Has anyone been in situation where their child is terrible at creative writing and has still passed the 11+? We are worried our child won't get any offers, including from the safety school, because his creative writing is so poor. He consistently scores very, very low which takes his entire average down.
He's an avid reader yet it doesn't translate to his writing. We do everything teachers have suggested we do over the years. We read with him to check his comprehension. He has a Descriptisaurus and multiple fun books/flashcards to help expand his vocabulary. He has attended creative writing workshops (which he's enjoyed but his writing doesn't improve) and enlisted the help of tutors (they remain stumped on how to help him). He understands what good writing needs to include but, even with a checklist, he won't bother including any of it. SPAG goes out the window (as he'll rush to get it over with) and he will write a few sentences along the lines of "The boy did this. Then he did that. Then this happened.". To the extent he manages to include adjectives, they don't make any sense whatsoever. E.g. an apple will be a blue, fluffy apple rather than a round, green apple. We simply don't get it. Basic spelling (of v off, where v were) will be wrong though he will easily correct them afterwards. At the time of writing, he simple doesn't care enough to use the right one.
With the 11+ a few weeks away, we're not confident at all that he'll get anything. Not even his safety school which we're not even that keen on. State schools aren't an option as we don't qualify for any of those closest to us as we don't meet the religious criteria.
Thing is, he's a bright lad. His CAT score is high (e.g. 136 for Maths). In terms of cognitive ability, it's there. But he simply won't apply what he's been taught in creative writing. He understands why it's important but, if we practice at home, he has a meltdown and will cry and refuse to have a go. Even with simple 10 min writing exercises where we write together. He has ADHD but we don't think this fully explains how terrible he is at creative writing or the lack of willingness to even have a go. The teachers keep saying he needs to find his motivation but they've been saying this since Year 1 and now the 11+ is round the corner.
Off loading here as we are now despairing. We are already struggling to put in the work around both parents working full time and a busy school day and activities. We want to retain a balance where he isn't just studying. So on top of not feeling like we're doing enough, we feel quite overwhelmed now that his creative writing hasn't improved one bit in the last two years. He's just had mock exams and he only wrote a few sentences in 30 minutes. They said they couldn't award him many marks because there wasn't much on the paper as he'd only bothered to write one paragraph.
Does anyone know if it's possible to get 11+ offers even if a student scores terribly in creative writing? I know it's common for boys to do less well in this area. Unfortunately, he's consistently inconsistent so we can't rely on him scoring high enough in the other areas to raise his overall average. Feeling quite overwhelmed right now.