I've also had to ask for yet more clarification as they say they are offering Digital Skills and E-sports as separate subjects but it doesn't appear like that on the options grid, and we don't want him spending a whole option on gaming, but he needs digital skills.
His strengths are very much in Maths and NOT in writing. His interests are in space, planets, rocks, volcanoes, and fast vehicles though he is also interested in animals especially if they are deadly. We could potentially ask his current Maths tutor to increase his hours and cover the Physics and Chemistry sections as that is his own specialty, but I don't know if that would be enough to do the double award.
I am a bit despairing with his English to be honest. He has definite SALT needs and is supposed to be having SALT at school and because all his writing at school has been by hand (his preference due to inflexibility because he never learned to type) he performs very very poorly. His spoken language is often a bit poorly constructed too. He can write stories but they end up being very repetitive, and he can write facts but again they are incredibly poorly structured.
At school all his English lessons seem to be reading (he rushes through and doesn't retain information) and watching videos. He is just now learning touch typing at home and also we believe at school but it brings me out in a cold sweat to think about having to ask every day what they have done in English and remind them every week he's supposed to be practicing typing and on track for GCSE and actually chuffing doing some learning and not end of term Year 2 relaxation all the time. He needs more intensive speech and language and English Language academic input, and the input he gets would be relaxed for a primary school child, let alone a child who's supposed to be doing exams in 2 years' time.
He has an English tutor too but she is not that reliable and also we feel doesn't do much with him. What he probably needs is a combination SALT and English Language tutor but I don't know if such a thing exists. An English Language tutor won't pick up on his difficulties as well as a SALT, or know how to fix things like sentence structure and word finding, but a SALT won't be up to date with GCSE (or even frankly Entry Level) syllabi and how to teach them.
I think I said I didn't get any further with the school that wasn't full, they said they'd get the SENCO to call me back but they haven't, and they also suggested we ask for changes to B at the moment (can the LEA insist that old information about behaviour is in there when it isn't current?). I'm going to email the LEA and ask if we can re-edit section B as that isn't going to add any more curriculum. It's things like "can be reactive" which is really not current, at most he's rude occasionally. I had a look at section B last night and there's so much repetition, whole phrases and sentences just pasted in twice, plus lots from 4 years ago when the current school was saying they were struggling to meet need.
Of course if the current school wants to keep him because he's easy to deal with and they can just babysit him, they have no incentive to say he is no longer aggressive.