To think that 4 G.C.S.E's needed to do business studies is ridiculous

So his behaviour was disruptive over a period of time and then involved in racist bullying. He sounds disengaged and disrespectful. Was there any realistic chance of him passing gcses before he was excluded? Stop minimising his involvement and acknowledge he has been let down by both parents who seem reluctant to get involved. Did you say whether FS was entry level, L1 or 2? Do you even know?

You've misunderstood. OP has said (in later posts) that he got grade 1s and 2s in his GCSEs. These are not normally considered passing grades for the purposes of moving on to higher level qualifications. (Most colleges seem to want 4 at a grade 3 or 4 or higher to study a btec level 2 qualification.). Separately, at a different school, he got Maths and English functional skills certificates, which OP has said are equivalent to GCSEs (presumably she means equivalent to GCSE's at a high enough grade for the college to count them).

I'm not sure what you expect any college to do OP?

He's shown he's not academically capable,
He's shown he's not willing to work hard
He's shown he's willing to humiliate a more vulnerable pupil (vulnerable by being in a minority)

Why on earth do you think any college would want to take him, let alone put him on a better course? Because you said so?

Op, I really think this is the point at which you need to help him learn from his mistakes.
It's not easy having teenagers, they have this knack of being impulsive and doing their own thing, however, you can empathise with his feeling on the course while helping him to understand the reality of where he now is and what limited options he has.
Stick with this bit and by this time next year after a lovely long summer, he'll be much more where he wants to be.

The question you ask in the first post, OP, about whether education has got much harder - no, not really. It is unusual to leave school with nothing but two Functional Skills qualifications (which are definitely not GCSEs - you have been misinformed on that). It is unusual to be excluded for racist bullying. And for him to sit all his exams and pass none of them in the school he was moved to suggests that his long history of disruptive behaviour in lessons resulted in him learning nothing for five years.

Did he actually show up to all his exams? Even when I taught bottom set, the ones who turned up got a grade even if they didn't hit a 4 or a D (before the grades became numerical). Yes, a few of them got an F/G or 1/2 - those were the kids who really could hardly read or write, or the ones who really struggled for various reasons. It was only the couple of kids who sacked off the papers altogether and went and got stoned in the woods when the exams were on who came out with no grade at all (and they were capable of passing, they were just on a self-destruct mission).

I suspect there might be a lot you aren't aware of, and if you've mainly got your son's side of the story then I think his behaviour has been a lot worse than you realise. If he wants to succeed one day in business, he will have to knuckle down to get the qualifications required and he will have to understand the severity of the racist behaviour because that would get him sacked in a heartbeat. He needs to know that and he needs to know why that is. Dismissing it as teenage horseplay doesn't help him at all.

I had to have 5 A-C GCSE’s to study for a BTEC at college in 1997. It’s not unreasonable at all.

Your kid sounds a bloody nightmare, his dad works long hours and you’re “doing what you can from a distance” - I’m guessing you don’t live local to him.

OP, sorry but it’s time to take off the rose tinted glasses of your precious boy. He’s a disruptive student at best, a naive racist at worse (the Muslim child being his ‘friend’ is neither here nor there. It’s racist whether meant maliciously or not)
He’s failed his GCSEs and frankly, needs to buck up his ideas.

He needs more parental involvement and guidance that doesn’t come from his mum with a “boys will be boys gosh everyone’s so hard on you!” Approach.

They need a certain number of passes to show that they are capable of applying themself to the work or there is no point in them doing the course. DD needed 5 GCSE's to get onto an Acting course, due to the level of writing. They had to have maths and English as 2 of those.

Your son clearly didn't bother with school. If he has done these qualifications now then maybe he wants to change things. He can turn that around with college courses if he applies himself and works hard. There are various Level 2 courses that lead on to a Level 3 the following year. It means 3 years at college, but could get him qualificiations. Or he does a Level 2 and then finds an apprenticeship. But he will need good attendance at college.

If he is finding it boring, could he talk to the tutor who might be able to give him some different/harder work?

For the record,DD has various SEN and struggled at school and got 8 GCSE passes from 4-8, failing only French which we totally expected. If your DS didn't get 1 GCSE then something seriously went wrong through his entire education.

and I agree with PP, you are totally minimising his behaviour that got him expelled. Schools quite rightly clamp down on racist bullying.

I’m not going to get into his behaviour but.

He needs to knuckle down and pass the year, and then try to get up to 5GCSEs next year. He should have a tutor in college you can speak to.

After that, he could look at T Levels.

In the absence of anything else he should commit to finishing the year.

Then depending what qualification he gets from that he can move up a level.
Then in his third year he can go up a level again.

The really good thing is that because he has the FS Maths and English at level 2 he doesn't have to spend time in GCSE maths and English lessons unless he wants to. Depending what his academic ability and his motivation actually is it may or may not be worth trying to get these at GCSE.

If this year he is on a level 1 course (sorry if I missed it), then next year he could do a Level 2 Diploma which is 'equivalent' to 4 GCSEs at grade 4+. Then he still gets a 3rd year at college for free.

I hope this thread is giving you food for thought, OP.

I would love to know what his grades for effort and attainment as well as behaviour have been since yr6.

I'm fairly sure they'd be a pattern of absolute shocking given this additional information.

OP clearly is in complete denial.

I doubt the bullied kid thinks they are friends.....

OP, most parents teach their children from a young age that actions have consequences. In the absence of effective parenting, your ds is having to learn this the hard way.

that makes it even worse that they were friends. How humiliating for his friend.

so in a nutshell you son has been neglected by his parents - the one he lived with working all the time and then his mother elsewhere.

I am not surprised he has acted out being the class clown for attention. You have repeatedly excused his poor behaviour. I was born in August and have 8 GCSE’s. If the whole year got poor GCSE’s I would be wondering why the school were unable to teach students to achieve them, and what parents were doing to support their children to hep them achieve this.

noone will employe him no matter what course he takes of he continues to act like this.

Ridiculing a Muslim boy while he was praying and then putting it on TikTok for more people to ridicule him? I’m sorry but that absolutely is bullying. And discrimination..

In my book it’s far worse than the chair throwing and other things you consider more worthy of expulsion.

You seem incredibly laissez-faire about everything.

Getting 5 GCSE passes at grade 4+ is the baseline required by pretty much all employers and further education providers for someone to show they have enough sense to absorb fairly simple information and follow instructions. If someone only has 2 then it sends a clear message that either that person is really very stupid or they are really not at all motivated to put any effort into academic achievement. Wouldn't it be more sensible for your son to spend a year or 2 reaching that baseline standard and getting a sensible number of GCSEs and then progress to the next level once that step is done. The point of GCSEs is that they are a general spread of knowledge over a wide range of subjects - your son may not thrive in business if he is so ignorant of every realm of human knowledge.

that makes it even worse that they were friends. How humiliating for his friend.

so in a nutshell you son has been neglected by his parents - the one he lived with working all the time and then his mother elsewhere.

I am not surprised he has acted out being the class clown for attention. You have repeatedly excused his poor behaviour. I was born in August and have 8 GCSE’s. If the whole year got poor GCSE’s I would be wondering why the school were unable to teach students to achieve them, and what parents were doing to support their children to hep them achieve this.

noone will employe him no matter what course he takes of he continues to act like this.

Not steep at all.
Bullying someone over their religion, recording it and posting it online, so now including cyber bullying.
You are either in denial or truly not a nice person. I would be disgusted if either of my dc did anything like that.
The school excluded him in order to jeep the other pupil safe from their bullying. Vile behaviour from your ds. Hope this teaches him a lesson

Good spot-I didn’t see that he’s done functional skills not actual two GCSEs. Very confusing for sure! He should be doing resit English/maths at college realistically. There’s surely a certain point of it being a paid resit too if he doesn’t pass. Not sure how it works at college though; 6th form resits get 4 attempts essentially January and July of both year 12 and 13 but that’s to study level 3 and they have to have passed 1 of the the two gcse eng/maths if they haven’t met the full requirements.

Do you feel a lot of guilt about him or something op? Is that why you're constantly making excuses for him? You've assumed that college are being unfair to him, seemingly without even knowing very much about his actual grades, what he's doing in college or the business studies qualification he wants to do.

You may think you're helping him by always being 'on his side' but you're not. He needs proper guidance from you not unending sympathy

This doesn't make sense.

He was enrolled in the normal amount of GCSEs, showed up and sat them but only has 2?

What happened to the rest?

You could walk in a write 'I am a fish' 100 times and still likely get a 1 (F grade) in GCSE. It's actually almost impossible to get no grade.

My school forgot to schedule a test on the time table and the WHOLE school missed it (they didn't realize and raise it until after the start time when no one had shown up) but I still got a grade C GCSE based off the course work component we had done in class for the previous 2 years (that was only half the marks available though, would have likely been an A with the exam).

I also got a splitting migraine and slept through one exam (that I really didn't need, it was a school requirement but I was doing 10 other exams anyway) after writing just my name and a sentence and I still got an F (which is a pass albeit the lowest one you can get) not a U basically because I showed up and took part even if it was the very bare minimum.

To echo what PP have said, Functional Skills is not GCSE equivalent. You're getting it confused with Foundation GCSE, where the highest grade you can get is a 5. I'm surprised the school he was moved to after his exclusion didn't make that clear to him or to you.

If he's only got FS, he needs to start at BTech Level 1 – at my daughter's college you can get onto that with FS and then work your way up. She's doing Level 2 in her chosen subject and if she passes at the end of this year, that will be the equivalent of four more GCSEs. Then she'll move to Level 3.

What you need to find out is whether his college offers Level 1 in Business Studies and if it doesn't, what Level 1 course would they recommend as a gateway he can do that while resitting Maths and English at Foundation Level, because it's really worth him doing that. Then he can progress to Level 2 and 3. Yes, it's a longer path, but this is where he's at and he needs to stop messing about and knuckle down.

What he did was criminal behaviour.

Saying it's teenage horseplay is beyond contempt.

I was willing to give the benefit of the doubt but what he did and the way he did it - when a student was at prayer and then it being put on tiktok - the school will have had little choice but to expel in line with a zero tolerance policy.

Far from being unfair, given he's well above the age of criminal responsibility it's lucky that the school left it there.