Has anyone changed schools once A level work started?

[Schoolrefusa]

DD has just announced that she does not want to go back to her school again and she clearly isn’t happy .
i strongly feel we need to listen to her as can tell she means it but it feels a difficult time to even try and find a place let alone catch up and I feel quite worried.
i can’t think of any good alternative options as she’s at a good school and has anyone attempted home learning ? I also wonder whether to see if there are vocational courses locally

Can you get her to say why? Is it something the pastoral lead at school or head of sixth form could help with? A new school would hard to find and even then space on her preferred courses might not be possible.

I’ve been trying to help the situation with them for a while and work through it and had thought things were better. I think her confidence has shattered while there but worried moving also isn’t necessarily going to solve or help that.
Shes struggled to make many friends and gradually become more withdrawn and shy as a result. And also finds A levels stressful which I’ve said can happen anywhere

My Ds jumped colleges about 4 weeks ago .. he hated it from day one - swapped courses - worked hard to catch up.. he is much happier.

is this her old school ? Maybe look at local colleges .

is it half term ? I would encourage her to think of an alternative .. despite all the prep from school they don’t actually think their plans through

It's common. I did it. What does she want to do? Can you look at apprenticeships? What about BTECs? Much easier to catch up on. Jump to A Levels is no joke and lots of kids hate it.

Which A Levels is she doing?

I do think that it's important to discover what is making her feel this way, one reason being that, if not resolved, it could happen again and there would come a point where all the options had been exhausted.

It would be too late to join a btec at the school where I work now, students have already completed their first assignments and have an exam in January with a lot of content she'd need to learn. Although the content is easier, at this stage it wouldn't be possible to catch up.

With switching schools, the issue is that if exam boards don't match or schools are teaching in a different order, it'll be tricky to just hit the ground running even if she's capable of catching up.

I'd suggest a restart of y12 elsewhere, possibly at a college - you can start looking around now for next September.

If you can afford online tuition tailored to her, and she's keen on the idea, that may also work.

I did it after 2 terms of A levels because I was miserable and not doing well. Got straight As so didn’t do any harm.

Kings Interhigh comes up a lot as an online option.

Talk to get school and make sure she is getting all the pastoral and MH support they have available. Something like a safe space to be in-between lessons and a weekly appointment with pastoral can make a big difference.