To be at my wit's end with DS?

My grandson got 10 x9s at GCSE. One was Maths. He started out with 4 A levels and dropped one at AS level. He struggled with A level maths and it was one he really needed for the UNi course he wanted A level maths really is different to GCSE. He didn't get the grade he needed so had to take his second option uni offer. Maybe more useful to stop at AS and pick up another subject to get an AS stressing wont help him much

Thank you for the disclaimer.

Of course they do. I didn't think we had to put that disclaimer on every post.

Disclaimer: The thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own and may differ from that of other people.

You are one employer. Other views differ.

My son is yr 13 and turned 18 in dec, since he went back to college in sept I made the decision to take a back seat, whereas previously I’d make sure he was up to get there on time, question him about homework etc
There’s only so much you can do and as they become adults they have to take responsibility, I know it’s frustrating sometimes re their lack of focus, my ds overslept this morning and missed college, he’s gone in for this afternoon but I find it so bloody infuriating he can’t just get up on time, he can manage it for work as he’s getting paid!

Good luck OP.

Is there a different subject he could swap to? My DS did so at Easter of that year - dropped physics took photography. It worked. It was project based but he caught up. He also had dyslexia.

He then did a 1 year access course whilst deciding if he wanted to do Uni, and what course.

There’s time to work things out, and it’s ok not to stick to the usual sausage chain route. Let him breathe a little, explore a little. There will always be a solution, and having the social skills and work experience will stand him in good stead.

My children are/were in English grammar and they just did year 12 predictors.

My son sat them last year. They definitely exist here (Wales)!

I’d say if he’s better at the practical BTEC stuff and failing the A Level, perhaps he isn’t academic and should be pursuing an apprenticeship? Not every child is destined to go to uni and there’s no shame in that.

I'm unsure if ASs still actually exist. I know schools still do predictor exams.

Will he be doing AS levels this summer? They can be a really useful wake up call to how much work is needed to do well.

Strong disagree - maths A Level is hard. And I say that as someone who got full marks on one of the maths A Level papers and has a maths degree. On one of the papers I got the worst grade I’ve ever got on an exam and got an E. I’m someone with natural mathematical ability and who thrives in exams (hence the full marks) and still struggled with some of the syllabus (I still got an A in the end), and I came into it with an A from GCSE.

If you don’t have incredibly strong foundations and motivation and interest to learn difficult concepts, you’ll struggle to succeed in a Maths A Level.

OP, what are you sons options like if he fails Maths - what routes will the practical A Level and BTEC offer him? I suspect there will be some viable options in there, and honestly I’d let the Maths go if he can focus on that.

Honestly as an employer I couldn't care less how resilient someone was in getting a qualification that was irrelevant to the job they are trying to get. Being ever so resilient and scraping a C in maths A level will mean bog all if it isn't needed for his next step.

Best thing for anyone to do is work out what your next step is and do what you need to do to get there. That's it.

Part of doing well in the world of work, in whatever category, is learning and demonstrating the ability to take responsibility, be resilient when life is tough -and play too.
He needs to take responsibility for his studies.

My eldest was incredibly bright and capable at primary school, but stopped applying himself at secondary and lost interest. His behaviour at school was great, he just was not motivated to put in any effort at home or to pursue any kind of academic goals. He left school during early Covid with little in the way of formal qualifications and I was at my wits’ end.

Six years, a college course, and two apprenticeships later he’s a qualified engineer with a lucrative job and great career prospects. I have never once had to haul him out of bed or have raging arguments to get him out the door in the morning. It turns out not everyone is like me, we all have different goals and motivators, and me trying to shoehorn him into the academic path I followed was futile. That boy was a lesson to me (as was his brother, who is studying Law at a highly respected university, having completed his later secondary education at college after hating school)

Maths isn't the big deal people think it is so as long as it's not a requirement for whatever he wants to do next, he should drop it. It's a dreadfully demotivating subject if it's not your thing and knocks on to other areas of life. My son is now a very successful software engineer without higher maths and earning in the top %age of earners. Don't sweat it, school isn't the be all and end all, there's plenty of other ways to get into whatever career he wants.

He sounds a lot like my DS at that age in terms of his life, priorities and attitude.

Ultimately, DS does not want to fail but doesn't care about achieving anything more than that. We ended up deciding to completely disengage from all reminders/cajoling him to study, and in the end he just did things his own way and scraped by. This meant quite a few scary intermediary failures (which actually helped buck him up a bit), but ultimately when it counted he did a lot of last minute revision and just about passed everything when it mattered.

There's no point trying to get him to do "the best he can" because he doesn't care enough to want to and we can't make him. This is true of a school setting, there are other areas in life where he will push himself and wants to achieve more than the minimum, e.g. the gym and another activity he does.

Long time ago, but this was me. Complicated by my moving school at 6th form and not having the same maths background the others did. I switched to Statistics after 3months and did much better.

So both your children are ND? What kind of assessment have they had? My son was diagnosed with DCD/Dyspraxia at 10 years and did fairly OK with GCSEs, using a laptop and being allowed extra time. However, long story short, it was a bit of a disaster after that and we spent several years getting to the bottom of the problem. He has now been diagnosed with ADHD and starting medication has had a transformational effect on his ability to study and organise his life. I would look into further assessment as dyslexia may not be the end of the story.

If he got a 5 or 6 for gcse maths I am not surprised he is struggling. At all the local schools near where we live kids have to have a min of a 7 to be accepted for A level maths. My son went to a grammar school and got an 8 for GCSE maths ... his careers counsellor advised him against doing A level maths unless he loved maths so he picked PE and both enjoyed it and did well in it.
Lots of his grammar school friends continued to do maths a level and many struggled. Its a very hard A level.

If he doesn't do well in maths but still wants to go to uni there are uni foundation courses that basically repeat a level maths and do other things. My friends son did this at plymouth uni to prep for an engineeering course I think

You can only do so much. At his age it's up to him to step up and sort his life and future out.

Suggest you consider taking a step back and if he fails maths, he may learn a tough but important life lesson!

He sounds like a normal 17 year old. Does he actually enjoy maths A Level? I ask because you say he is doing ok on the non a level subjects so perhaps he is more suited to them.

My son is in final year of college and to be fair his priorities are his car, gym, football and work. College is somewhere on that list but he is sailing through it and on top grades because he enjoys his course.

I dont put pressure on him and I tell him its his life and he makes his decisions. It seems to have worked as he has 2 unconditional uni offers for September.

I had the same approach with his 21 year old brother who is in his 3rd year of a degree apprenticeship.

Sometimes the more we preach to them, the more they push back.

Haha! Another yr 12 solidarity here and I’ve been through it before with my now 19 year old.
DD just says ‘mum, everyone did badly in that test. You don’t understand’ or blames the teachers not teaching it properly. Hmmmm….

But ultimately, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. I do still reiterate the same things and want to make sure she has options to do anything she chooses but it never works.

Ironically my DS now lectures her on the same thing as he realises I was right all along. Funny that. And how if he’d worked harder he could’ve at a better uni etc etc

What I would say is also that in our current era, I actually thinks it’s more important that your children are active, sociable, have good mental health and a work ethic for actual work (even if it’s to fund a hobby to begin with!). Soft skills/social skills are going to be of such huge importance. He’s showing himself to be balanced in his life and that’s huge. I know a lot of super academic kids who have never held a part time job, have no common sense and have terrible mental health and don’t communicate. But they’re studying at top unis and got 9s at gcse…

Would I like my kids to apply themselves more? Yes. Absolutely. And to reach their full potential. But there’s also many ways to skin a cat and if he’s showing you all the great stuff now, it will happen, just in a different way or at a slightly different time.

I would encourage him to go to uni open days over the summer, to get an idea of what options are available.

I think it's also worth him talking to careers advice people at sixth form to check what the current thinking is on C and D grades at A level. My fear is they might look worse than not taking the subject at all, but I'm not up to speed on the current thinking. Can he downgrade the A level to an AS in maths / statistics? And maybe pick up another qualification in September?

It's also worth him talking to the SENCO or equivalent around the accessibility of teaching materials for maths - I bet it's not very dyslexia friendly. It ought to be possible for him to access the textbooks in alternative formats as a print disabled student so he can get the text books as Word documents and adjust the formatting to his preferences. I suspect screen readers don't handle maths well but worth checking in case it's easier for him to learn with a computer reading to him.