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

Well that would depend on the 16 year old. Mumsnet is ridiculous sometimes.

4 (to me) doesnt sound unreasonable tbh.

Not sure whether this is comment is directed at me but to clarify, I am not doubling down - I have not once made a comment on the equivalence of qualifications and nor will I.

I am saying, that based on OP’s comments, the GCSE grades are poor, it’s not normal for a cohort to come out with no GCSEs (if that is true) and racist behaviour is definitely not just “horseplay”.

The racist card?

At this point I'm shocked anyone is bothering to give you advice. No one excluded your kid cos he was late. That didn't happen.

'The racist card'??? Wow. Your son was racist, and it was just the culmination of a long series of bad behaviour. But with parents either not caring or encouraging his sense of being a victim, it's hardly surprising

I really doubt the army would have him. He doesn’t sound like he has the kind of character they would look for at all, or the intelligence.

They are equivalent to a grade 4 GCSE which is a level 2 qualification ,and this may blow your mind but there qualifications lower than ,that
Grade 4 maths and English/ Funtional skills can open so many doors, to so many options.

To be fair if the incident was videoed and put on TikTok it’s unlikely there was much to challenge.

i’m an ex teacher and if there’s video evidence of the student doing something that is a cut and dried permanent exclusion under the rules even if the school wanted to keep him in there’s very little they could do.

we had a kid who brought a knife into school and then made a TikTok showing it on school premises.

they are usually allowed in to do their exams although one kid did them from home -we sent out a teacher to invigilate. He wasn’t allowed on the school site asa condition of I think his remand. Very violent kid.

however this is not the point. A few weeks or even months off school in year 11 don’t make that much difference. A student getting 1s and 2s is working at about eight year old level for literacy and numeracy.

i’m glad he got his functional skills op, but in order to progress at college he needs to show them he can pass his course.

if he can they’ll let him on to level 2. If he can’t they’ll offer him another level 1.

@Tigerbalmshark Do you even know the meaning of the word literally ?

@magicalmadmadamim what is technical skills? Has he explained to you? Showed you work?

They are literally not.

That is so wrong.

They are not literally the lowest qualification you can get. They are level 2.
below level 2 is level 1, and below level 1 are Entry Levels.

He took them in 1 term because there is masses of overlap with the GCSE syllabus (being at the same level!). The format of the papers is more accessible and only the properly 'useful' content is there. So for English you don't have to do comprehension on 100 year old newspaper articles but you still have to understand different formats, opinion v fact etc and write for purpose formally and informally. Plus you have to pass the S&L bit not just do it. For maths you still need to do percentages, ratios etc in real life wordy questions, but you don't need eg trig.

Suggest you don't try to make your incorrect opinions sound like facts. Maybe you should sit FS English to learn the difference?

Well said. I’m baffled by the posters doubling down when they are wrong.

They are literally the lowest level qualification you can get! As evidenced by the fact he took them in one term.

Did you think they were equivalent to a PhD or something?

Posters on this thread aren't on their high horse. Many posted in good faith and gave the benefit of the doubt. Then the penny started to drop about parenting and your none existent low bar for it.

How about raising your bar for the sake of your own son rather than shouting at the world for their 'high horses' and not taking responsibility for the mess you have helped create.

For now he has his server he made on minecraft and it is doing well so far.

Its quite easy to make pocket money/side hustle cash on this sort of thing - far far harder to turn it into a full time income stream

Maybe not but posters can't just decide that level 2 functional skills is not equivalent to GCSE
Sure most people who are doing functional skills rather than GCSE are probably not destined for A levels and Top Universities, but they do open the door to other options, and shouldn't be dismissed.

He didn't fuck up just once. I taught a girl who got excluded a few weeks before GCSEs. The final two months are revision; we'd completed the course. She couldn't attend the revision classes but she worked at home on everything we'd already done and came out with Grade 4 and 6 (English and English Lit) because she'd been learning for the past five years. She made a massive mistake that led to her exclusion, but she hadn't spent her education turning up late, backchatting and disrupting lessons. So she still came out with qualifications albeit not as high as she could have achieved if she'd stayed in school to the very end.

I say this not to stick the boot into a 16 year old, but to say this is an ongoing and long-term pattern of behaviour and attitude that must be acknowledged and tackled if he's going to move forwards in a more positive way. It wasn't just what he did to his friend at prayer that caused this, it is everything that led up to that point as well and that's what he has to change.

Fair enough, "not academic" then. Either he's not cut out for sit-down learning, in which case what's the point of him doing a business course he won't manage OR (more likely), he was dossing about, winding the teachers up and didn't apply himself. That said, most people who are better at different learning styles / more practical subjects, could still manage more than two(!) GCSEs.

Yes x2boys situation is different to the OP, as is our situation.

However there have been too many posters saying roughly that:
. the FS Level 2 is lower level than GCSE (it isn't they are both level 2s),
. it is pointless (it isn't, it acts as a gateway for many students to next level education or employment),
. and anyone would be disappointed if that was all their child got (no we aren't, we are delighted, this is child specific.)

It is the incorrect statements and mass generalisations that are wrong and a bit upsetting to those of us whose DC have overcome adversity to achieve FS or the odd GCSE.

My goodness, what a horrendous time you’ve all had (and I know through your posts over the years about your younger son’s situation too). The celebrations when your older boy passed FS must have been wonderful. Well done him and you.

For the posters continuing to dispute that level 2 FS is counted as the equivalent of a grade 4 pass at GCSE, well, I guess I must have imagined my son’s college accepting his two FS passes as GCSE equivalents and not requesting that he re-takes the GCSEs.

Your situation is not really comparable to the OP’s.
In the OP’s situation (based on her posts), there is a combination of lack of parenting, entitlement and unrealistic expectations.

To be honest, a kid who has achieved GCSEs only at levels 1 and 2 is not in a position to complain that a qualification isn't challenging enough.

Did you or your ex use your rights to challenge the exclusion? Did you encourage your son to use his time out of school productively by really getting his head down and revising?

Absolutely, your son has done amazingly well, applied himself
, worked hard , put in the time and is catching up.
A far cry from the boy in question.