BTEC/T level/other vocational 25/26 - part 2

[BTECnewbie]

New thread for those of us with DC doing vocational courses (and for those with DC looking for an alternative to A levels next year and looking for advice).

My DC is currently doing a level 3 extended diploma. He struggled academically at school and was pretty miserable in year 11. With a lot of hard work he got the grades needed for the level 3 BTEC and is now thriving at college.

I literally "interviewed" 13 colleges last year trying to get a good fit. These guys made me a lot of promises that they're not actually keeping.

There's nowhere else that she can go unfortunately as it's a very niche course and subject.

At the moment I am trying to get them to speak to me and at least put cards on the table because then I could do things like organise other stuff for her to do. But my guess is they can't answer so are being ostrich like. There are several higher levels I can go including Ofsted and the examining board so they're being a bit ridiculous.

I just hoped after years and years of fighting the SEN department at school that I might be able to retire that skill set.

Sounds like you are more than prepared to push this higher - which, sadly, ime is often necessary 😡

@OhCrumbsWhereNow I'd be looking at writing in to course tutor and the SEN department saying

• DD has as far as we are aware completed all her assignments to a high standard and has no work outstanding
• Lessons are now all about getting students who have missed deadlines / done poor assignments to catch up
• She is not being given meaningful interesting work to do (additional essays feels like a punishment)
• She is finding going in with nothing appropriate to do distressing to her mental health
• Therefore unless you hear directly that she needs to do catch up assignment work or something that to her is interesting and meaningful is arranged (eg <insert here>) she will be staying home and you expect it to be marked attendance wise as not expected to attend or home working or similar.

We have had similar problems randomly (and a bit at the moment too).

Sorry to hear it's not just us.

The sad thing is that DD really needs structure and social life and we live in the middle of nowhere. So I just want them to provide a blooming education!

Or talk to me about what is going on so I can organise work experience. But I don't know if suddenly there will be things organised next week or next month or anything.

VLP is scarily unhelpful and empty.

At the moment I am carefully wording everything at cohort level and 'students' rather than focused on DD. But yes, I think I may have to focus on the SEN and the mental health issues to get some kind of reaction from them.

Thank you for the advice and wording!

Their attendance thing is ludicrous - she arranged a week of directly related work experience last month, and they put her down as absent. Did the same when she had days off to shoot a series for the BBC. Crazy. Apparently NOTHING is acceptable for absence.

Hi all - final term!
DS was in yesterday working out what he has left to do this year. Not much it seems - he's not going back in until Thursday.
He's on top of his work and it does seem that this term is more for mopping up/catching up and the GCSE resits.
I have heard his course gets a lot tougher next year, hopefully he will be able to up his game.

Good luck to all doing resits this week (next week?) and those trying to find out what their DCs should be doing this term.
We break up end of June, so four more weeks! DS intends picking up as much work as possible this summer to save for when he's finally 18 (not for ages, he's still 16!)

Dd will find out more tomorrow but it seems that she's basically done 🤷‍♀️
She's got a photo shoot on Thursday and a trip and helping and a fashion show and that seems about it
Official end of term is 3rd July