Case study: Failing confidence at A Level

Daisy’s mum contacted me in the summer of 2025 after Daisy got a U in her year 12 English Literature exams. Her target grade, generated by her GCSE results, was a C but her expected grade was an E. Whilst Daisy did not need a specific grade as she was not applying to university, she and her mum wanted her to pass the exam and have something to show for two years of hard work.

Background

When I met Daisy, she was not enjoying sixth form much and considering dropping out; her confidence was very low, and the school was not able to give her the support and help she needed to get back on track. This is quite a common problem at A Level: many students who are successful at GCSE do not adapt well to the sudden expectation of independence and application needed to succeed at A Level. Teachers expect students to make this jump up and are rarely given the time to steer those who are struggling in the right direction. This can leave perfectly able students floundering.

Daisy said she generally liked the texts they were studying in class but was not confident of her understanding or interpretations. Her Year 12 exam grade had made her feel downhearted and she did not know how to improve.

Tuition Action

When I met Daisy, it was quickly apparent that she had not been taught how to structure or write an A Level essay so it was no wonder she had not progressed in Year 12. We started by looking at the requirements of A Level essay writing and identifying Daisy’s particular concerns. We chose an essay title from the Novels unit and worked on how to plan a response and find the right evidence from the texts. This exam is an open book exam which means that familiarity with the texts is an essential part of exam success. Having gathered appropriate evidence, we then looked at how to develop a thesis by discussing what the point of xxxx was in the texts i.e. what did the authors want to show the reader through the presentation of this theme or idea? This helped Daisy develop her own critical voice in her essay writing – an important part of the step up to A Level. Once she had this thesis, it was easy to show her how to include it in her introductions and use it to scaffold her argument points.

Essay writing at any level can be helped with simple scaffolds as a starting point and though A Level examiners don’t want to see formulaic responses, having an acronym to help students remember what they must include to hit all assessment criteria is a useful crutch to use while developing confidence. Once confidence is developed, the student’s own critical voice can come through, and they can adapt the scaffold to their own particular style. Daisy found that the acronym I used reminded her of what she needed to include so that she didn’t submit essays that missed out whole assessment objectives.

One of the most important lessons to be learnt at A Level is that you can’t really interpret a text incorrectly – as long as you can support your interpretation with evidence. Allowing Daisy the space to make her own judgements about her texts without fear of being told she was wrong, meant that she started to enjoy discussing the texts in a way she had not before and therefore really enjoy the books she was studying – arguably the most valuable part of studying Literature.

Over the nine months that I worked with Daisy, we looked at all of the set texts on her course, ensuring that she understood the writers’ intentions, the contexts which influenced the texts and developed more confidence to analyse them. We looked at connections between the poems she was studying so that she could make the right choices for comparison under the time pressure of the exams. We used exam style questions to build her confidence at planning and writing responses in the mocks and final exams.

We spent a number of sessions on Daisy’s NEA, which constitutes 20% of the final grade. Daisy had already chosen her title and texts with her teacher but was struggling to start writing the essay. We worked on picking out evidence from both novels that best enabled Daisy to address her chosen question and then used this to narrow her focus in a thesis statement. From this, we mapped out the sections she could focus on so that she had a clear plan to follow. One of the assessment objectives for this task is to explore texts using different interpretations. Daisy was struggling to do this alone because there was very little critical material available for one of her texts. I found some critical material for both texts that she could use to meet this objective. Whilst I was very happy to be able to help Daisy with the planning and structuring of her NEA, it would be unethical for me to be involved in writing it, so she did this alone and then gave it to me to proofread when she had finished. We were both delighted that Daisy’s teacher marked this essay at a B grade – considerably higher than her target and predicted grades.

For revision, we did a lot of essay planning together – thinking through how to respond to each question by discussing thesis statements, argument points, the best evidence to use and relevant context to consider. There was no doubt that Daisy now understood the texts and had a critical voice in these discussions. I urged Daisy to do lots of timed essay practice as it’s so important to practise articulating a whole response in the limited time exams allow but, as a tutor, it is difficult to dictate this.

Outcome

By the time the exams started in May, Daisy was more confident at how to structure her responses in each exam. She had revised in class, on her own and with me and was far surer of the set texts than when we began. Most importantly, she had shown huge resilience in completing the course despite being ready to drop out of sixth form on a number of occasions and said she really enjoyed the tuition sessions.

Daisy’s final grade was a D. I was happy for Daisy that she had passed her A Level and had something to show for persevering with sixth form. Students often look at a D with disappointment but, for a student who was failing in year 12 and had been predicted an E, this is still a win. Daisy’s NEA will have pulled this grade up considerably and illustrates how important it is for students who are less confident under exam pressure to have the freedom to explore ideas thoroughly without the time constraint.

For students in a similar position to Daisy, it is important to seek help as soon as possible. When students have to use their GCSE skills to approach A Level texts, they often underperform.  Gaining the skills needed to write at A Level standard as early as possible in Year 12 is important and gives sufficient time to embed and consolidate these skills before the students faces the final exams.