If your child is not academic/self motivated

[Cajoling55555]

How do you support a non academic child?

Currently in year 10. Needs 4 passes including English and Maths for college. English last mock was a 4, Science a 5,5 and Maths is under 4.

She has a tutor for maths but doesn’t do much at home. I just want her to finish year 11 and get the passes needed.Thinking of paying a tutor an extra hour/ 2 days so she sits down there to do the homework. Whatever it takes.

If she just needs four 4’s she not that far off and has plenty of time. additional tuition for maths should do the trick. Is she not on track to pass any of her others?

She is on track, scraping passes; except for maths; getting her to do the tutor homework requires constant reminders; she doesn’t want to do it or maybe she is tired from
school; just want to chill, only does the school stuff.

Any additional work that we tried to put outside school in the past never worked.

I would get additional tuition for maths.

What's the tutor like? Our younger son struggled with maths & we used a university student who offered online tutoring, very professional but younger seemed to work to engage our son, certainly he engaged with all of the sessions & did some of the past paper Questions set by the tutor- his results in August will tell us if it worked or not!

So science is fine, English is ok and it’s really just maths.

what I would do slightly depends on how far under a 4 she is but good ideas are:

make sure she has the school calculator and hassle her to make sure it‘s at every lesson
tutors can make a massive difference but they need to focus’s on specific topics. So every class test or exam paper get dc to take photos or ask teacher to scan it and send it straight to the tutor.

@Octavia64 makes a good point about sending topics/school work to the tutor. Our school would send out an email to parents with a break down of the topics they were working on & I used to send that to the tutor.

A friends DD tried three times to pass maths gcse. She still hasn’t and she’s 21. She went to college got NVQs and is working in the NHS, but still needs the math. I don’t know why though! A friend got divorced in her 50s needed a job and as an artist though assistant art teacher. They made her take her GCSE math which she’d never passed! Hardest thing ever she said. But why did she need to take it at all?
Anyway, get her a tutor outside school and then sit with her doing past papers. I’m not into this kind of helicoptering but in this one incidence she needs to pass.

Same situation with Maths as dd has dyscalculia. She’s been sitting between a 3 and 4 and we just need to get the 4 so she can move on to post 16 and not have to resit.

We need to find a new tutor for year 11, dd had one for a few months then she moved out of the area. Dd would take pics of her maths tests on her school iPad and bring any past paper booklets home to go through with the tutor. Her Maths teacher at school says to keep doing past papers, unfortunately no training or support for dyscalculia at dd’s school so we need to find a new tutor.

Hannah Kettle Maths is a good resource, but dd does need one to one in person tutoring we’ve realised.

Thank you all. Tutor is good and engaging; only started recently. I sent her the breakdown of her last mocks with topics, green, amber, red.

Maths worries me. I will keep encourage her to do the work the tutor sent. If that doesn’t work I will pay for an extra hours to do practice with her every week. Whatever it takes; DD just seem to need that structure at the moment to sit with someone else who isn’t DH or me; she just doesn’t seem to like working at home.

I know there are so many resources out there but I have been unable to get DD to do work outside school or tutor time.

This is my worry

Maths is a little and often subject. A few questions a day works better than a couple of long sessions a week. Get a question practice book or get on a maths website like maths genie and do a 5-10 mins a day.
Practise questions for every subject, YouTube videos for science that she doesn’t understand. Freesciencelessons is good.

For those who are in the position of a resit, have a look at online Functional Skills tests via a provider like LearnDirect. You can take the exam (£80 approx) without necessarily paying for a course. Those give you the Level 2 pass and are a lot more straightforward in the content and type of question.

Might be a backup plan to have that pass in the bag while still working on resitting GCSE?

This is good advice.
Doing past papers regularly once all the topics have been covered is a game changer. Practice, practice, practice really does work.

@Cajoling55555 does your DD realise that she will need to keep retaking maths at college if she doesn't pass first time? The success rate for retakes is pretty low so it is better to focus on passing first time then she won't need to do maths any more.

If she won’t work on her own and she will work with the tutor (and you can afford it) just pay for extra hours.

resits are a grade A pain in the bum and it’s better to cough up the money so she passes.

my dc needed this for English.

I am trying to encourage 15 min per day but still not happening. I told her the importance of passing so she doesn’t have to resit. I will speak to the tutor so she also spell it to her as not sure she is listening to me.

Yes, this will be the next step if she doesn’t start putting in the work at home.

Thanks. Is this accepted for college and work though?

Take a minute to look at this from the other side. She doesn’t want to revise at home or flat out refuses to revise at home (two different things imo) but what is she doing with her time at home instead?

If she’s basically completely mentally switched off once she’s home, at this point I wouldn’t want to waste a lot of time trying to change that. It’s annoying and it would be an ideal habit to have for college and adult life that home is a multi-function space, but that’s a whole extra thing to learn so probably not the best use of time for year 11. In that case, figure out at least one space you can get her into where this will feel like a study space. Does she see her tutor somewhere out of your home? Library, classroom, tutor’s house? Depending on what that space is, you may be able to add more time there without paying for more tutoring, and see if she will be more switched on and do some revision alone.

If that looks impossible or highly unlikely, then yep book more tutoring and see what you could schedule. You might find you could slot into gaps in someone’s schedule if you’re up front that you would happily take 15, 20, 30 minutes more days a week so she’s revisiting maths more than the one session a week outside of normal school lessons.

But backing up, if she’s not entirely mentally switched off the whole time she’s at home, would she engage with a YouTube video series? A paid for online recorded tutor? An app or website that makes it a bit more of a game than just doing homework?

It is also worth asking at school what intervention plans are in place for kids who are sitting on that borderline in year 11, because school will want her to pass too. There may or may not be things planned for half-term breaks etc and knowing as much as you can now will help you prep for what will be the right balance of helping her without completely burning her out.

Multi-pronged approach that divides things into smaller, regular pieces will be your best way forward. It means the detriment of having an off day or missing part of the plan is far, far less because you’re not banking everything on one or two big things in the schedule.

My DD was never really able to do extra work at home. We ended up accepting it and making sure the tutor was aware that school/college and tutor were it.

In y11 get your DC to go to as many in school revision sessions as possible, they may find those more palatable.

Thank you

She sees the tutor at her home; she has a study/separare classroom. I have suggested the library in the past; organised a separate desk at home for her studies as the one in her room is used for makeup 😅

I only want her to do the tutor homework and revise a bit when she has Mocks.

I think she is tired from school and just want to switch off.

I am going to ask her what she would like you to do.

15 mins at home everyday.
Staying at school to do it
Going to the library
An extra day with the tutor

Occasionally she does work at home when is a project/presentation she is interested in.

Part of her want to do it; the other part can not be bothered or is too tired (more likely)

I have suggested early in the morning when she is fresh, I have suggested videos. It is just not happening.

Will encourage she attends extra sessions.

Sometimes she doesn’t want to go to the tutor but once she is there she is fine and happy she is done the work when she finishes.

I paid mine for effort! Paid out on day of last exam taken, before results came in.

Kept a 'totting up' sheet. A good heads down session of self motivated studying was £10, a meh session £5.

Money started to add up and this got him more motivated to put in a good shift for double the amount a rubbish shift paid. Sacking it off got money taken off the balance.

I paid out happilly before the exams as I had always made it effort contingent, not results.

This was per core subject. He passed them all. First mocks indicated he was never going to pass even one!

Does she have hobbies? A long commute? Why is she so tired?

Does your child get on well with the tutor? This makes a huge difference. My first two years at secondary school i had the school extra maths tutor who I really liked and helped me a lot, then she retired. I did not gel with the new tutor so my mum contacted the old one who still did private home tutoring and she tutored both my brother and I through our GCSE's.