Daughter not being allowed to sit A-level?

[MellowSnail]

DD got 7s to 9s at GCSE at her current private school

Unfortunately in 6th form she got disrupted by boy issues.

She initially was doing maths, biology, and psychology, but maths was downgraded to AS, and finally dropped.

She is now due to sit biology and psychology, but the school don't think she should sit biology, having scored Es consistently in mocks. Her psychology is at C.

She has an offer of 32 pts for foundation psychology, so can do that with a C or two Es.

Her other offers are typically 2 Cs, so a C and an E or D wouldn't realistically help. (She has an AA non-foundation offer)

Her exams are

psych 1 16 May
Psych 2 21 may
Bio 1 5 June
Psych 3 9 June
Bio 2 13 June
Bio 3 18 June

She has been of the opinion that she will improve. However her attendance is very poor and reasonably this is in doubt.

The school have said:

Come into school (when others are on study leave) and the psych teacher will help you one to one until the end of exams.
Drop biology.

This makes some sense as she might therefore do better in psychology. However it might be she is lazy and doesn't want to go into school idk.

Anyway, can anyone advise:

1. Can we insist that she does biology? ultimately if she's informed of the consequences it is her decision to make
2. Is she likely to get anywhere with, say, 1 A in psychology, and no other A-levels, in clearing? I.e. is the school's suggestion/decision in her interests?

sit both exams
If you think autistic get her assessed after exam period but before results. Lots of unis accept lower grades for a late diagnosis of autism.
sounds like she’s being a bit abandoned though which can also be written down on her uni application to help with leeway ie She’s been told she needs to leave home by Sept

I wouldn’t let my dd sit if this was her prediction with previous good grades. Send her to college to do her a levels next year.

This.

I want to repeat - shame on you.

What the heck 😮

Maybe she got with a bad crowd because her parents aren’t great people and she’s unhappy 🤷‍♀️

I get this has been difficult but I echo others re: Shame on you both.

If the mother wont step up or can't continue any longer you really need to.

You are setting her up for failure forcing her out at 18. It will impact her whole life probably.

She needs good family support and a resit year.

> No wonder she can't concentrate on her exams if her parents are kicking her out whether she goes to uni or not.

No, nobody has said that she is being kicked out.

She has been asked from some months ago if she wants to not go to uni. She said "I want to go to uni".

The hope is that at uni she will grow up.

Her mother does have an attitude of "thou shalt graft", and she gets frustrated when DD doesn't do this.

Therefore it doesn't appear to any of us that it would be a good idea for her to stay at home next year.

Okay so if there is ?ASD there is enough going on that even if she is not ND then you should put in place some of the strategies and scaffolding that you would for a child with a diagnosis.

First thing to grasp... ND kids tend to operate at around 3 years behind chronological age in terms of executive function skills. It helps to remind yourself of that when you are packing your teenager's bag for school the night before.

Secondly. Some things will be can't, some things will be won't. You've probably got some PDA tendencies in there too.

Yes, it's all load of fun and you have fantasies of just leaving them to get on with things... and THEN THEY WILL LEARN. Nope, they won't.You just have more pieces to pick up.

You do not have to go to university at 18.
There are many paths to the desirable outcome.

Getting 2 A levels and going to a low-offer university for a very popular course is GOING TO BE A DISASTER.

I can quite imagine your child is not easy to live with (I have one of my own) but you don't get to give up on her this easily.

Find a plan that gets her out in the world to grow up for a few years and then resit the A levels - or, with her GCSEs do an access course - and then try university again.

> For the school to suggest this Op, they really must be of the very strong belief that a pass is incredibly unlikely and better to focus limited time on the possibility of a pass with another subject.

The conversation that I had with them was to the effect that an E at A-level on someone's CV is likely to see that CV binned.

So it's not I think that they don't think she will pass - an E is certainly not a stretch - it's just that they're saying that:

1. She'd be better off spending all her time on psychology and getting a good grade there and they will support her with one-to-one time.
2. A C and an E, say, is worse than just a C, in the context that she can go on her foundation year with just a C, and then the E looks bad for the rest of her life whereas a C doesn't.

Further education is free until 19.
Could your DD go to a further education college and redo year 13 there?

I agree with everyone that university would be the worst idea for her. If she isn't motivated to do any A level work she won't do any university work either. The teaching staff expect the students to be self starters and don't hand hold or remind them about deadlines. If she fails her first year she can redo it the year, and if she fails again she will get kicked out. It will be a waste of student loans.

Your DD needs some kind of counselling and to grow up before she considers higher education. It would be a complete waste of time for her to go this year.

Us as parents. I.e. she has two choices:
Leave home and go to uni or
Leave home and don't go to uni

This is very harsh. Have you any idea what the rental market is like these days? No landlord will rent to her without a job or a guarantor.

Would grandparents fund a boarding sixth form for a year to retake A levels? There are plenty of boarding crammers. Or wokld this be throwing good money after bad? No matter what she wants, she's unlikely to be going to uni with a C and E at A level.

This sounds like a vulnerable, possibly ND teenager who has been in an abusive relationship. It appears that she has not had much parenting and is on the point of being thrown out of her home. What do you think is going to happen to her if you stick to your current plan?

A levels and school fees would be the least of my worries.
You have no idea what might have happened to her in that abusive relationship, what she might have suffered and has been unable to tell anyone about.
It is very unlikely she will get into university or be able to cope if she does.
I doubt she will be able to get a job either, based on what you have said about her motivation and time keeping.
So we are left with the possibility of a vulnerable kid living on the street.
Awful.

A child who has fallen off a cliff like this academically is not going to morph into an A grade student at uni even if you could find somewhere to take her with a single A level. Resits next year at an FE college would be much better if (and only if) she wants to knuckle down. There is clearly something much more than boy trouble going on here. Is she smoking a lot of weed?

I can understand her mother’s frustration but as she was previously a good student, something has gone wrong and she is clearly struggling and probably very unhappy. But it is your job as parents to find out what and help her.

I wonder if she got in with the wrong crowd, and drugs were involved?

Her foundation offer is presumably based on taking 2 A levels. If she only takes one, the uni must be informed and the offer may be withdrawn. She is probably better off taking the 2.

Foundation years aren't a doss. My DS was caught up in the COVID fiasco of changing grades, and ended up losing his degree place - they offered a foundation year. He worked very hard that year.

what they are suggesting sounds eminently sensible

Hi. The kids I know who fall of a cliff at A level are usually neurodivergent (Ed Psych in my day job). My own kid being one, who also got a C and an E. The executive functioning issues, strain of being unable to keep up with organisation, content and workload in subjects you are theoretically good at, whilst knowing you are clever (good GCSEs) is immensely stressful and can cause a breakdown of sorts - often involving being nocturnal and sleeping a lot in the day. Are you sure she's lazy and not just completely out of coping skills? Is she displaying EBSA? (" School refusal"?) I can't help feel that school may have rather let her down by not looking more into how to support.

I would do both exams. It's literally weeks away. If she gets a U she need not declare it, and if she gets an E then that is points in the UCAS jar.

I would be very concerned about going away to uni though. Does she have the life skills and skill for personal organisation?

I disagree. An E is an A level pass. It's UCAS points. She can say she has 2 A levels. She doesn't have to share grades on a future CV.

A pound to a penny they are thinking of their stats not her CV.

I would suspect they think an E is very optimistic

I’m a uni lecturer. Kids who are like you describe your dd don’t grow up at uni generally. To be honest the opposite is true. Every year I have multiple 1st years going off the rails to some extent, too many boys and partying. There’s not going to be anyone nagging them to turn up for lectures, etc

I’m a uni lecturer. Kids who are like you describe your dd don’t grow up at uni generally. To be honest the opposite is true. Every year I have multiple 1st years going off the rails to some extent, too many boys and partying. There’s not going to be anyone nagging them to turn up for lectures, etc

It doesn’t sound like she’s cut out for uni if she can’t be bothered going to school and working on A levels she’s supposed to be interested in!

I’d get her to focus on finding a job after leaving school. There’s no point her racking up a huge debt not to study at uni…

She needs a gap year to resit OP. Her results aren't good enough given she was doing good at gcse's. Pull her out next year, make her work part time to save up for uni and resit her exams with a proper approach. Her crap part time job will give her perspective on inot messing about if she wants uni seriously or force her to consider and alternative route to uni.

Neither do her parents!

This. Uni isn’t a dumping ground for teens at risk of going off the rails. It’s where those kids actually do go off the rails and implode - often with devastatingly tragic consequences.