Advice needed urgently

[Ggangu67]

Dear members,

I have a 16 year old daughter who has been struggling in school since year 7. She presents with low self-esteem, no confidence and hard to re-assure. She is underachieving in school andhave recently been advised by a friend who works with special needs students who says my daughter displays signs of a learning difficulty and would benefit from a psychological assessment. The school does not believe as they say my daughter is just not working hard at the level she is at. Should I get her to be assessed by a private Educational Psychologist? My friend advises that I should not let my daughter to sit for her GSCE as she is highly likely to get a U if no support is put in place for her. What should I do? please advise, I am confused.

What do you want to get out of an ed psych consultation? I presume she is sitting GCSE's this summer. The deadline for exam access arrangements is Feb 25, so the school would need to apply before half term. Criteria for any exam support such as additional time is very strict, she would need to be at a significant disadvantage against her peers to get additional time or support with reading or writing in an exam.

What is your friend basing this assessment of your daughter on?

Schools want every student to do as well as possible in exams, lots of support is usually put in place for year 11 so they do as well as possible.

Exactly what Wonderstuff said. Is your friend an EP or school SENCo?

re you saying you don't want her to have a go at GCSEs in case she fails them? Surely she has done mocks? What did she get in mocks?

Don't bother with an ed psych, useless, some are helpful and honest, some are not, all tend to be disregarded by the school.

I have some students whom I don't think are capable of GCSE. But I'm not sure there is any real alternative. There used to be but not now.

So these students will keep working for their GCSEs, and doing their best , but are likely to get nothing at all in some subjects, and low grades in others. Still a few low grades is better than none. They all have a lot of support.

What sort of support exactly do you want your daughter to have? She will most likely be getting a lot already.