Deliberate ‘failure’ with Year 6 school work?

Hello!

My son is in Year 6. Up to the start of Year 6, he was consistently achieving very well in all aspects of his school work right from starting school. In the last few months, however, his scores in English have dipped considerably to this week not even an age expected score in SATS mocks. He is a capable student, and often achieves perfect scores in maths. He claims to not to be able to read, that he can’t spell, yet his prior achievement in school and when doing homework or reading with me, does not bear this out. He’ll go from using more complex language with a high degree of accuracy, such as ‘spherically’, to consistently writing ‘tabel’, even after I’ve corrected this.

His teacher, the SENCo and I all think that there’s an element of him deliberately trying to almost ‘fail’ in all other aspects of written school work apart from maths. 
None of us have come across this before - his dad and I are also both highly experienced teachers. We’re at a loss of how to support him.

I’ve been trying to find something online which discusses this but with no luck, so am wondering if anyone else has had this experience or can point me in the direction for support?

Thank you for reading this.

Parents
  • There is a tendency among autistic children to excel in subjects they find interesting and rewarding and to put little effort into, or actively reject, those that they have no interest in, or perceive as unimportant. I'm autistic and was amazed at a friend who got superb marks at all his school subjects at O-level. I could not really fathom that people just worked hard at things that did not interest them. My own O-level results were rather variable some very good, some just scraping through. It could be that this is what is behind your son's uneven attitude to English. His continuing excellence at maths suggests to me that it is not a global problem. 

  • Thank you for taking the time to reply and for sharing your own experience. It’s something which has got me thinking about  him needing to see the relevance of certain subjects.

Reply Children
  • Good point about being bored - same primary school throughout. I’ll try and sound out from him what his peers are saying.

    Thanks for reading and replying!

  • I was wondering if it was a boredom problem too, is he sufficiently challenged by the maths he's doing?

    Someone earlier wondered if it could be about bullying, it could well be, maybe not bullying exactly, but if he's picking up from his peers that it's "not cool" then that could be why he's refusing.

    One the other hand he may just have gone off it and isn't doing it because he has no interest, and dosen't see whats in it for him? Has he changed schools recently? Could it be a different environment or teacher? Could it be that he feels to much pressure to be "good"?