College preventing progression to Y13 due to poor attendance

[Wobbly75]

Can they do it?

Wow.
He needs a talking to.
Many schools would not allow a resit year.
I had to do it (illness in my case). The world didn't end ☺️

What course is he doing and what was behind missing two whole months? That’s a massive amount…

And I'd also expect the SLT to provide a college attendance agreement that he and you have to sign tbh.
They will want proof of commitment this time.

Maths, Economics and Business. Not being bothered.

I think that he needs a wake up call about options and what he is throwing away. What careers does he want to look at? CBA is a really bad reason to fail.

Hopefully the fact he will have to restart will wake him up a bit. Does he have a part time job? It could be a good motivation to take education more seriously.

From his courses he is looking to do something that he will want to go to uni for and he is already damaging his chances of the elite places.

I think a little if people, parents and students alike, don’t realise the differences between education before 16 and post 16. When they are at school the school tries everything to engage them and to make sure they attend but in sixth form they have to be motivated to attend and do the work themselves. They aren’t coaxed into it.

It’s not going to be good for their statistics to pay for him to sit the exams knowing he’s going to fail.

Is he even bothered about finishing? He could just call it a day and get a job.

My only question would be why have they left it til now?

Surely if his time off was earlier in the year then he should have been spoken to then.

I'm assuming his mock grades are terrible because of his absence so the shit has hit the fan.

In that case he is bloody lucky to be given a second chance. Unless his end of y12 mocks indicate he has no gaps in his knowledge and has managed to gain A or B grades he’ll have missed big chunks of the curriculum which y13 will build on. No other college will take him
into y13 in any case, so his choice is either retake y12 with a huge change in attitude or become a NEET. There is no other option.

He’s fucked up so needs to accept their option or leave, having wasted his and their time

What does he want to do @Wobbly75 ? If he is not keen to repeat the year – as in, he still won’t bother to attend – I wonder what the point is. or has he turnd a corner and is attending better now?

Does he want to go to uni? What is is plan post A-levels – job, apprenticeship? Might he be better to do that now?

If he did go forward into Yr13 would he actually attend as he should.
Why does he think he is a special case ?
Is this his normal attitude or just relative to his schooling ?

Many colleges won’t worry overly about attendance as long as the student does ok in end of year exams.

most colleges have minimum grades for end of year exams to continue on to year 13.

(it’s not uncommon for students to be ill with glandular fever/whatever and continue studying at home and get good enough grades to continue).

there’s three years of funding for level 3 (a level) qualifications, it’s relatively common to either resit year 12 or go off and do a BTEC instead.

presumably he messed up his end of year exams?

How are his grades?

I know of a child with attendance almost that low but as they’re still getting A’s and B’s, they’re allowed to progress to year 13.

Time for him to face the consequences of his actions then. Might be a valuable life lesson.

Yes if it’s unauthorised.

Thanks everyone! Grades are low. I guess there is little motivation due to not having found his call in life quite yet. He must be in education for another year, currently very hard to find even smallest of jobs. Let's hope he doesn't spiral and, eventually, finds his way forward.

Many colleges would have asked a student to leave well before now if they were absent for two months without good reason.

he is lucky they are allowing him to repeat a year.

But he hasn’t done well at all. He may have attended more than half, but low grades suggest he doesn’t even have a solid foundation from when he did attend.

Has he considered changing his subjects? Hope he finds his way.

It can be hard when they don’t know what they want to do.

What grades did he get at GCSE? Some colleges let kids do A levels with 5’s and 6’s at GCSE and tbh, I think for a lot of those kids, A levels prove to be very hard and they lose interest.

I think I would steer him towards something else because what is going to be different at the same college doing the same subjects? He will just fail. What is he actually interested in? Would something more vocational suit him better. Has he actually looked at other colleges and courses?

I would be kind and understanding, but he does need a dose of reality.

Schools/colleges receive 75% funding for year 14 students. So it isn’t the norm to give a restart.

Having said that, y14s struggle with feeling like they’ve out grown the setting/rules/institution and attendance etc can be a real issue. Restarting is generally successful when there was a major issue in y12 that has since been addressed/sorted e.g rehousing, bereavement, illness. It doesn’t resolve a poor attitude.

Did he literally take 2 months out? What was going on with him? What did school do in this time?

70% would require considerable effort to recoup lost ground/content. what kind of grades has he finished on? Did he perform well on the content he was in school for?

Has he had career appointments? Work experience? Has he got any sense of a goal?

Lots of questions but am interested to know as answers build better picture about what might work - there’s always a way through. Life’s a journey 👍

Does the college have a qualified careers advisor that he can talk to ? (Not just someone in admissions?)

do they offer btecs ? He could move onto a btec and he might massively prefer that style of learning. Can still get into uni with those.

might feel better to restart onto btecs for 2 years, than flogging himself on a levels that he knows he doesn’t enjoy …

Yup. I teach in a college. We're under pressure for our attendance stats so I'd not have him back without very, very good reason.

I used to be an A-level teacher, and the college are doing it for his own good. Most colleges would not let him carry on at all, as PP have said. It's for his own good because if he leaves now, he's only wasted 1 year of life, drifting around doing fuck all. If they let him stay, that's almost certainly 2 years of life that he'll completely waste (because he'll fail everything). My DH did exactly this, and his school stupidly let him stay another year to retake, so that was 3 years of his life wasted. Much better if he'd been thrown out after 1 year. He got the kick up the backside he needed when he got a job, and realised he needed a degree to do the job he actually wanted to do.
He needs to just get a job/apprenticeship, even if that isn't his final career choice - at least he'll be earning money then. He might find he enjoys the hospitality industry (start off waitering, then move into pub management), or retail (start off stacking shelves, move into supermarket management) - I've known students do both of these.
Or maybe he'd prefer to do something like bricklaying or training to be a chef - I know 2 young people who did these jobs, after drifting down the academic route at first, A's at A-level, but ultimately they did not want to do anything academic.