On friday we went to meet the exams officer where we are hoping SB will do her igcse exams this summer. Unfortunately she was off sick, but I have to say it caused me to have a fluttering of panic! Not real, real, panic, but that – OMGsh what have we started! We are first timers to these exams. Obviously DH and I went through the UK system, but we did O-levels – that dates us! – and we were in school, so the whole curriculum and prepping for it etc was outsourced. now, we are ‘in charge’ of helping, scaffolding and encouraging SB to do the best that she can, and it is a weighty responsibility.
Deep breaths really! However, it did make me pull an Arnold Rimmer 
and redo the schedule as we had run a bit behind on the geography, and hence we ended up with the new ticksheet below. Also, although we have ‘outsourced’ classical civ, I realised that I was feeling anxious and out of the loop about the plan and progress.
SO then SB, DH and I discussed this, and the plan is that most weeks she will do an exam questions with one of us on each subject [bar French - also outsourced!] where we help her plan the answer and format and she says what she knows and we look it up to craft what we all think is a good answer before looking at the mark sheet. Gradually we will do less of the planning / crafting and hopefully she will need less looking up.
By the end of Feb she will have finished both the geog and biol books and we can then be doing revision and paper practice. This makes me feel more confident, although there is a huge amount to learn! French I am not so worried about, as she has a tutor, and her basic french is good. Classical civ I still feel exposed over, but we will see!
The bottom line, though, is that we are taking these early to see if we can do them successfully at home and to spread the exam load – especially since she might want to do en famille again next year. So if it really doesn’t work out, it isn’t a disaster. I think it is going to be OK tho, SB is a clever girl, who although she has inherited the doing it tomorrow gene sees she wants to do this, and i am sure she will.