DS is 14, he's autistic and hasn't been in full time school since 2018 when he was excluded from mainstream primary. At the time, I honestly thought he would never be able to go back to school, his trauma from lack of support and inappropriate restraint was so deep and the violent meltdowns he was having multiple times a day were terrifying. I genuinely believed he would end up in residential care at one point. The only school in the county that said they could meet his needs was 45 miles away, and even then they admitted that they couldn't offer him more than a basic academic curriculum or an appropriate peer group as most of their students had profound LD whereas DS is very bright.
I went to every workshop and training course I could find on SEN law, took DS for independent assessments of his needs to find out what was really going on and what he really needed in order to succeed, and got him an EHCP and then a funded place in a nearby independent specialist school (specialising in children with school related trauma).
He started off going to school for an hour a week in 2019, and half the time I ended up having to take him home early as he wasn't coping. Since then, he's very slowly built up to 3 full days a week last year and he will be doing 4 days from September when he starts Yr 10.
The school are very much led by the child's interests and so have started teaching DS Latin and Greek because he showed an interest in classics (I blame Percy Jackson 🤣). They suggested he sit the intermediate certificates in both languages this summer to give him some experience of exam conditions and to give us an idea of what special arrangements he would need for his GCSEs so we could get things in place. We made very little fuss over it and he took it in his stride (he was the only candidate so it was very chill).
He just got his results and he's got A* in both Latin papers (87% on one and 94% on the other) and a Distinction in the Greek. I'm crying, he's gone back to painting Warhammer models looking baffled by my level of emotion, there's nobody else around to share this with and I don't want to brag on FB like a wanker so I'm doing it anonymously here instead!!