GCSE Disaster - Where now?

[SatokoHF]

Our son has had something of a disaster in his GCSEs.

He has some learning difficulties and has a statement for his ADHD and Asperger syndrome from Wandsworth council. He also has minor dyslexia that makes it difficult for him to deal with writing. (We have a private tutor to support his English at home) He takes medication during the school hrs to help him concentrate on his work. Although he is 16 he is still very naive and is not equipped to deal with the real world as yet.

He managed a B in Maths but would like to achieve A in order to move on to the 6th form. Despite private tutoring (during which he made huge gain) he only achieved an E in Eng Lang & Lit. The 3 Sciences are currently D and he would like to achieve Cs or above (his controlled assessments were generally disastrous but again we had a private tutor who thought he would do much better...)

We had expected him to get at least Cs in Eng & having already gained an A in Japanese last year were expecting him to get into the 6th form. Although the school had offered him a 6th form place (subject to 5 A-Cs) they appear to have discarded him completely - "sorry Chum, you're on your own."

Ideally he would be best served by re-doing Year 11 but this doesn't seem to be on the cards. Does anyone know of a way for him to re-do the controlled assessments as well as resit the exams? We are not rich but are willing to pay a reasonable amount but some colleges are talking about £2,000 or so per subject which we simply cannot afford.

Any constructive advice would be greatly appreciated.

Your son sounds like my daughter - she has a statement and an ADHD diagnosis (though her problems stem from early trauma from her birth family, she is adopted).

My dd did however manage 6 (Bs and Cs) but was 1 UMS short of a C on English lang, so we are sending that paper back. We probably could have persuaded school to keep her as she was only 1 UMS short of their entry requirement and she does have a statement with her school named on it, however she has decided she doesn't want to do A levels and is going to do a L3 Btec in media at a local college. Academically, this is a much better option for her I feel.

The SENCO and her learning mentor are absolutely fabulous. The SENCO has authorised her learning mentor to support her with transition to college. I am hoping this will mean that she will take her on the first day and help her to find the right places etc as my dd is extremely anxious about these sort of things. The SENCO is also going to meet with the SENCO equivalent at the college and talk through the support she will need.

The connexions worker is in the process of filling out a Section 139a form for her. As you are probably aware, statements lapse when young people go to college, so funding for support comes through this route.

I was (and am) very nervous about DD leaving the excellent support she receives at school, but A levels were never going to suit her. I am hopeful that college will be ok if everything can be put in place for her quickly.

You can only do resits in English and Maths now, for all other subjects you need to retake the whole qualification.

As he has a Statement, you might be able to negotiate a repeat of year 11 as he has to stay in education for another year. I'm not sure about the law on this point, so I suggest you contact IPSEA.

But I would also look at the options at your local FE college too. All our local colleges offer a resit GCSE year as well as alternative qualifications.

Sato, my DS has roughly the same mix of conditions. We are going into year 11, so I can't offer any advice about colleges. I hope somebody with more experience will be here soon.

Generally there is always a way and you just need to keep on searching for the solution, as you do with a SN DS . The first thing is to consider whether the school has really supported him in the way they should have and otherwise demand that the LA offers him a second chance. It seems that the school has failed your DS with English. Was this result expected and did they do anything? Is the LA still under obligation to maintain the statement? He should be in employment or education somewhere, and the school is still named on the statement, so he might as well repeat his year 11. You might find more advice re his rights to continue education in the special needs children discussion board. They could also advise you on home education.

What I can say is that maybe you want to drop literature as it might be taking too much of his time from other subjects and could be the only way to salvage a C in English. It seems that your DS struggles particularly with controlled assessments and you need to understand why. The way to avoid them is to shift to differen exam specifications. For example GCSE English specification, which is a combined language and literature with fewer assessments. You might also consider IGCSE which do only exams, no controlled assessments at all and this is why many private schools prefer them.

May I ask what in your experience are the key challenges in sciences and maths exams?

There seems to be a few of these posts this week,if your Ds can get an A in Japanese at GCSE he is obviously very bright and for him to achieve only an E in English that has to be down to the teaching and the support of School.

Reading other posts it seems the School have a duty to provide the best possible outcome for your Ds and that has to be to redo yr 11 and achieve with better help the grades that he has with his Japenese grade that he is capable of.

There is an other post that is very similar to yours from Morry 1000 that her Dd despite having a very IQ has achieved GCSE results that are far below her academic capability but have in their wisdom and possibly under legal requirement to readmit Morry"s Daughter to yr 11 again.

Possibly under legal requirement decided to readmit Morry"s Daughter to yr11 again.

Thank you so much for all the kind comment and advice. It's much appreciated.

My son is half Japanese (I am Japanese and my husband is English). The weakness in our DS's English is being dyslexic and also handling two languages may be. His Japanese is much less fluent than his English (His mother tongue is EN). We were asked to stop him learning Japanese several times by his school in the past so that he could concentrate on English but as he really wanted to continue learning we thought it best for him to continue (and it was good job that we did as JP was the only A he achieved).

For the moment we have enrolled him in at a local college for Game Design and Development however his GCSE results mean he could only enrol at level 2 rather than Level 3 which, we are told, is equivalent to 3 A-Levels. As Olivevoir58 said this is not bad at all.

He passed his GCSE Music Tech, which we were told is equivalent to two B grades at GCSE but this is not on the result paper and therefore the college will not accept it. The ICT result was also missing. If we have these passes he should be able to upgrade to the higher course.

We have been trying to reach his school to find out where these results are and are requesting copies of the marked exam papers as well as his controlled assessments to give us some idea of where and how he failed.

He wishes to do his GCSEs again and to go back to his school to do the 6th form in Sept 2014.

We contacted Connexions and were told that we should talk to the Special Needs Dept at the council and have sent an e-mail and await their reply. What we really need is a course that will take him through the 5 subjects required to qualify for the 6th form at his old school or, failing that, a college.

I will check IPSEA and all others that were suggested.
Thank you again.

Reply to HisMum4now

May I ask what in your experience are the key challenges in sciences and maths exams?

The main challenges are the distractions that his conditions present ? i.e. focus and the ability to put thoughts into words etc. He is also very good at avoiding what he has to do. He has had a private tutor (a doctor of medicine turned teacher) for Maths and Sciences for the last 6 years and an English tutor who has done much in taking students through A levels too. Had Maths incorporated controlled assessments he might have failed that too...