best possible mark, for getting the best possible marks sake (subjects pertaining to my field of study at degree), others to create a positive deficit to compensate for my weakness in other modules of a subject. i didnt have to pay because i never did more than one re-sit of a module, but if i was in a position where i would have had to pay to do so, i would have done so, on the grounds that it was an investment for my future academic life and career.

that said, with most a2 modules(ie last year of a levels), you only get the one go at it and people seem to do ok, which perhaps ints that resits arent always a good idea anyway

lellie

we resit first time for free.. second time they charged £25 which basically covered BOTH resits! somewhat of a discouragement and really makes you revise for the resit! only resat in physics to bring up my mark.. well worth it.. went from an average C in some papers at AS to a high A I didn't think an A in physics was achievable..

I think it's fair enough really.. a lot of people don't seem to try as they know they can just resit everything the following year.

JPR

Thanks for all the above. Yes, it was partly a matter of not so much hard work but it was a shock not knowing this in advance.

If we had a pound for every time a teacher did not turn up for lessons over the last 4 terms then the fees would have been paid - but that's another story......

pavlovs_dog

if you feel that teachers going AWOL has had a detrimental effect on your son's results, and the school has not made adequate provision to accommodate this, why not write to the school and ask them to take this into account before they charge students for re-sits?

Savvy_Sue

Agree absolutely with pd, must be hard to keep motivated and start working if the teachers aren't turning up!

It might also be worth considering selectively which modules to resit (if it's not too late, don't know what the deadline is) and only doing those where there's a really good chance of him (pulling his finger out and) doing well, or where it's going to make a difference because he's weak in the other modules he's taking, IYSWIM.