Oh Roses, I'm so sorry.

My son is fifteen, and "sixth form" is post secondary, but before university.

I've noticed that despite an excellent vocabulary and sophisticated grammar he's struggling with certain aspects of English, due to hyper literalism. If he was simply looking at the linguistics of English, he'd certainly get an A. However, the Eng lit part of that course he's currently getting a D at... though the school thinks a C is attainable. In part of the exam, he even managed a B... but his performance is bound to be spotty, depending on the skills the exam is testing, and that's always changing.

One thing I'm glad of is that we accidentally moved to a part of the country with excellent mental health services. I finally got the support I needed to "normalise" again, and my son finally got the help he has been promised for years. If we'd had this help when he started secondary school he'd be doing far better academically... but the point is that the help he's got here has made it possible for him to actually make friends, which is more important in the end.

I really do think that if your son wasn't provided the services he needed you should kick up one hell of a stink. I can see the benefits appropriate services offer, and I'm really saddened that your lad was let down.

It's not too late for him to learn skills like interview techniques etc, but it's got to be harder. One of the major appeals to me of the course I want my son to get on is early intervention and training on things like social functioning, interview technique, etc. (A recent mock interview that he did at school provided an interesting result. The "interviewer" asked, "why do you think you are right for this job?" "Because I've got a stupidly high IQ and I'm crap at lying, so you know I'm telling the truth.") I wonder how often people who are bad at interview techniques just don't know how to "play the game" and say things within normal boundaries?