Year 11 Child moved from Scotland to England and content to learn overwhelming - son doesn't want to even try

[Stressbucket1973]

I have a son in Year 11 - we moved from Scotland to England and the difference between National 5's and GCSE seems vast. He has so much content to learn before the exams. He has mocks in November and hasn't got a clue. He is so overwhelmed that he has just given up. He won't talk to us or even try. He is also dyslexic and the amount of work to get through is daunting. The school are trying to help and given us the areas he needs to focus on. but he has set his mind that he will fail so why bother. I can't get him to sit down and concentrate.

I feel like we are constantly harassing him to study or work or do anything... he just won't sit down and focus. He just want to game or go to the skate park and escape. He says he's thick and won't pass so why should he bother. He doesn't like school and is feeling totally overwhelmed.

The school allowed him to drop one subject but the issue is combined science being mandatory. He only had to do Physics in Scotland so he now has to catch up on chemistry and biology topics that others have been studying for over a year.

I'm at my wits end and my husband and I don't know what to do. We are trying to help and support but I feel all we are doing is making our son feel worse. I really don't know how to get him to want to try. There seems to be a lot going on for him and I'm wondering how we help him to try... I'm desperate and stressed out - any advice would be most welcome.

Didn't anticipate? Exactly how clueless do you have to be not to anticipate that moving her DC (who has dyslexia) to a new country and a new academic system when he's already missed the majority of the curriculum might result in significant issues? This is the reason why those of us with DC at that stage don't move them hundreds of miles away - and if we have absolutely no choice, we put strategies in place before we take them away from their friends, support networks and school.

As I say, not in the slightest bit helpful.

And as I say, this could easily have been avoided - which would have been incredibly helpful to the lad in question and the OP. Unfortunately there is little to be done of any real value now.

Oh my God. Even a very academic child without dyslexia would be in trouble trying to learn the whole content for all their GCSEs in one year! I'd move back to Scotland ASAP or see if I could get him moved into year 10.

Just reading through this post has me wondering about the differences between the scottish and the english education system.

Obviously, the setups are completely different, but with everyone saying how much the young man will struggle doing the english equivalent, does that mean the scittish system is inferior to the English system?

I ask this as a Scottish person 😄

Not necessarily inferior, but different.

Different. Just as a kid arriving from England straight into S4 with exams next April is going to struggle.

Different in many ways as a scot living in England having compared my dd and her cousins GCSE'S and Nat 5 the GCSE'S are more vigorous and what dd did.in year 9 her cousin does in year 11. Dd did 10 GCSE'S cousin is doing 7 Nat 5. Both equally academic kids.

Sorry that should read s4 for the cousin

No. Just slightly different syllabus and the poor child is changing in the middle of a two year course.

I guess I always (wrongly) assumed that the course content would be similar between both scotland and England.

Taking any traditional academic subject and thinking about the course content which would be studied at Bachelor degree level - thr associated GCSE in that subject will brush on probably less than a quarter of the available topics within that subject, and although the overall depth of study will be broadly similar for two different GCSE courses in that topic, the actual details of what a student is supposed to be able to recall under exam conditions will have very little overlap.

But a move in September is not half way through a 2 year course. If a school covers all the content by the end of January and then has mock exams and revision until May (this timetable varies from school to school) then a September move could be closer to three quarters of the way through.

I suppose you could argue that maths/science will have more crossover. Or something like modern languages. But there are subjects in Scotland like Modern Studies which don't exist in England. In English, they study a mix of Scottish and other English texts, history looks at some Scottish topics alongside British/international topics etc as does Geography.

And that's before you get into the fact that the school years are not the same despite people trying to say that one year is the same as the other as there is a half-year mismatch between our intakes - the English cut-off is 31st August, Scotland is 28th February. Moving a child at 11 or 12, or even 13 or 14 when they are a couple of years off exams is one thing, lots of children move at that time and slot in quite comfortably from what I've seen, not just from England but from all over the place. It's always going to be harder to move into ANY system where the kids are building towards exams in a few months' time. Scottish exams are earlier than in England, the firsrt day of exams next year is 22 April.

The content of the science curricula may not be that different but English children are required to study chemistry, biology and physics to the age of 16. They may only take one or two GCSEs in science but it will cover the content of all three subjects. As I learnt from this thread, Scottish students don't have to take any sciences at Nat 5 and it's incredibly rare to take all three, so a Scottish student moving into the English system may have to pick up two or three new subjects that they haven't touched for years.

The content of History is very different between the two systems, as you might imagine. English students study English language and literature as two separate GCSEs so there is significantly more content. AFAIK the only texts which cross over between England and Scotland are Jekyll and Hyde and a few poems by Carol Ann Duffy.

@Skye85 English system is far, far more academic. The level expected and the number of subjects. Content amount is huge too in the English system.
Family friends moved with their DS to Aberdeen when he was in Y9. He went from low/middle sets to top sets in his school in Aberdeen and ended up in the newspaper on results day.

Yeah we're all dead thick up here. It's a wonder any of us have managed to type in proper sentences on MN.

@Stroopwaffels no one said you're dead thick. The English curriculum is a joke that's giving kids breakdowns. If anything, the fact Scottish kids are just as successful with a lot less content should show this joke of a government something.