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
  • I recall as a child deliberately trying, and succeeding, in doing no work and to fail subjects I deemed irrelevant and/or uninteresting. My special interest was one of the sciences so I worked really hard this and the related sciences plus maths as it is the language of science, but would do nothing at all in any foreign language and the minimum in English. Fortunately one teacher explained clearly and carefully the importance of English (she presented it as ‘new data’ which clicked with me) and that the university I wanted to attend wouldn’t accept me without decent and proven English language skills. I took this onboard and scraped a decent enough grade to get into uni. 

    Additionally I have never accepted being told what to do, will kick against authority figures, I have to personally own a project or subject to do it  I bet I was a difficult pupil. Things turned out well as leaving the regimentation of school to the freedom of university self motivation and responsibility I prospered and went on to have a very successful working life. Im retired now btw.

    Im not sure if this is relevant to your problem but certainly felt a resonance when reading your post. 

    Thanks for your post

    AnA

  • There are so many elements of your post which sound familiar, and that’s just with an 11 year old! I like how you describe the link to English, that’s a great one to try.

    My career is actually teaching languages, and thinking back to some of the autistic students I’ve worked with, I suspect there may be issues. The one aspect of MFL which I think he might click with is grammar, as it’s such a clear cut ‘right or wrong’ concept - he’s already decided he doesn’t want to do French, but luckily German is on offer, which I’ve already been trying to drip feed!

    Thank you reading and for sharing your experiences.

Reply
  • There are so many elements of your post which sound familiar, and that’s just with an 11 year old! I like how you describe the link to English, that’s a great one to try.

    My career is actually teaching languages, and thinking back to some of the autistic students I’ve worked with, I suspect there may be issues. The one aspect of MFL which I think he might click with is grammar, as it’s such a clear cut ‘right or wrong’ concept - he’s already decided he doesn’t want to do French, but luckily German is on offer, which I’ve already been trying to drip feed!

    Thank you reading and for sharing your experiences.

Children
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