A-level mocks a complete failure

Hello,

My son has HFA. For this he receives additional time in exams to read the papers.

On finishing GCSE's he got mostly A and B grades. However, he's finding the mock-exams at A-level grade difficult in that on his latest he got a U. 

The problem is he fully understands the subject (and his other subjects) and probably knows more about it than the others but he simply cannot infer from the questions what they want him to say (he doesn't take things literally like answering 'yes' to questions requiring a full answer, just fails to pick out what is being inferred).

It seems the move to A-level is exaggerating this greatly.

It's really quite sad that someone who clearly fully understanding the entire topic to a high level will fail completely due to this.

Is there anything that can be done, e.g. (I doubt it but) is there a way exam questions can be altered to be more specific, or are there any books available where I/he can read to attempt to improve his ability to interpret questions, etc. ?

Thanks.

  • Did you vote brexit and did you vote tory?? 

  • For me it was as simple as doing a mock exam question ever week at lunch time  By the end of it I was using 10 minutes to focus on the question with a spider diagram to organise what I'd pen ... It was then I realised it was sort of a game whereby I had to regurgitate and organise a clever set of answers regardless of the veracity... without the rote training of a mock exam one a week I wouldn't have got into the writing essay mindset .... The frequent  feedback stopped me going off at a tangent ... exam questions then became less stress full. I say less because I'm always stressed! 

  • I did well in my GCSEs. I then initially struggled in my A Levels. In my mocks I got Ds. But managed to turn them to As. I had some really caring teachers who did mock essays with FB every week and due to excessive rote practice I became a master at structuring an essay. I undoubtedly struggled as ama result of my learning difficulties...

    That continual theme of practice (i.e learning for a topic every week) with continual feedback helped me to narrow the objective of my focus to something pratical. Once I'd spent 10 minutes on a quick mind map and digesting what I thought they wanted it became easier.... As I was writing the essay I'd continually check back to the question to ensure I'd not tangentially wandered off .... Instill this as a habit in him by rote practice and it won't be an issue.

    The question I'd then ask is do I have time to do this prior to the September exams. It's likely too late

    If I could tell my past  self one thing it would be to take 3 years for A levels. I'm a slow learner as I need to absorbe more low level detail to make the big picture stack up. There's then a strength because the level of inquiry is more detailed. 

    Maybe then take the exams in September as practice but also re do his final year with an emphasis on practices how to answer questions. It's not the end he's just at the start. This will take the pressure off your son and he can be safe in the knowledge the new tactics should help. 

    Use this as a turning point. He can and should go to uni given his GCSEs but don't rush it. I struggled in my first degree as this was all undiganosed and it became a real struggle but that is another story. 

    All the best and trust me it isn't a disaster as it may seem. I used to think I had dyscalclia due to my visual stress... turns out I just got a distinction in a statistics masters i took in middle age. All the equations and algebra were initially a nightmare but I managed to break through the barrier. The key to your son's learning is to encourage his effort and help him to thinking he can still do it... It can become disparaging if you seem slower than everyone else but that's half the battle determination which aspies often have in spades

    Ted 

  • Dear Chucklepie,

    I have similar issues in this area and it was very hard for me with the jump from GCSEs to A Levels. I like your son was good academically but at times struggled to put things down on paper; especially as is the case with A Levels when you need to interpret what the question is really asking you to do. In my scenario I found moving to a more vocational qualification (e.g. BTEC or OCR Level 3 Extended Diploma) a bit better but I am not sure if this may be the case with regarding your son.

     

    Unfortunatly for me this is still an area I need to develop so I am not able to offer a full solution or alternative manner to really tackle this issue. BUT what I found to be a little helpful was the learning support department at my college giving me (and other students like those with Dyslexia) help with the issue I described above. They gave me worksheets (which should be available in some study support books) that explained for example when a question says explain etc, what does this really mean (i.e. contrast the differences and similarities between the concept(s) in the question and give a conclusion). I know this might not be of particular use at this current moment in time with your son's mock exams but hope it gives you some idea for the future. Also prehaps getting him publically (i.e. via college or ideally social services) or privately assessed by an Educational Psychologist and/or Speech and Language Therapist (SLT) as he seems to be struggling with lingustics (i.e. the meaning of language in a variety of contexts) and inferences. Some american SLTs have mentioned this issue with Autism and you can find out more by searching about lingustics and Autism/Asperger's Syndrome. Have a look at:

    http://www.speechpathology.com/articles/oelig-eading-between-lines-making-1526 

     

     

    Regards,

    urspecial

     

  • Just to let you know that my son with ASC also did not do as well as he expected in his mocks and was quite upset about it. He normally averages around 90% and was getting 40% in some of his mocks.

    However, his whole year group did badly (he is in a mainstream school) whose attainment of A-C grades at A level is in the 90% area.    Some of the top achievers were getting marks well below their average and they are NT.  

    It might be worth checking to see if the NT's were also struggling, and if this is the case it may not be due to your childs ASC,  but just a new skill he needs to acquire to interpret the question correctly.

    Good luck

  • A levels being an industry of sorts there are propbably books out there on exams and learning technique and learning cards and so on. I just wouldn't be placed to recommend as trends change.

    As with anything else like this, there are issues of quality and accuracy. Given lots of books and websites on how to pass exams you'd think there'd be higher success rates but books cannot tell you everything. There are lots of "experts" out there whose ideas worked well enough in the early 2000s but not in the 2010s.

    Past papers is a good way forward if you can get some insight into how they are marked. Sometimes a teacher can be persuaded to disclose the marking guidelines they used on past papers if they were official markers of scripts, it depends on current rules about these.

    A Level (and Open University papers) tend to revolve around very concise marking outcomes. The markers are told what is acceptable, what isn't and what gets more points, what gets less, if the working out gets more marks or the answer.

    Hence past papers on their own don't always tell you enough about the right way to answer.

    I would always advocate studying course outcomes. Somewhere in the information supplied on A Levels there should be some information on what studying a particular A Level is supposed to achieve. That can help you understand better the angle or spin on answers.

    I'd still emphasise my earlier points. This is what is often seen to affect people on the spectrum.

  • Thanks for the reply.

    It's not the following the neurotypical approach that is the problem as I'm sure he can do that, it's actually more simple than that - just understanding what the questions are asking of him, i.e. where do I go or what can I do to get him taught to interpret questions? is it a case of going through as many mock exams as I can (not that he'd let me anyway....) so he can spot question types? are there any books by the NAS to help? etc

     

     

  • My experience was with helping undergraduates rather than with A levels, but I might venture to offer some advice.

    This sort of difficulty will affect any student, but can be a lot more problemmatic with aspergers/HFA. From the NT perspective you tend to follow a taught mindset, indoctrinated into you by teaching and personal study methods, which means when a different technique sneaks up on you, people (like teachers) don't seem to notice that some re-alignment is needed.

    Transition from A level to undergraduate has major changes, and some bright A level students flounder at university because they just cannot comprehend the new mindset.

    The AS situation is harder because:

    Not interconnecting socially makes it harder to pick up on collective new insight. Basically his NT classmates will be discussing the new concepts, your son may not be getting connected with that process. Mind you, the collective learning process (the blind leading the blind) can get it horribly wrong, following popular myths. Also by A level a certain degree of gamesmanship enters and the brighter ones, previously held back by the troublemakers, learn how to plant false trails, and watch their slower classmates get confused. I'm tempted to say revenge is sweet.

    Being given to routines, it is harder to change or to spot the need to change technique. Also as you move up the education system, learning by rote becomes less important than being able to discuss or explain.

    With AS your son may be embarrassed about some things that he perceives beneath his intelligence, or just frustrated at having to do plodding things when he feels smarter. The trouble is, increasingly, he'll find that he is expected to show his rough working in calculations (indeed more marks may be given to the roughs than the answers) or compare and contrast concepts, or show some thought processes as to how he reaches a conclusion. Many people on the spectrum get caught out because they don't feel they ought to have to do things a certain way. I'm afraid there's a lot of "jumping through hoops" ahead.

    Some people with AS are too driven to logicality in their writing (Mr Data has to take a lot of the blame for this). He will be expected more and more to use certain techniques in how he explains things or develops ideas. He cannot hope to get through with an overly rigid or inflexible way of writing.

    Relevance becomes increasingly critical. He needs to read questions carefully and ensure he fully completes what the question expects. This may take a lot of practice. He must resist the temptation to answer with what he thinks will be more interesting than the question set. Also he needs to reduce the amount of extraneous detail - things he feels the examiner might like to know also, which the examiner will interpret as him not knowing how to answer the question.

    At the moment there is no option in sight to change the curriculum for people with AS, even though I do feel there are strong arguments to allow this. Assessment is designed around NTs, and AS has thinking process characteristics that are going to clash with this. I've tried to put forward alternative strategies but so far there's no give.

    He will just have to grin and bear it. It's humiliating to have to do things the NT way, but for the time being its the only option.