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Student Consultations

Personal Tutor One-to-One

Every student at QMC meets regularly with their personal tutor on a one-to-one basis to review their progress. The aims of these meetings are:

• To help you to succeed in college by monitoring your progress
• To agree action plans that build on your strengths and help you to improve in any areas which you find difficult
• To provide an opportunity to discuss any other issues that are causing you concern

You will have a meeting roughly once a month in tutor time (12.40-1.10 every day). In addition we hold a progress review day every October, to check that all students have settled in and are on the right course. These are supplemented with regular parents' evenings and a student progress review day, dates of which are published in the student handbook, termly mailings and on Viewpoint and the website. Further information is also posted/distributed in tutor sessions immediately prior to each parents' evening.

Subject and Personal Tutor Reviews

You will have regular opportunities to talk to your tutor and to your subject teachers on an individual basis, and should feel able to approach them at any time. At the beginning of each half term you should make an appointment to talk to your tutor as part of the tutorial programme.

In addition, there is also a more formal review process in place, designed to help you to reflect on your progress and design an appropriate action plan. The first settling-in check will take place at the end of September. At this stage any areas of concern can be raised with your tutor and hopefully resolved!

In November and March further “census point” review data is gathered from all your tutors, and collated by your personal tutor, who will then discuss all of your subjects with you. You will put together an action plan in order to improve your performance, and will grade various aspects of your progress according to the indicators which are explained below.

Some of the indicators are produced by the college system or by your tutor. For effort, deadlines, and involvement you should consider how you feel you have achieved on a 1 – 4 scale using the guidance given. You will be asked to fill in subject and personal tutor review sheets, which will aid discussions and help reflection. These sheets will be filed in your Progress File, and can be shared with teachers and with parents/guardians.

The areas to consider are:

• Your overall aim and goals and whether they have changed since you began at College.
• Your main strengths in your subjects.
• Issues that have arisen from the work that you have been doing.
• Any specific work that needs to be undertaken in preparing for exams or completing coursework.
• Any key skills work that will be undertaken as part of the course.
• Things that have changed since the last review and whether you have acted on the targets and actions that you put on your last review

Remember, that in addition to the support your teachers and tutor can provide, the Skills Centre in the library annexe can also help.
 

The Six Indicators

Minimum Target Grade
Your GCSE results give us an indication of your ability. For several years both nationally, and at the College there has been intensive research into the connection between a student’s GCSE results and the results that a student achieves on a specific A level. This research has now also been extended into other qualifications. We can therefore produce graphs showing the connection between your GCSE results and what you should at least achieve in a particular subject. It will not necessarily be the same for all subjects. We use this as a starting point to see what you should be aiming to achieve as an absolute minimum.

Final Target Grade
This is the result that your subject tutor feels you could achieve at the end of the course taking into account the work that you have been doing.

Attendance and Punctuality (%age)
All classes are registered. A student’s attendance and punctuality percentages from one review to the next will be produced by the College systems according to the daily registers.

For the next three categories you will be given a grade from 1(excellent) to 4 (poor). You may find the following descriptors helpful:

Deadlines
1. Always hands work in on time
2. Usually hands work in on time
3. Frequently hands work in late
4. Always hands work in late

Effort
1. Always uses initiative, plans study and reads around the subject
2. Fulfills tasks without further reading
3. Occasionally fulfills tasks set, doesn't read around the subject
4. Work is often incomplete: disorganised student

Involvement
1. Always takes an active interest in the subject
2. Usually takes an active interest in the subject
3. Occasionally takes an active interest in the subject
4. Never takes an active interest in the subject