Gcse English

Hi Portland girl

I've not got much to add as my daughter is just 13 however I suspect you are in the same LA as myself given your username.  Due to personal reasons, I very much doubt my daughter will be in a position to take many gcse's at the age of 16 but as I plan to keep her in education for as long as possible (to make up to a certain degree for the amount of school she's missed in the last year) and therefore will consider a staggered approach to gcse's.  I think there are very few people that will speak up on your behalf and Mr Gove is unlikely to listen (me, cynical?) but I believe your son should be entitled to extra time in exams and possibly a reader and scribe?  It may be worth speaking to the SEN department to clarify if its not already in place.

I personally, would like a conversation with Mr Gove too however I think my anger at the lack of educational facilities (in this county particularly) for ASD children would overtake my desire to just talk!

Thanks Hope,

Trust me to get something so fundermental, very wrong. Thanks for the clarification also. No matter what, she is very much missed here. 

I shall try and look her up

Kindest regards again

Coogybear XX

IntenseWorld, a woman with Asperger's and two kids with Autism, is a regular contributor on the Talk About Autism forum, under the name WhirlingMind. I also regularly visit this forum, and eventually surmised that WhirlingMind and IntenseWorld are the same person!

Hi Longman,

 Thanks for that, It's a consideration, but I'm not sure if he is self-motivated enough for the independant learning options. I will put it to him though.

Longman, do you know what forum IntenseWorld moved to? I really miss his input and it would be great to stay in touch.

Kind Regards 

Coogybear XX

Thanks for your comments so far, I was rather hoping that someone could wave a magic wand ? I will speak to school SENCO tomorrow to see what they can do but if anyone else has ideas or is willing to speak to the lovely Mr Gove I would be very grateful !

I've commented on this somewhere previously. It is considered necessary to formulate questions in different ways to encourage discussion rather than merely descriptive answers.

The problem from an autistic spectrum perspective is, as you have commented, the wording often has social connotations.

Particularly when it is necessary to "question spot" - learning likely answers to expected questions, which may be partly necessitated by a school's emphasis on the curriculum means candidates are not prepared for some questions, you have to hope your learned areas come up.

So when the phrasing of the question feels threatening to someone on the spectrum, it can make it hard to answer your best question.

Unfortunately no-one seems willing to adjust the curriculum for autistic candidates. And it is all very well the examining board saying they will take autism into consideration - do these examiners properly understand how socially phrased questions can undermine a candidate's confidence?

But there must be a way of preparing pupils on the spectrum on ways to deal with these kind of questions.

You'd think such preparation would already be available. NAS Moderators - could you raise this with campaigns or some other action group to raise this with examination boards?

My youngest is now doing the Cambridge igcse privately.  I have spoken to the examining  board about the same issues you mentioned and  they said they will be  taken into consideration when marking.  They also don't have a speaking and listening component which my son struggled to do at school.

Hope  this helps.

My son has ASD and Dyslexia. A double whammy! He's failed three times so far and is on his forth attempt. Each fail has been by just a few marks, but because he hasn't got a C he's compelled to retake it. Far from empowering I think this is very demoralizing.

If he does pass, it will be compulsory Maths GCSE next, he's already taken that three times also.

The governments new policy has effectively ostracized those with SEN and set them up to fail in my opinion. At least with the old system they stood a chance of getting a grade which was truly representative of their ability. Now it's all down to the Exam at the end and knowing my sons ability to perform under pressure, it's a recipe for failure.