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

I know. Especially when waiting just a couple of years would have seen him out of education - what was the urgency to buy a house? I can’t get my head round moving overseas during my child’s important GCSE years particularly when the father works such long hours and isn’t able to be around to supervise homework etc.

That was quoting @Tigerbalmshark
And can posters stop assuming that children who are not academic must have SEN.

Wrong again plenty of children get less than a grade 4 . In their GCSE,s and it's classed as a level 1 qualification, and they wont have SEN either .

Ok, they are the lowest qualification that a 16+ child in mainstream education with no SEN can get.

The fact that children in special schools can achieve qualifications in independent life skills is not really relevant to this boy, who simply hasn’t done any work for the past five years. It is disrespectful to children with SEN who do work hard, to conflate the two situations.

Entry level qualifications were never going to be on offer for this boy, and he is even turning his nose up at doing his level 2 qualifications because he thinks he’s too good for them.

Too funny!

Only a hate crime then. 🤡

Ah OK. So it's everyone else's fault. Expelled for no reason, of course.... hahahaha sounds like the apple didn't fall far from the tree.

The point isn’t the level of qualifications - it’s the lack of effort, hard work, and appropriate behaviour that’s the problem. If the OP’s son had worked his arse off to get his functional skills then that’s a
huge achievement and one to be proud of. But it sounds like he’s actually fucked about, misbehaved, and done the bare minimum, and therefore not achieved what he might have been capable of achieving. This suggests to me that he’s not been given much in the way of guidance or firm boundaries from his parents.

We live next door to a lady and her adult son. He's in his 30s. He's up all night, often playing loud video games or rap music. He has a dog that he never walks which is always barking. He doesn't work. He had a girlfriend but she got sick of his abuse, jealousy and cheating and left. He has at least one child who occasionally visits. He spends a lot of time on the phone shouting at people and threatening them.

He's in the room next to ours (the master bedroom) because he wanted it, even though his mum also wanted it and she's the one renting the house. So we have to hear all his bullshit through the wall. He spends most of his time smoking weed. She says he's her "baby" and he's completely indulged by her.

Seems like if your parents are willing to enable you, you never have to grow up.

He didn't just mess up once. He showed persistent poor behaviour: showing up late, messing about in classes, disrespecting staff and making it harder for those of his classmates who were trying to concentrate in class.
In most families, the need to respect the staff, and not dick around in class and disrupt the lessons is instilled during the early years of primary school. OP is still making "boys will be boys" excuses for a 16 year old. I feel sorry for him, really he's been failed.
I'd also challenge his "it wasn't racist, because we're mates" excuse about the video - I know people from a predominantly white area who genuinely thought that the (only) South Asian boy in their class was their friend - He told me years later that what he mostly remembers from their time at school was that all of the group 'banter' which involved him was focussed on his race, and he'd be happy never to see any of them again.

Why would they bother to go through all the paperwork to exclude a disruptive child 2 months before GCSE OP? There would only have been a short time to go before study leave started anyway, so it's not as if it was a case of not wanting him ruining lessons anymore. If it wasn't that serious, they could easily have suspended him for a week or two until he would have been off anyway.

It's outrageous - these days you can't even bully a Muslim, for being a Muslim, film it, and put in on the internet for the whole world to see, without some bloody do-gooder 'playing the racist card'. It's political correctness gone mad. The OP's son is clearly a fine individual - a prince of a boy - who has been subject to worse unfair persecution than Jesus himself.

None of them are getting it yet, even now

That is the key. No one has learned anything from the experience. Not even the adults involved. As was said wayyyy back in the thread, education is a ladder and the OP's son must build on every step. His life isn't over at 16. He can move on from this and improve his chances, but so much has to change. There has to be a fundamental shift in values and attitude in the son and his parents.

What education? Great mates btw.

This has badly backfired.

You dumped him for financial reasons, didn't think about who he was hanging around with and clearly haven't had a clue how bad things had got with school.

It would have been apparent at least two or three years ago it wasn't working out as planned. He would have failed his exams regardless of the expulsion and this would have been apparent for some years.

Stop making excuses. Face up to your part in this and where you have ended up.

Other people don't just move abroad when the going gets tough. They stick it out for the kids.

Wrong. Functional Skills level 2 is GCSE equivalent. Entry level and Level one FS qualifications are obviously lower than FS2, so Fs2 are not the lowest level qualification you can get?

If you were an employer and had two candidates who otherwise looked equal you'd take the one with GCSEs not functional skills qualifications.

It's a tough market out there. He's not fighting an up hill battle from the bottom of the pile in a competitive world.

The attitude of him and his parents is going to be everything at this point.

None of them are getting it yet even now. He's fucked.

Unfortunately, I think functional skills qualifications are perceived as lesser qualifications compared to GCSEs because young people who take them are unable to pass foundation GCSE maths and English, so the logic is that if they are equivalent to GCSEs why haven't the young people taken and passed them at GCSE?

I admit that I was guilty of thinking that as well as most posters because I had no idea that they were considered an equivalent. I suspect that most employers think so as well.

Congratulations to those whose DC have struggled and managed pass them though. That must have been quite an achievement.

What I don’t understand is why this has come as a shock to you @magicalmadmadamim

I suppose as the non-resident parent you wouldn’t have engaged with the school, but why hasn’t your son’s father? Are relations between you so bad that your ex hasn’t kept you informed of what is happening? And the fact that so many children have failed their GCSEs doesn’t say much about the school. Was it a pupil referral unit? Why do you not know much about your child’s education? Why did you have to distance yourself from your child?

There is more to this than meets the eye.

play the racist card ffs. It was 100% racist.

The school have probably done the best thing for him and other students 'despite it not being about the racist incident' (it was the racist incident).

Expelling him has meant he has received a punishment and is having to reflect on his own behaviour and other students don't have to put up with him being a dick around them.

And newsflash he would still have flunked out.

He's got a short sharp shock that his behaviour isn't ok. Better now than when he's horsing around in the real world and ends up on a racial harassment or worst charge.

You and him now have the opportunity to reflect on this and change.

It looks like neither of you are. That's your fault and your problem. Not the schools.

He needed a rocket up his arse. You still aren't getting the message that he needs a rocket up his arse.

I's wish you well for the future but it's not your problem as you don't give a shit anyway and it won't affect you because you are busy non parenting from a distance already.

My son is y11 this year and wants to study business - he’s had a hard time at school but is now working hard and grades improving, so we have looked at a number of post 16 options. They get three years of post 16 funding, so would suggest @magicalmadmadamimlooks at college as a three year stint and see what could be achieved. My son’s preference is to take A levels for which he needs 5 x 5 at GCSE including English and maths, with grade 6/7 in the subjects he wants to take (so business A level requires a 6 in business GCSE if you took it) The level 3 BTEC business course entry requirement is 5 GCSEs at 4+ including English and maths. They offered a level 2 BTEC in a ‘foundation year’ which I think was 4 GCSEs passes and if you didn’t already have English and maths at grade 4 you could retake them alongside, then progress to the level 3 course. We also looked at level 3 apprenticeships and they all require GCSE English and maths as an absolute minimum plus are super competitive. He’s hardly likely to get a glowing reference from school.

The point is there are various routes to get where he wants to be but he’s at a very low starting point with only 2 FS qualifications. Whether he can succeed will depend on whether he can grow up, knuckle down and accept that he’s made his progression more difficult for himself. It would be worth enquiring if you can privately fund study beyond Y14 as he may not have long enough to get from level 1-level3 in the 3 years the local authority will fund.
Is he ready to knuckle down or does he still think he’s the dog’s bollocks and any employer would be lucky to have him?

Sorry OP, I know this is painful but you're still minimising this. Your son has clearly exhibited a pattern of behaviour which showed he was not applying himself and being rude and disrespectful to teachers over some period of time. He then went on to be racially abusive to another child at prayer.

This is very serious stuff and it wasn't a one off: the school had to do something and saying it "played the racist card" demonstrates that you haven't begun to engage with how serious it was.

Its understandable that you feel got at: by school and now by people on here. But you and your son have two choices: you face up to what's happened, you read the riot act and make clear to your son that its now on him to get his head down and apply himself. Then he can maybe turn around his fairly poor academic credentials and demonstrate he has the chops to do well.

Or, you can continue to blame the system and convey to him that he will never succeed because people are out to get him, prompting him to bounce from one failure to the next.

It's not pleasant, but this is an opportunity for growth. If you don't learn from mistakes, how do you expect your son to do so?

“The racist card”

You aren’t painting yourself in a good light either OP.

No, not directed at you. There are several posters insisting relentlessly that Functional Skills Level 2 is not the equivalent of a grade 4 pass at GCSE. They are wrong.