Stress over A Level exams cancelled

[anotherglass]

Hello,
Looking for support from other parents of boys who have taken a while to get into their stride in A Level. My son was not terribly well focussed in Year 12, but turned a corner into Year 13, and had started to get better grades. He was targetting the exams to improve his predicted grades of BBB. The school now believes his final grades will be based on overall performance over the entirety of the course. This will not be fair for kids who mature later. Obviously he will be working hard over the next few months to secure his grades but we know feel he cannot do better than predicted grades if his assessment is based on overall performance over 2 years. Anyone else in the same boat?

Yes, I agree. My son is in a similar position and is devastated to have to rely on teacher predictions. His studies come together in the last few months, his actual Gcse results were way better than his predicted or mocks. He is very sad his A level grades will not accurately represent what he is capable of.

We don't yet know what's going to happen. The best bet is to keep pushing on.

Mine's similar but opposite! He had a great Year 12 but found lockdown hard and socially isolating, his mental health took a dive and he struggled with learning online. He works hard but really needs the interaction of his teachers and other students to 'talk through' his learning so Year 13 has been challenging trying to get his learning back on track.

Hopefully it will all work out - will have to see what they come up with. Best of luck to us all.

Like many others, we went through this all last year with DD1 and have it all again this year with DD2.

I would counsel your DS to not give up yet and keep going with demonstrating his abilities. File every piece of work requested. Make sure each piece is the best he can do. It's going to be a few weeks before they decide on how to deal with this situation.

Yup same here. DS did not engage with online learning well last year and was definitely hoping that acing his exams would bump his grade significantly from those predicted. It is what it is though and fingers crossed universities will take the situation into account when offers are made. Hindsight is wonderful and I’m sure DS and many others would have worked much harder had they known the future but they didn’t so they will just have to deal with it now.

Have a bit of a similar issue with DS who post appalling mock Mark's in Feb last year was assessed and found to need a keyboard and extra time by college. All put in place but due to Covid only started in Sept to get better Mark's. He can now finish a paper. Raised the fact that if yr12 mark's are used to grade he's being disadvantaged with every teacher at his virtual parents night last night. They said that it would be considered when Mark's were awarded. I really hope so