If you are watching it from the outside
You can see they are stressed. You cannot tell whether that is normal.
Most parents have never seen an internal assessment and are not sure whether to step in or stay out. Here is what it actually is, what good looks like from the outside, and the line you must not cross even when you want to.
What is actually true
It is a real piece of the grade, done largely alone
The internal assessment is a substantial part of the mark in most subjects, written over months with far less structure than an exam. Capable students often struggle with it precisely because nobody tells them what it should look like.
You cannot write any of it, and neither can I
The work has to be the student's own. An IA that reads as though someone else wrote it is the fastest route to losing a Diploma. Everything I do is designed to leave the work unmistakably theirs.
What you CAN do is ask questions
What is your question? What are you actually going to do with it? What surprised you? Those are not tutoring, they are the questions a supervisor asks, and most students have never been asked them.
The warning signs are behavioural, not academic
Avoiding the subject entirely, changing topic repeatedly without being able to say why, or going very quiet about a deadline. Not knowing the answer to a technical question is normal. Not wanting to talk about it at all is the signal.
Late is recoverable, wrong is expensive
A student who starts late but starts on something workable is usually fine. A student who has worked for a term on something that cannot score is the harder problem, and the earlier that is spotted the cheaper it is.
Three things to do this week
- Ask them to say their question out loud in one sentence. Listen for whether they can.
- Ask what they are going to DO with it. If the answer is vague, that is worth knowing now.
- If you want a second opinion, send me what exists and I will tell you honestly whether it can score.
You might be the wrong one of these
People arrive here as a student and turn out to be a parent, or the other way round. Both of the others are worth two minutes.