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A-level mocks a complete failure

chucklepie

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.

Parents

  • 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.

Reply

  • 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.

Children
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