A devoted mum claims her son has been failed by the education system and so she has taken him out of school and is re-mortgaging her home to pay for a private tutor.
Carolyne Meadows is spending £100 to £140 a week plus exam fees on private evening education for her son Samuel, 14 - and, in addition, she is teaching him entrepreneurial life skills via her family business.
She claims he was not being given the support he needed to get his GCSEs and so she decided to remove him permanently from The Coleshill School on Coventry Road, Birmingham.
"My son has been failed by the education system," said the mum-of-three from Marston Green.
"He's been assessed and is two years behind. He's being told he should just about pass his GCSEs but he's in Year 10 and is struggling with Year eight work.
"I cannot see how we can close that gap ahead of his GCSEs in any school with 30 children in each class. Samuel needs one to one tuition and they can't offer that, I wouldn't ask them to, so I'm re-mortgaging my house to pay for it."
Carolyne says her son has an EHC (education, health and care) plan and struggles with concentration.
"In my opinion no school is going to close that gap. It's sad and it's not any individual teacher's fault at Coleshill. In fact he's really sad to be leaving one of his teachers," the mum added.
"All the schools are getting bigger but the staff levels aren't increasing. The teachers are getting targets that are impossible to meet.
"I've been in school constantly begging for support. I've been to lots of meetings and told everything's fine. I've been told he will get support but then he doesn't."
Carolyne says the final straw came when she got a call from her son to say he had locked himself in a classroom as bullies had taken his blazer and bag and were threatening to attack him on Wednesday October 9.
'Managing to get out of the school', Samuel has not returned since. The school says it "takes safeguarding very seriously and is committed to ensuring that all students feel safe in school."
Brummie Mummies
On Monday, October 14, Carolyne took a letter into the head teacher to say she was withdrawing him from school.
Since then, Carolyne has been for a meeting at The Coleshill School where she said it was suggested her son moved to an alternative school but Carolyne has made up her mind that she's going to privately educate her son, whatever the cost.
"They said he could go to another school within their group but I can't see how joining a new school aged 14 is going to help now," said Carolyne, whose other children are aged 17 and eight.
Carolyne says she can already see the benefits of taking Samuel out of the school environment.
Concerned that her 14-year-old would have nothing to do in the day time, Carolyne has set up an itinerary to keep Samuel busy.
She and her husband Rayne run Phoenix Commercial Catering, a successful catering equipment business, where they plan to show Samuel the ropes.
"We've done a health and safety assessment and got him a uniform so he can work with us three days a week as a way of getting him ready for the workplace," she explained.
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She added: "On the other days he will go to the gym and to rugby and swimming where he has other friendship groups outside of school. It's all about building his confidence.
"I will also give him a shopping list to go and get groceries for us and have spoken to the manager of a local bike shop who said they will have him in there helping them out too. Lots of people are supporting us with this. It's all about building his life skills."
"Since leaving, people have said he's a different child," she explained. "He was so nervous when he went for his first private tutor session but he came out with a massive smile on his face. You can't put a figure on that.
"His tutor Claire said he's bright and he's going to succeed. He turned to me and said 'no-one has ever said that to me Mum'. I understand teachers don't have time to do that in a class of 30 but it makes such a difference."
Carolyne is confident that her son will catch up on his learning targets and pass his GCSEs through private tuition, which takes place in a church hall in the evenings.
"When he had his one-to-one tuition, he didn't lose his concentration once," she said.
"He came out of that tuition with rosy red cheeks, saying it was brilliant and that he'd learnt more in an hour than he had at school. I just hope and pray we still feel the same in a month's time.
"His tutor believes he can do well in his GCSEs and has told him he's a clever and capable boy."
It will cost the Meadows up to £140 per week for the next two years to pay for Samuel's private education.
"He will do six to eight hours a week of private tuition in the evenings. We've been told that four hours of one-to-one tutoring like this is worth more than 10 hours of teaching in a class in school.
"I've sat Samuel down to make him aware of the costs. We were thinking of moving house but it's a good job we didn't now otherwise we wouldn't have been able to remortgage our home to pay for his education."
What the school says
Ian Smith-Childs, headteacher at The Coleshill School said: "The school takes safeguarding very seriously and is committed to ensuring that all students feel safe in school.
"Bullying is not tolerated, as highlighted in all Ofsted inspection reports. However, if bullying does occur we have a range of measures in school to deal with it. We always tackle bullying when it is reported to an adult or one of our specially trained student ‘Hope’ mentors."
