When I spoke to littl'un last night on our regularly nightly phone call, he said that he had been talking to his head of year at school, and the school have decided to put litt'un onto alternative curriculum.
I had never heard of this but it's basically a system where kids who have special educational needs and behavioural challenges are put on a different learning program where they purely concentrate on english, maths and science, but also do a lot of vocational-type stuff.
This is basically a last-ditch effort by the school not to fail the pupil completely. Like they're saying "Ok, there is absolutely no chance that you are going to pass any GCSEs the way you're going, plus you're disrupting all the other kids, so let's cut out losses, concentrate on what's possible, and try to keep you occupied in the school system instead of excuding you."
This is effectively what I was going to be aiming for in his last year anyway as I had made up my mind that when he came to live with me for his last year of school I would get him a tutor for maths and english and just concentrate on trying to get him a pass in those subjects. Obviously this system would be way better as he would not have any other lessons, plus he would have far more individual help and support from the teaching staff.
The staff appear to be aware that his dad cannot be counted on for support at home, from what was said.
The major hurdle for me is that this means he would have to stay in Cardiff until he's finished his GCSEs, which is an extra year before he comes to live with me :(
My chances of getting him on this program within my hometown are minimal; this program, from what I can tell, is decided on where there's a history of bad behaviour and achievement within the school. It's also linked to the local area since they have ties with local colleges and businesses for the vocational stuff, and different schools run their programs in different ways. So he's not going to be able to just turn up here and be able to go into something like this. And obviously, once he's on it, he'll have to stay on it - he can't go back to regular schooling after doing this for a year.
Ex doesn't yet know about this - littl'un hadn't told him when we spoke last night, he was waiting for his dad to just get a letter about it. I'm going to wait until he's had that, and then ring and talk to him about it.
I'm also thinking that I may take a couple of days off in half term (mid-Feb) and go down for a couple of days and talk to Ex then, in detail, about him supporting littl'un through this. My major concern is littlun's relationship with his dad's new partner: so far this has been very adversarial, so I need to somehow convince ex to tackle her attitude and make sure littl'un doesn't have any easy excuses for, e.g., not doing homework.
I've got to be sure this is going to work for two years. Then he can come to me afterwards. I suppose if the worst came to the worst and he still failed, I could get him up here and with some private tuition arrange for him to re-sit them privately. It's expensive, but it could be done.
I've got to do the thing that's best for him. But bloody hell, I miss him so much already. Another 2.5 years :( This was what was really firing me up to pay off my debt quickly. Now that's going to be gone. I've got to keep the focus on and concentrate on keeping it going so that I'll have savings by the time he comes to me. Sigh.
Photo credit: ba1969
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