Renovations and Repayments.

Great advice thank you Alex. I gave found another teacher who will give individual lessons and I think dd will really get along with her. Dd tells me she isnt even being observed whilst she plays.

I used to play violin but not to a high standard and only on a ceap violin! I do appreciate music though. The new tutor is part of a music school where they have concerts I think dd will enjoy.

His choices (at the moment, all subject to change) are Lincoln, NUA (Norwich), UCA (Farnham), Worcester and possibly Staffordshire.

I know none of them are high brow or RG but he is extremely picky (as he should be) on the course content offered in what is quite a niche course, so the pool of universities is really quite small. He is also held back a little because of his GCSE results (his maths needs to be one grade higher for the really good universities). He's a typical late bloomer partly thanks to the brilliant college he is now at after an abysmal academy he previously attended who decided to ignore his statement and not provide him with the help he was supposed to get in his GCSE years plus left him languishing in the bottom set of classes with all the disruptive students because he had additional needs. It didn't matter if he showed potential, they had written him off because of his statement and the fact he had only been full time at school since he was 11 and his attendance even after that was not great due to hospital admissions.

Once he got to the college and felt comfortable, the shutters opened (he has complex autism plus other 'stuff') and he finally felt able to show exactly what he could do.....top of his year group, achieving 3 x Distinction* which is equivalent to 3 x A* at A level. He works incredibly hard to remain at the top, putting in hours and hours of work every night producing thousands of words for every task, so I get very annoyed when I see people saying that BTEC is easy, that they do no work, that it is for the failures and a 2 year doss. So far, in all his units, he has achieved Distinctions and probably killed several large trees....

It's been a complete surprise for the college, they thought at best he would be a below average to average student, with an aspirational target of 3 x Merits (equivalent to 3 x C at A level) at the start of level 3, I was never in doubt that he would fly at some point, he just needed the right setting and support.

His top two are Lincoln and NUA. Eldest will be very upset if youngest gets an offer from NUA, it was the only uni to reject him after interview and was the one he had set his heart on, of course, all that is spurring youngest on, he wants to beat his brother!

Eeek, went on a bit of a rant there! Just for balance, his infant and junior schools were amazing, never giving up on him and some outside the box thinking from the head of his junior school which meant that youngest could stay in mainstream education. His high school was also very good and he was making good progress and starting to fly until it became an academy...then it all went horribly wrong.

You are quite right Frayed Not, I quite frequently think that.

What is done is done and you can't change it. Draw a line, learn from it and move forward. One thing you can do is influence the future (notice I don't say control as that's impossible with outside factors kicking in from time to time).

We all have blips on the OP front - especially at costly times like birthdays and Christmas - don't worry about it.

Take care.

MCI