ABOUT TO FAIL A’LEVELS!- What next?

[Fabricanta]

DS is at an Indy and in upper sixth form. To give some background, he is bright and capable but as lady as sin. He coaster through GCSEs and managed 6A’s 3B’s and C all by the skin of his teeth. Started A’levels and inspite of so many warning. At home and school has continued in the same fashion, hardly any revision, never opens a book just does a few revision questions.

End of last term exams he got a woeful BCE. He decided to retake them and has just told me yesterday, that the E subject is now worst does that mean a U? The other two remain unchanged. Now this is where it gets really weird. Shocked I asked what school have said about his predicted grades and his reply was the head of the failed subject said they will predict him a B in that subject but he’ll have a hell of a lot of work to do. DS doesn’t seem bothered by this.

My feeling is they are managing him out aren’t they? How the hell can they predict a B for somebody who has failed that subject. He basically hasn’t even got enough grades to do a prediction, he is short one A’level and if he couldn’t get the E up to a decent B during the 8weeks of summer how on earth is he going to do it now?

So what are his options? Take him out immediately?isnt it late to join a BTEC course? Let him complete his current journey but then enrol him somewhere to retake? Can he do a foundation yr at a good uni? Just to add, he is an August born, I don’t know wether that will affect funding for further education.

I have not slept all night, very sick with runs and sweating that suddenly came after news arrived, so please be gentle.

If he doesn't like coursework then a BTEC is not for him. They basically lock you in a room and make you do it!

BTECs are not easy. They will try to help you pass if you are struggling (which is not the same as can't be bothered), but PPP for an Extended Diploma is only the same as EEE at A level.

To get the Merits, or Distinction you need to put in the work and be capable of higher thinking and writing skills for analysis and evaluation.

There are no Level 3 courses you can do without working!

I think it’s time to stop asking HIM what school says and ask them yourself. If the school have not initiated contact with you themselves, I would be very concerned about their commitment to your son. I have 2 daughters at independent school (oldest just started upper 6th) and their schools would have been in regular touch with us if they had been consistently under-performing in that way.
The question of whether he is under-performing is key though. With those GCSE results, Bs & Cs at A level really ought to be achievable but there is no educational establishment anywhere that can get those grades for him, if he won’t work. I suspect his school knows perfectly well that he could get Bs if he worked. You need to have a meeting with them to understand their position and your ds needs to understand that, if he won’t work, you will not be able to justify funding further education for him next year. It’s just throwing good money after bad and expecting you to keep doing it is treating you like an idiot. It’s disrespectful and it’s wasting everybody’s time. If he wants a job in a supermarket or waiting tables, he can go and get one now.
You presumably pay for a phone, a console, a Netflix subscription......(insert thing he does actually give a toss about here). It’s time to introduce some performance related pay. School will have seen this plenty of times before and should have some advice. But you are either going to have to engage a lot more and stay on his case with weekly check-ins with teachers or you might as well save your money.

Well, there are lots of things DS doesn’t like which he will still do when hasn’t got any other choice. A lot of it is about what he can get away with.

BTEC is piss easy. It’s coursework based and they basically give you the answers because they only get money for you if you pass.

They are not piss easy when I teach them and no I don't give anyone any answers.

When I completed my own BTEC we were not given answers either.

OP

In order to complete BTEC he needs to be completing work all the time. If he is lazy and doesn't complete course work he won't complete BTEC.

Personally I would not be paying for a school for a lazy child, complete waste of money IMHO.

I'd say don't do A Levels, if he gets 3 grade 'E' A levels he will not get funding for a BTEC.

Maybe he needs to get a job and think about what he does with his life.

Just a hunch but has he picked A Levels with the least written work rather than A Levels that will help him progress ie sciences?

Get off - We are engaged with school. Like I said, he just got his resit results yesterday and I asked him what’s he’s now been told about his grade predictions. Doesn’t mean we aren’t going to discuss further with school.

How about talk to your DS? Ask what he think he will do in a year time? 5 years? 10 years?

Help him understand he needs to do effort to get where he wants to be.

I know ppl who practically failed AS levels because of distractions e.g. GF, new school, parties... But they do well at A levels

Sassy - Just a hunch but has he picked A Levels with the least written work rather than A Levels that will help him progress ie sciences?

Ooh! Your hunch is excellent! Although he choose a science.

Started off with physics, maths, economic and computing, wanted to drop economics but didn’t in the end and dropped physics.

MY DD got a U in her AS for the subject she wanted to study at uni. With hindsight we should have got a re mark!

Her school understandably said she had to drop it. She moved schools, started AS again- a different board in that subject and 2 new subjects. Got a A at the end of the 2nd year.

Just graduated with a 2: 1 in that subject and is now doing a PGCE.

With my son he did no work outside lessons for his maths GCSE- no revision- got an A. When he got to A level I think he had the same view- maths is just something that you do and that wasn't the case

If he achieved a B and C for end of Year 12 exams with hardly any revision why would you pull him out of school unless you're struggling to pay the fees? Why start a BTEC course when he's more than half way through A levels? Ask the Maths department to give him a kick up the backside.

And the move from the upper sixth of an independent school to the rather more demotic surroundings of somewhere offering BTECs might be rather a shock to the system, and bring with it its own problems.

Clavinova - I don’ t know ether pulling him out is the right thing to do that’s why I’m asking for advise here. I don’t know what’s the best option for him might be. He is our eldest and we didn’t school in the U.K so it’s a lot to get our heads around. Obviously it’s straight forward enough if dc does well. But when it starts going wrong it can get very complicated.
Another problem is regardless though of what the Maths dept do now, the fact is he has only 2 grades for his UCAS app or 2 plus a made up grade and his school deadline is October.

My advice would be simple:

Write off applying for university now.

Do everything possible to get decent A Levels in May 2019.

Apply in September 2019 when UCAS opens, with the grades in his hand so issues of prediction and past history are irrelevant.

Get an unconditional offer in October 2019.

Spend the year getting ready to study seriously at university.

You can afford school fees so you can afford to fund a gap year. Applying now will see his application rejected by a lot of the places he/you aspire to, and accepting an offer somewhere lower in tariff and hoping for adjustment in August next year is an uncertain game (yes, there will be lots of places available, but accommodation is a pain for most people going through clearing and adjustment).

Just stop worrying about applications, get the best A Levels he can, apply for an unconditional place next year.

Talk to the school. They will give an accurate assessment of how he is doing, what he needs to do to improve.in
My DS sounds a little like yours, no work done in yr 12, then had a bit of a blip in yr 13 with mental health issues. I think the difference was that he did pull it all back. A D in chemistry at the end of yr 12 meant he did work over the summer to gain an A at the beginning of yr 13 for his predicted grade, dire mocks, but pull it (mainly) back and got a good set of a levels but not representative of his abilities.
He's taking a gap year to get a job so he can find the first year at uni. He needs to take some responsibility and also grow up quite a bit!!

There are also lots of good a level maths crammers-he could re-do maths in 2019 at a crammer or with a tutor. Some uni students tutor at a decent rate.

The ucas deadline is not October for all. You can even apply after the May offer deadline, although choice may be more limited. Speak to school, see if Maths is recoverable and get a tutor on board if they think so and ds is motivated to work hard on it. Have known a few repeat lower 6th, although more so when AS were involved. Would his timetable enable him to do so for Maths?

Thank you all for you wonderful advise and comments. We have a meeting scheduled for end of week, so hopefully and with all theadvíse here we’ll find a way forward. To the posterwho asked for an update in 10mths time, certainly.

In the meantime, I’m still reading comments so please don’t stop posting your thoughts.

I don't agree with all Keneft's comments above, but the suggestion of holding off on the UCAS application seems worth considering. If he hates coursework and is a bit lazy but seems likely to pass at least 2 of his A levels, it sounds better to try and rescue as much as he can than to start again doing a course with loads of coursework.

From comments, it also sounds as if he either needs to get to grips with Maths to get on to and do well in the kind of university course he currently has in mind, or to consider alternative options.

What school says doesn't sound as if they're trying to manage him out.

In my experience, kids who struggle to motivate themselves to work usually do better on BTEC and gain higher grades. The work is done in the classroom with the guidance of the teacher, there’s no final exam to cram for, instead the work is done a little bit each week and contributes to the final grade. If a student falls behind the teacher will intervene, parents will be contacted and a plan put in place to help them catch up. This constant support and tutoring is much more effective than the A level approach of “study at home and do an exam at the end”. By the time a kid fails an exam a year has gone by and it’s already too late. In BTEC it would never have got that far because the kid’s lack of work would have been flagged up and dealt with after a couple of weeks.

BTEC is all classroom work, no self-directed revision at home? Is that true?

It’s absolute madness that the head said they’d predict a B in maths A-level for a kid who got an A at GCSE and an E/U in Y12. There wasn’t any disaster at exam time, he got what he deserved and it would be hard work to get that up to even a D or a C. He’s also lazy.

Either your plans need to involve restarting maths from scratch, or dropping it.

I thought btecs included exams/timed assessments now.

BTEC is all classroom work, no self-directed revision at home? Is that true?

If the classroom work isn’t completed the student will be told to finish it at home. But it’s perfectly possible to do it all in the classroom if you get on with it and don’t mess about.

It used to be 100% classroom based but a couple of years ago they introduced exams, so there is a bit of revision to do now. Still, the exams are only small ones (nothing like A level) and are spaced throughout the year and done in the classroom with the usual teacher.

kids who struggle to motivate themselves to work usually do better on BTEC and gain higher grades. The work is done in the classroom with the guidance of the teacher, there’s no final exam to cram for, instead the work is done a little bit each week and contributes to the final grade

Which is great. But what happens if they then go to a traditional university where much of the work is done outside the lecture theatre, most of the lectures are to 100+ students, the assessment is mostly by final exam, and such continuous assessment as there is represents only a small part of the total load and certainly not enough to outweigh doing badly in the rather larger weight of exams? How do people who struggled to cram and pass exams while living at home and supported by both parents and teachers do on their own at the end of the first year? Not well, unfortunately, is the all too common answer.

This constant support and tutoring is much more effective than the A level approach of “study at home and do an exam at the end”

But is entirely unlike a traditional university, which is precisely "study at home and do an exam at the end". As I say, you can say it shouldn't be like this, and I may well agree with you, but it is a cold hard fact: switching from A Level to BTEC in order to raise your grades and therefore get into a "better" university may prove to be a Pyrrhic victory if you in the process end up at a university which is much more exam-focused than the one you would otherwise have gone to.

I'm a huge fan of continuously assessed degrees and think that in many fields they are immensely better both as education and as training, so there is no snobbery on my part: but MN education forums are often focussed on Russell Group, older universities and it is a fact that final exams are much more likely to be an issue there than at some other institutions.