ABOUT TO FAIL A’LEVELS!- What next?

Plenty of students get BBD in A levels would not be the end of the world by any means. No need to pull him out or restart, but just keep going with the poorest subject.

Ds's school forced him to restart one of his A levels in Year 13 because he didn't get the minimum C to progress to Year 13 (No ASes, internal exams) He did a subsidiary Btec as an one year A level subsitute and did very well in it, top marks, but really what he should have been encouraged to do was continue in the D level A level. If he had achieved 3 Cs that would not have been the end of the world. He ended up with 2 Cs and a Distinction Star in Btec, which is fine for his course, but for later life I think it would have been better to just plod on with the A level he had started. Very boring having to explain the Btec to most unis in applications, some had not heard of it, and Glasgow outright rejected those with Btec as part of predicted grades (in the subsidiary)

If he can get his Maths from an E to a D or a C that would be still worth something. BBC is perfectly respectable.

He’s not going to fail his exams though. He’s on course for perfectly adequate A level grades in two subjects: possibly really good grades if he pulls his socks up. The problem is maths.

I think you need advice from school about whether they think he does have potential to get a passing grade and is just screwing up or whether he’s genuinely reached his limits. Science courses are a buyers’ market so if he can get that grade even up to a D then there might be possibilities. I’m speaking here as the parent of a child whose GCSE maths went from 6 in January mocks to a solid 9 in the real thing so it is possible, but not for everyone.

What were the school's Y12 exams like? At the selective independent school where I teach, the Y12 exams are deliberately pitched above the level of AS and are much more like the A level will be in level and, sometimes, content. We are usually happy to predict pupils who get B grades in these exams As in their A2s because we know we're stretching them in Y12, especially in science and maths subjects.

Has the school explained how the internal exams were set and graded?

I don't pretend it was just the course- but I think it helped her understand some tricky things and also changed her mindset so she was more positive about the exams.

She is pretty numerate but was highly focused on her social life and drama !!

Yes maths.

One DD went up from a D in AS mock to an A at AS on one of those intensive two-day courses.

In maths?

One DD went up from a D in AS mock to an A at AS on one of those intensive two-day courses. She was coasting before. She was motivated to do well in the public exams though and it kick started her revision. I think she'd just been ignoring all the things she didn't understand before that!

If he’s bright he can catch up. Have the conversation about whether he’s prepared to make the effort and if he is then get tutors. Online through something like Alpha tutors. Face to face from local recommendation. Book him into half term and Christmas crammers like Cherwell college.
Get school to provide more structure and supervision with added tuition.
Remove blocks to work. No internet except for working until he’s completed 2 hours work a night minimum. Ask house staff or tutor to check what’s happening in study periods.

No food until assignments done well. No lie ins at weekends until he pulls socks up. Sport is good though, in moderation.
Reward for full weeks hard work - pizza or something on a Saturday night.
It can be done. We dragged our son from poor AS results overall to 4As at A2. Goodness it was hard work though and he now says he’ll be forever grateful that we took a hard line.

You will need to fund a BTEC

Not if you go this year - its free until 19. Colleges around here are still enrolling so if he wants to go and him wanting to go is the key here, then I would choose a 2 year extended diploma. The top grade of D D D attracts the same ucas points as 3 x A at A level. Lots of universities take them.

DD dropped put after he second year of A levels doing Maths, Biology and Geography. She was suffering with anxiety and depression. She actually got AAB at AS levels but the cost was too high for her mental health. The college tried to press her to finish her Alevels but she wasn't able to do that at the time. She enrolled in a Extended BTEC in Applied Science and is doing well. I don't know about 'easy' - she certainly seems to be working very hard but without the big looming exam stress of A levels she is much happier. I know the tutor looks at the assessment she hands in and she gets a chance to amend them after that before final submission.

She is hoping for DDD at least and is planning to go to university to study Bio Sciences. So far so good. I guess it's horses for courses but it suits DD.

Well he has chosen pretty hard A levels.
What did he get for those subjects at GCSE?
Ds's school say they need an A* or an 8/9 to do Maths A level. It is a huge jump, hence the new curriculum, too late for your ds.

What does he say about it all? Is he really lazy or is it beyond him? If he is set on uni then I would be looking at starting his A levels again. Which A levels are a requirement for computer science?

What KeneftYakimoski said about parking the university issue and focussing on A levels or similar for now. As a few posters said, your DS current problems will be barriers and precursors of further problems at university, so you need to really identify the barriers for his success now and remove them as much as possible first, and then re-evaluate his path to the suitable career.

I had to grapple with similar questions for my DS, however due to trauma and health problems, not attitude. But some of it might be relevant. The lack of work and effort thing could be a psychological reaction, anxiety and denial due to GCSEs not being as high as he expected. Loss of confidence. That in turn could be because he feels he knows all the answers and can do all those questions, but somehow in the exam hall it does not happen. If this is roughly accurate, why it doesn't happen is the real question.

For us the answer was obvious from DS's particular circumstances. You need to put your finger on what is really going on for your son. Did you get copies of his exam papers and discussed with teachers where, how and why does he lose marks? They seem to think he has the ability, they must have an insight. How does he explain what is going on in exams and why his marks are not what he hoped for?

Your DS seem to be drawn to logical and quantitative subjects, yet struggles with maths, which is contradictory. Does he have some specific blockages and a good underlying ability? My DS, as I said in different circumstances, had some odd selective blockages for some units of his Further Maths A lelels, while getting A* on other units. He could do some more difficult maths, but would go 'off line' when he saw some specific topics. We had to deal with those blockages, panic, 'escapism' before he could progress to uni.

And also this
You presumably pay for a phone, a console, a Netflix subscription......(insert thing he does actually give a toss about here). It’s time to introduce some performance related pay.

I agree that there’s a disconnect between BTEC style learning and a degree. But a BTEC in the hand followed by no degree is a better outcome than no A levels AND no degree.

A lot of BTEC students continue on to a HND, which is equivalent to the first two years of a degree. Then they do one year at university to top up to a degree. The style of classroom based learning and coursework for HND is the same as BTEC, so students receive a lot of support. Then they only have one year of traditional university to cope with. And worst case scenario, if they fail that one year at university they still walk away with a HND.

What are your son's interests? What subjects was he good at in the past?

thank you BigBlue. Sounds like BTEC could suit DS very well, and I can sell it to him as NOT lots of revision & homework which is what he struggles with.

kids who struggle to motivate themselves to work usually do better on BTEC and gain higher grades. The work is done in the classroom with the guidance of the teacher, there’s no final exam to cram for, instead the work is done a little bit each week and contributes to the final grade

Which is great. But what happens if they then go to a traditional university where much of the work is done outside the lecture theatre, most of the lectures are to 100+ students, the assessment is mostly by final exam, and such continuous assessment as there is represents only a small part of the total load and certainly not enough to outweigh doing badly in the rather larger weight of exams? How do people who struggled to cram and pass exams while living at home and supported by both parents and teachers do on their own at the end of the first year? Not well, unfortunately, is the all too common answer.

This constant support and tutoring is much more effective than the A level approach of “study at home and do an exam at the end”

But is entirely unlike a traditional university, which is precisely "study at home and do an exam at the end". As I say, you can say it shouldn't be like this, and I may well agree with you, but it is a cold hard fact: switching from A Level to BTEC in order to raise your grades and therefore get into a "better" university may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory if you in the process end up at a university which is much more exam-focused than the one you would otherwise have gone to.

I'm a huge fan of continuously assessed degrees and think that in many fields they are immensely better both as education and as training, so there is no snobbery on my part: but MN education forums are often focussed on Russell Group, older universities and it is a fact that final exams are much more likely to be an issue there than at some other institutions.

BTEC is all classroom work, no self-directed revision at home? Is that true?

If the classroom work isn’t completed the student will be told to finish it at home. But it’s perfectly possible to do it all in the classroom if you get on with it and don’t mess about.

It used to be 100% classroom based but a couple of years ago they introduced exams, so there is a bit of revision to do now. Still, the exams are only small ones (nothing like A level) and are spaced throughout the year and done in the classroom with the usual teacher.

I thought btecs included exams/timed assessments now.

It’s absolute madness that the head said they’d predict a B in maths A-level for a kid who got an A at GCSE and an E/U in Y12. There wasn’t any disaster at exam time, he got what he deserved and it would be hard work to get that up to even a D or a C. He’s also lazy.

Either your plans need to involve restarting maths from scratch, or dropping it.

BTEC is all classroom work, no self-directed revision at home? Is that true?

In my experience, kids who struggle to motivate themselves to work usually do better on BTEC and gain higher grades. The work is done in the classroom with the guidance of the teacher, there’s no final exam to cram for, instead the work is done a little bit each week and contributes to the final grade. If a student falls behind the teacher will intervene, parents will be contacted and a plan put in place to help them catch up. This constant support and tutoring is much more effective than the A level approach of “study at home and do an exam at the end”. By the time a kid fails an exam a year has gone by and it’s already too late. In BTEC it would never have got that far because the kid’s lack of work would have been flagged up and dealt with after a couple of weeks.

I don't agree with all Keneft's comments above, but the suggestion of holding off on the UCAS application seems worth considering. If he hates coursework and is a bit lazy but seems likely to pass at least 2 of his A levels, it sounds better to try and rescue as much as he can than to start again doing a course with loads of coursework.

From comments, it also sounds as if he either needs to get to grips with Maths to get on to and do well in the kind of university course he currently has in mind, or to consider alternative options.

What school says doesn't sound as if they're trying to manage him out.

The ucas deadline is not October for all. You can even apply after the May offer deadline, although choice may be more limited. Speak to school, see if Maths is recoverable and get a tutor on board if they think so and ds is motivated to work hard on it. Have known a few repeat lower 6th, although more so when AS were involved. Would his timetable enable him to do so for Maths?