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.

You're right. It's a tough situation him.

Did you not check how different the curriculum was before considering moving? Moving schools within the same system at that age is bad enough!
Can he lodge with friends back in Scotland until he's done his exams?
Or start year 10 here? Don't expect he'll like that idea though.

DS has dropped all 3. No point in sitting an exam when you don’t understand the subjects and will fail. I’d much rather DS sat an exam in a subject he is doing very well at and likely, according to predictions get an A.

I’m really sorry to hear your son is struggling with the move, it must be a massive change in school system for him when it is already really challenging to relocate. I think it’s massively unhelpful to suggest moving back to Scotland as we know nothing about your personal circumstances so that might not be possible.

I’m a teacher in Scotland so I’m and recommending things we would do for a child in this situation. Here are some ideas:

• Ask all the teachers of his new subjects to provide all the work he has missed so far electronically via whatever platform they use e.g. Google classroom/teams etc.
• Ask what support your son is entitled to due to his dyslexia, this might be a devise to use in class or extra time in his exams.
• Create a realistic plan for him after school to do some catch up work at home. This needs to be manageable chunks of time, I’d say no longer than half an hour at a time.
• Ask the school if he can be removed from core subjects e.g. RMPS and PSE and use that time to catch up in a designated supervised classroom. This would usually happen in support for learning department.
• use retrieval practice strategies such as making flashcards for his existing subjects to give him a bit of confidence and he can then use this later on for his new subjects. Kate Jones and impact wales are excellent and you can have a look on twitter for ideas.
• give him some time to settle and make friends. Once he is feeling a little more settled, you could ask if there are any lunch time or after school supported study sessions.
• depending on your finances, tutors might be appropriate for some subjects.

The school also has a responsibility to ensure your son is settling in and in the right courses and level. I wouldn’t put too much pressure on him if he is finding this challenging, it will lead to other issues and you don’t want to impact his mental health.

Honestly, if you can I'd either ask if he can repeat year 10 or I'd remove him and pay for a tutor for a handful of GCSEs of his choice (including Maths and English Language) and sit as an external candidate and a couple of social groups a week with a view he can go on to college later.

It must be so difficult for him so I can only imagine that you moved because you absolutely had to.

Poor kid - he won’t even have any coursework started! In a nutshell I would suggest your options are: 1. Pay private and start at yr10 again 2. Drop all gcses bar English Maths & Dble science - get school to help with coursework and buy all the relevant revision guides and work through these together 3. Look into further education colleges where they’ll assist with maths & English gcse whilst he starts a fe course 4. Get him back to school in Scotland somehow.

https://childlawadvice.org.uk/information-pages/education-of-children-outside-of-their-chronological-age-group/

Bloody hell poor kid. Unless the move really was completely unavoidable you have done an awful thing to him.

Can you enter him for Nat 5s privately and get some online tutors?

My parents moved from England to Wales when I was in year 11. The curriculum was so different I was overwhelmed. English and maths were the only subjects I managed. The school recognised this and suggested that I drop a year and go into year 10. I gave up on school then and missed out on A levels and university which I was on track to do. I never forgave them really. I lost all my friends at the same time, was desperately unhappy too.

Having had experience of both systems, and a child with dyslexia, you have set him an absolutely impossible task. I echo the advice given by others.. either he returns to Scotland, moves to another English school and joins year 10, or you withdraw him and home educate (possibly with an online school).

3 days later, no posts from OP, and people are still giving advice 🙄

Why did you not do your research before moving you child?

I am glad your DS has a solution that works for him as an individual but it doesn’t change my view at a systemic level. The purpose of a national statutory curriculum is to ensure a basic level of knowledge in certain areas across the populace. I’m of the view that this should include biology, chemistry and physics in addition to literacy and numeracy.

Tell him to do the best he can. Not to worry and you’ll support him if he wants to go to college next year to start again. You don’t expect him to perform miracles - just to try and whatever he learns with help him for next year. Depending on what he wants to do - can concentrate on maths and English, other subjects he likes and is good at. Personally I’d forget the science - tell the school it’s too much to catch up on. If he wants to go to uni - go a year back or see if can go to Scotland for school. But he must want to do this- it’s a lot of extra pressure being away from mam and dad in yr 11. Main thing is you support him and tell him he can do it next year. It’s not his fault he is on this position and apologise to him

I feel so sorry for the child.
a) he goes back a year take the pressure off
b) he stays with family for school

I agree with everyone else why did you move him at this stage was it necessary?
Had you not looked into his education and how it effected him before hand?

All that’s doesn’t matter now what’s important is you act fast take the pressure of your son.
He feels he’s a failure and he has both parents laying on the pressure . This is out of his control
but not his parents (who created it)

Another factor to consider.

He’s missed out more schooling due to Covid than his peers in the English schools have.
England did a much better job of prioritising education than Scotland did, and got schools open again earlier.

I know all this, thanks Sassh. I was head of KS4. Theory and practice are quite different things. As is funding. Good luck to them finding a state school that will move him back into yr10. Anyway, that's not even necessarily going to help at this point.

Y10 or a load of tutoring

This was madness. He is dyslexic too, there is no way on Gods Earth that he can do extra work to squeeze years of learning into one year with a learning disability that severely limits how much reading he can do in a day. He is correct that he will fail, you have set him up to fail. He is not correct that he is ‘thick’ perhaps that is a message he has internalised by you insisting all he needs to do is study and hey presto! He can self teach an entire year (or two) of coursework between now and November. No child could do it.

My advice is to drop him to Year 10. GCSEs are typically a two year course, although some schools run them as 3yr courses starting in year 9. But there is no way he can succeed if he stays in Year 11.

He has no chance of achieving his potential. But if you are very strategic and focus only on 5 subjects, he could potentially have some options post GCSE. Definitely focus on Eng and Maths. What other subjects does he have some aptitude for? Also, can you get him a tutor? And can he change to do triple science and essentially ignore Bio and Chem and focus just on physics? And before any of that is possible you're going to need to try to convince him this is worth a shot. I think I'd say to him that you totally understand how he feels. It was the worst time to move him. He is most definitely not stupid etc

There are a lot of myths on this thread.

It is very unlikely that a state school will allow the student to repeat year 10.

Schools should not be teaching significant amounts of GCSE content in year 9. This used to be common practice but it has changed in recent years. This doesn’t change the fact that he has an impossible amount of content to try and cover even without a learning difficulty like dyslexia.

If a temporary move back to Scotland to stay y with family and complete Nat 5 is impossible then I would look seriously into flexi or home schooling with a tutor who is familiar with the Scottish curriculum, and finding a centre in Scotland willing to enter him as a private candidate.

I assume you have a very valid reason for such a drastic move. All you can do is reiterate to him why you had to move and possibly beg the school to move him into year 10.

All the "just go back to Scotland" - yes obviously that would be the ideal, but there are many reasons why that wouldn't be practical. Many families wouldn't be able to stretch to the expense of running two houses for a start. Or family don't have space to accommodate extra people, even if they lived close to the area the family moved from.

I don't know much about the relative difficulties of GCSE and Nat5 but I do know that they are entirely different. I have a 15 year old who will be doing Nat 5s in April/May and in subjects like history, english, modern studies (which doesn't exist in the English system) the content is about a third Scottish related, a third UK related, a third international. Moving to a GCSE system would mean learning new set texts for English and studying whole new topics for things like history. And that's before he even tries to pick up loads of extra teaching in science.

I think the best solution would be to drop back a year which will give him two years to prepare for these exams. If that's not practical, concentrate on the very basics in English and Maths and start making plans for this time next year in terms of A-levels or college or whatever his long term goals are, do what he needs to do to secure that next step and no more. There is no point in putting him through "triple science" if all he wants to do is join the police or be a joiner.

It is very unlikely that a state school will allow the student to repeat year 10.

But @YippieKayakOtherBuckets he's not repeating year 10, he is a student who has moved from an entirely different system with different intakes and cut offs, who hasn't done "year 10". He's done third year in Scotland which is different.

My thoughts exactly!