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

[magicalmadmadamim]

My eldest DS is 16 and been at college since September. He has 2 G.C.S.E equivalent certificates in English and Maths.
I'm sure back when I was in college business studies was always a foundation course?
He really wanted to do business studies and they have put him on some really rubbish courses that he is super bored with.
Is it me or is education getting much harder now?
Hardly any of his school friends passed any g.c.s.e's :(

"Not challenging enough"? Well, OP, your son hasn't exactly shown himself up to academic challenge, has he?

With pretty appalling exam results and a long history (or so it would seem) of being disruptive in class and just not doing the work, why would anyone imagine that he's got enough in him to do anything academically challenging?

He's allowed himself to slip to the bottom of the class, so to speak. If he wants to be challenged, to be thought better of, and to overcome some of the obstacles that he's strewn in his own way, he needs to basically sit down, shut up, and get on with his work.

If he does well enough in that then maybe next year he'll be able to try something more to his liking. But right now, he's got a lot to learn --- and not just the GSCEor BTEC syllabus.

A level 2 Functional Skills pass in English or Maths is the same level as a GCSE grade 4+.

A GCSE grade 1-3 is a 'level 1 pass'. A GCSE grade 4-9 is a 'level 2 pass'.

He’s hanging out with the wrong friends if not one of them could get a GCSE.
And no, I don’t think four GSCE’s is too much for any course. You need to ask yourself why your expectations are so low.

My year six is able to understand that harassing someone praying is totally out of order.

I think that there's possibly only a couple across the whole year who might not grasp this yet.

He is a racist bully. Constantly late which will have affected his grades and he back chats the teacher. No wonder he has such low grades and yes he deserved to get expelled. With his track record he won't get an apprenticeship, they do read the school records and he will be competing with people who get good grades and are trustworthy and reliable. Geez My kids would detest having him in their class.

So he’s a lazy, disruptive, Islamophobic bully.

'A few weeks before his exams'. So, during Ramadan, then? During prayers during a time of fasting, not even drinking water?

For your average Christian-ish person, what that muppet and his mates did was on a par with gatecrashing a funeral for shits and giggles and filming it to entertain equally racist/islamophobically minded prats. High spirited horseplay, or what he undoubtedly claimed was 'banter, he's my mate, honest', my fucking arse.

Anyhow, if he's only managed to get a level one qualification, there's no way on earth he's at the standard required to manage a level 3 BTEC. He might think that he's big and clever enough to cope with it, but he couldn't even manage to get 4 GCSEs to show he's vaguely literate and numerate at the moment. No point wasting funding on a course he would almost certainly fail if he didn't get himself chucked out for further hate crimes first.

He has most definitely FAFO. Yet Mummy says it's not fair, rather than 'what the fuck did you expect would happen? Red carpet and an honorary doctorate?'. So no nearer the finding out and maybe even learning a bit stage.

Sorry to be pedantic but a level 2, is a 4 ( low c), not a 4+. (But not a 3 as I erroneously suggested) .

Just mentioning in case anyone else who is reading is navigating options for their children.

www.learndirect.com/blog/is-functional-skills-level-2-equivalent-to-gcses

I should have clarified, they are both at level 2. English and Maths.

"I'm sure back when I was in college business studies was always a foundation course?"
So I work in a College, No business studies is not always a foundation course. You can do honours degrees in it! You can do lower level business studies, but you have said that the course he wants to do is level 2, so it is a level 2 course. 4 GCSEs are a pretty standard pre-requisite for that course. If your son wants to do a lower level Business Studies course, he can probably find one that is level one or entry level, but he won't will then come out with a lower level qualification and would need to do his Maths and English to move up to the higher one later, if the higher one is what he wants/needs for the future.

Do you think he is likely to understand the purpose of knuckling down? Why he needs to behave and just get on with it.
He's on a step learning curve but this is the point at which he can turn things around.

Your " average kid" at 16 doesn't leave a secondary school in the UK with a couple of Functional Skills qualifications. Fact.
It would be highly unlikely that " most of Year 11 got the same" unless he was talking about the Year 11 cohort in a Special School or a Pupil Referral Unit. Fact.
Given what you say about previous problems with his attitude and his most recent reason for exclusion, I suspect his behaviour has been very poor for some considerable time. I can't see how you can pretend not to realise this and haven't seen through his bullsh**t long before it reached this stage.
The pretence is continuing if you believe he can make a career out of hosting a Minecraft Server. Do you even know what that means?
Setting up a Minecraft Server is not hard, requires no coding skills and many gamers are already moving onto new things.
It's not a valid career choice for someone with no coding skills.
Someone needs to be brutal and tell him that.
He needs to get his head down and work hard to get some basic qualifications at college. He needs to grow up and realise that sometimes you need to get the grades even when you find things " boring"
Otherwise he won't be able to do anything except unskilled minimum wage work, if that.( Not that there is anything wrong with that, but could he do better?)
He also needs to put some time and distance between any potential employers and the reason for his exclusion. Bullying and posting inappropriate material on the internet is going to be a massive red flag to any potential employers.

What a lovely lad you have raised. You must be so proud.
Backchatting teachers, racist bullying, underperforming in exams…

Yet you excuse it all and think your darling son should be allowed to study business studies, despite not putting the work in to get the GCSE’s he needed.
Wow.

Business studies as a qualification is not aimed directly at people wanting to run their own business. It is a general exam that introduces stuff that goes on in offices, eg a bit about finance, some sales & marketing, human resources etc.

So it is a qualification that is useful for someone wanting a junior role working in an office.

Whether it was his friend or not, that behaviour was racist and so disrespectful.
And it was spread over social media.

Schools have to be seen to be tough on this kind of thing (rightly so) and I think expulsion was correct. Particularly as you admit his behaviour has been pretty off for a long time beforehand.

As a PP said, don't make excuses for him. He's in serious danger of messing up his life here.
If you live away & his dad is always working who is supporting him?
Teens need a lot of support, especially through the exam years which are tough & require a lot of work over a sustained period, not just at the end.

For what it’s worth about 70% of the students who take gcse maths at age 16 (so the year 11s) get grade 4 or above.

22% get grade 2 or below.

data from here because I was interested in- used to teach maths and the only students who got 1s and 2s at my school were either SEN or just didn’t bother.

https://www.bstubbs.co.uk/gcse.htm#M

many students who struggle with academic subjects will often do other GCSEs like art or photography or catering or music that play to their strengths (and are less exam based) so it’s quite rare to have no passes at all.

My son took and passed Level 2 Functional Skills in English and maths and yes this is the equivalent of a GCSE grade 4. I’m not sure why a couple of posters are claiming that it isn’t.

There are a few questions regarding your son……

If courses offered were unsuitable it might have been better to address this problem back in September?

What were your son’s (and his friends’) predicted grades? If he didn’t achieve them then why not? And you both need to be honest here.

True, he got Maths and English equivalents - useful ones but I worry about the word equivalent?

The course titled ‘business studies’ could be quite a different course to the one you are familiar with from your past. Going back on my teaching experiences business studies was little more than typewriting and keyboard skills - very useful but not what the subject has morphed into.

If the college’s entry requirement is 4 GCSEs then it looks like it is an A level type course and requires a certain degree of academic rigour to understand it/get a grade at the end.

So if your son got 2 GCSE equivalents them he may well be wasting his time and the colleges resources embarking on this course. They are working from past experience, you are working from hope.

TBH I suggest your son has a rethink, asks and takes advice. If he’s only got half the entry requirements I can’t see them weakening and letting him join, certainly not over halfway through the first year.

Even apprenticeships require certain grades and GCSEs, usually 5, so your son has zero chance not progressing.

If I did what your son did, I’d be sacked from my job. Discrimination and bullying on religious grounds is illegal. Totally right that he was expelled.

You - and your son - are minimising his behaviour by calling it horseplay.

So he's a racist bully, as well as lazy, rude, and immature? Dismissing his actions as "teenage horseplay" rather than addressing them seriously is doing him no favours whatsoever. Didn't you and his dad respond to that despicable behaviour at all? Or did you just downplay it and allow him to think he was a victim?

He needs to start being accountable for his actions. As for his complaints that he is bored and the work isn't challenging enough? How utterly ridiculous. He hasn't shown he is capable of passing the most basic exams. He ought to get his head down and prove he can achieve the results he needs. Though TBH, his academic work would be the least of my concerns if he were my son.

DS learned a trade in college. He came top of his class with a 97.5% average score

Rules were changed when he got to the final year and because he didn’t have an English GCSE he was blocked from completing rhe course. So will never qualify

Most ridiculous thing was if he went abroad to do the final year he could come back qualified to the UK and even if he didn’t speak a work of English he would be qualified and able to work

Wow that's awful! Any chance he could retake his English GCSE or go abroad? Absolutely ridiculous policy though.

It certainly doesn't make sense to require 4 or 5 GCSEs at level 4 and above to study some Level 2 courses, which are GCSE equivalent. Particularly when they are practical courses which people who are not great with exams can excel at, and no GCSE resits other than Maths and English are possible unless you pay and study privately at great expense.

Then people wonder why there are so many NEETs. Because apparently you are supposed to stay in education or training to 18, but they put loads of barriers up to doing that if you fail or are not ready for exams at 15/16, as many are not.

At DD's college you need approximately 4 GCSE Grade 4/5s to do a Level 3 course, and 4xGrade 3s to do a Level 2 course.
You can progress up the levels by getting a Merit in your vocation course.