Elizabeth I spent the day in Edinburgh on Friday as she had an exam in the afternoon so we went down the night before, had a wee wander around the city in the morning, then headed off to the exam.
Elizabeth is doing A-levels at Queen’s online school, studying maths, further maths and computer science. She already has half an A-level under her belt, for which she was awarded an A*, for an EPQ project she completed in her first year.
The school is fantastic. The class sizes are small, the teachers are all really good, and the head teacher knows and cares about all the pupils. In Elizabeth’s further maths class she’s currently the only student You can’t get a better teacher-student ratio than that.
Online school is working really well for Elizabeth because she has so many extracurricular activities with her violin, dancing, singing, and musical theatre. She likely wouldn’t have time for all of these if she were doing a regular 8-3 school day. All the extracurriculars also mean she’s not isolated and alone at home, which is sometimes a concern with online schooling. She’s also getting a very well-rounded education: while her academic studies are entirely STEM-based, she has all the music, dance and theatre alongside them.
The only downside, especially as we are in Scotland, is we have to find somewhere for her to sit A-level exams. This has not been easy and had I known from the outset how difficult it would be we might not have gone down this route.
In Scotland students sit Highers and Advanced Highers rather than A-levels, so . Elizabeth can’t simply join students at a regular school for her exams. While there are general exam centres in England that take private candidates for A-level exams there are none in Scotland for the particular exam board her subjects fall under.
I won’t bore you with the details other than to say there’s a Cambridge exam board and a Pearson Edexcel exam board and to complicate matters further, Pearson have domestic and international versions of their exams.
I think I should be awarded an A-level just for figuring it all out.
Eventually we found a private school in Edinburgh whose students sit A-levels and which also accepts private exam candidates. So down we went for Elizabeth’s first computer science exam last Friday. She thinks she did pretty well.
We had the morning to ourselves so we walked up to the castle then down the Royal Mile.
We also checked out Old Fishmarkets Close, which fans of The Magnus Archives will know as the setting for the very first episode of the podcast.
It was a bit eery!
There was a lovely woodland near the school where we had lunch before it was time for Elizabeth to head to her exam.
Afterwards, we had a bit of time before our train back to Aberdeen, so we had an early dinner at a delightful vegan place called Pulse, which is in the crypt of St John’s church at the far west end of Princes Street.
They have a nice outdoor seating area overlooking the valley beneath the castle.
I took photographs of our meals because they were so delicious. I highly recommend this place if you’re in Edinburgh. Elizabeth pointed out that vegan restaurants are much more creative with food and I think she might be right.
We even had time to walk along Princes Street then up Calton Hill ,which is something I’ve not done before.
Not a bad way to spend an exam day in Edinburgh.
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