Wondering whether anyone can share their experiences and thoughts to help me navigate this situation.
My son has just got straight As in his Highers, and is insisting that he doesn't want to continue at school where he is down to continue with three Advanced Highers, plus some additional enrichment subjects. He first claimed that now he has got what he would need for university entry (engineering) he doesn't need to go back (might be true for some universities which give contextual admissions to rural schools; I'm not convinced he would have his choice of all relevant courses without the Advanced Highers).
He's been talking for a while about pursuing a graduate apprenticeship route rather than a degree programme, and in principle I'd be supportive; I'm not sure he's really familiar enough with how it would work (I'm certainly not) and what he would have to demonstrate to get taken on by an interesting company and programme.
He has moved on now to say he doesn't want to do a degree at all, and (this week at least) is talking about running away to sea - or less dramatically, nautical college for maritime studies, possibly either as an officer cadet or as an engineer cadet. If I read the info I've found online correctly, if he took the engineering cadet route he could only get as far as an HND in the nautical colleges in Scotland, and if he wanted a full B.Eng he would need to do marine engineering as a university course.
Has anyone any experience of any of this? I confess, I'm not sure how far this is stemming mostly from his wish not to do what is expected of him (full disclosure, both his dad and I are academics so he must feel pressure from us as well as from school), but also I don't want to push back too hard against what might be perfectly sensible proposals if I had a better understanding of what he'd be getting into. What I've said to him is to do his best not to close off options for the future - but I'd like to be able to be more positively helpful than that if I can.