His parents worked with teachers and then with an education welfare officer to get him to return to school. Everything failed.
Then Sam was lucky enough to be allocated a youth worker by the local education authority.
As Sam's mother explains: "The youth worker and teachers put together a detailed reintegration programme. The youth worker came twice a week and would walk with Sam towards school, a little bit farther each day."
As Sam recovered his confidence, he was able to sit in class with the youth worker beside him. Gradually, he became "one of the boys" again and no longer needed to be accompanied.
The story is a simple but eloquent testament to the effectiveness of youth work.
What is unusual is that appeared in a national broadsheet newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. Let's hope it is the start of a trend - positive appreciation of everyday youth work solutions to otherwise intractable problems.
How many is 135,000 young women? To a magazine publisher, not enough.
So when you see May's edition of J17 on the newsstands, buy it. It will be your last chance. Once known as Just Seventeen, the magazine has been a source of advice and reassurance, fun and wisdom for hundreds of thousands of young women. And quietly to an awful lot of young men too. Now, after 21 years, its owner Emap is axing it.
Paul Keenan, chief executive of Emap Consumer Media, told the press: "Sadly, with J17 we've exhausted all options to make it a viable proposition on the newsstand."
This will be mysterious to publishing outsiders. What is going on if 135,000 readers don't add up to a viable commercial venture?
One culprit for the fall in readership is thought to be mobile phones.
With phone cards eating up young women's money, there's not enough left to go on reading matter. Shame.
The Home Office announced last week that it has merged 50m into one fund, which drug action teams can spend specifically on under-19s.
What does the Home Office call this drug fund? A single pot fund, of course. Good to see there is someone there with a sense of humour.
