She just scraped the GCSE entry requirements for her school's 6th form, which was 5 grade 5's. She is not naturally academic and this was a huge effort for her, however she was determined to get in to the 6th form to be with her friends. We ended up paying for tutors etc just to get her those grades, aside from the grade 5's she has a mix of 4's and 3's.
I've always felt vocational would suit her much better, she is absolutely brilliant with people and can be extremely proactive in certain situations. Not academic but absolutely excels in other ways. She has done work experience in a care home and they were so so impressed with her and stated she knew what to do and all of the procedures without even being told. She also enjoyed it as she does want to go into a health and social care sector (right now she is interested in learning disability nursing).
But she has always had her heart set on the school 6th form and A Levels as her route to uni and of course it's her choice. Teacher's etc at school did try and push her towards vocational and away from A Level which aways upset her. However 2 days into Sixth form and she is struggling massively, there has been little to no transition from GCSE to A Level content and she feels completely out of her depth and has no idea what her teachers are talking about. We've had panic attacks and tears, and she is worried as her friends seem to be coping. And teacher's also told her the first few days are the easy part and it's going to get a whole lot worse. She's announced today that she's dropping her maths A Level and just doing her other 2.
I wish she would go to college and do a Btec health and social, she would do so well in that and it's equivilant to 3 A levels and apparently unis prefer vocational training for nursing, but she won't entertain the idea. I think it stems from the fact the her school (an extremely high ranking comp in a very wealthy area, 20% of students picking up 8-9's in at least 5 GCSE's) has lots of very academic students and her friends are in this group, some of them are being pushed for Oxbridge. I think she feels as though she needs to keep up with them but deep down I believe she knows vocational would suit her better. It's just a case of getting her to realize it's in no way inferior.
Is anyone else's DC in a similar position? I know I can't force her to do anything and I'm not going to try but I'm just wondering how you would deal with such a situation? I have tried to say to her that she is more than capable of scoring top grades in Btec, and that will look so much better on a uni application than 2 scraped passes in A Level, but she will not have it. Persoanlly I think she's going to come to this conclusion herself sooner or later, but I don't want her to change her mind half way through the year for obvious reasons.