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
  • Things I remember thinking at school:

    Being good makes you stand out, it isn't cool. If you want to fit in you have to dumb stuff down. You don't get picked to play football in the playground if you're clever.

    Being good means the teachers get bored with you, they never ask you the questions or give you a chance to speak, so you stop bothering. Then why bother with the work at all 

    You get more attention if you are not very good. People try and support you.

    If you do well all the time it is expected, then all you get is grief if you get a B. At some point you think it isn't worth the effort. If you can't get an A then get an F and save the energy.

    A lot of subjects are pointless, arbitrary, not rule based and just random. Spelling is random, you just learn it, art is unfathomable, etc.

    Most teaching was just so slow. Or was unintelligible. There was no middle ground.

    Maths is clear, rule based and you can expand it logically. It didn't do it for me though, I did my o level at 14, but it was just a tool.

    I did school work for other people. I would rather be reading, making things or burning them, or outdoors. I would rather be in my own world learning things. But you have to keep doing stuff because you are told to.

    It was always just do this for another year or two years then things will get better. You'll get good grades, then things will get easier. I tried that for 56 years till I realised just another 2 years is not going to work any more. 

  • Thank you for sharing such a personal experience. We’ve had plenty of training on autism during our teaching career but for me, what’s really helpful is hearing the person’s own experience.

    So much of what you say resonates with me and from what I’ve seen with students over the years. It’s given me a lot to think over.

    Thank you for taking the time to reply. I really appreciate it.

Reply
  • Thank you for sharing such a personal experience. We’ve had plenty of training on autism during our teaching career but for me, what’s really helpful is hearing the person’s own experience.

    So much of what you say resonates with me and from what I’ve seen with students over the years. It’s given me a lot to think over.

    Thank you for taking the time to reply. I really appreciate it.

Children
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