Any home educators around?

kafkathecat

Hi Onlyme, I home educate in London. Ds is 13 and has never been to school. Education Otherwise has a yahoo group that you can join and ask any questions, there should be a link on their web page. I would say even if you only do it for a year it is worth making contact with other local home educators for socialising and for advice. I don't know where you are but there are so many groups and activities you will be surprised and other home educators can be a mine of information. A friend of my son's is only being home educated until a school place comes up but I know his mother has come to appreciate home education over the last few months. I know many home ed children who have gone on to 6th form college and university and done well. Various children I know have used correspondence courses like NEC, internet schools like brite school, the open university and 6th form colleges as resources. Good luck whatever you decide.

shy-but-need-help

yummymummy79 wrote: »

I have been recently wondering if there would be much demand for a qualified teacher to 'home school' a group of up to say 4 children, even on a part time basis? The cost could be split, you'd be getting the benefit of a qualified practitioner, and you'd not have to give up as much time as if you were home schooling them yourself. Is that something you may be interested in, theoretically speaking!

In some areas where the school choices are poor or good schools over subscribed it probably would work, we HE for middle school because our options of middle schools are frankly balls for want of a better description- they're in special measures, have bad bullying problems and the one "good" one coaches for fantastic SATs results and then fails to provide anything further for kids who reach the upper level for SATs so they never achieve their full potential, just what the school needs to table well. We'll be deregistering our 2nd at the end of year four and at present I'm being quizzed daily by other parents wanting to know how/why we HE, many expressing the fact they don't want their child at any of the local middle schools but don't see how they can fit in HE or feel a lack of confidence for it. They law states you have to provide an education suitable to the childs age and abilities- it's down to the parent if they chose to do that themselves, allocate the job to a school or hire in others to do so, which would mean private tutoring would be an option too.

yummymummy79

Thanks for responses, I'm due to qualify in 3 weeks but am also pregnant so am looking at my options for when I'm ready to work.
Was thinking of some kind of home educating as an option to consider, a charge of £80 - £100 a day spread between up to 4 kids I think could be reasonable (every day, once a week or whatever frequency they wanted), especially if it means parents wouldn't have to leave work / reduce their hours to alternatively educate them. Might be something worth researching in my local area.

shy-but-need-help

I think the £20 to £25 a day would attract alot of people who want to HE but can't afford to give up work because then you'd be filling the role of childcare and education. It might be worth researching with some of the HE forums because I know alot of the HE'ers we know prefer a much more child-led learning approach than structured, many deregistered to get out of the grades on paper, formal form of education so if you could show that flexibility it may well be a good market. Only thing I can think of would be you'd have to maintain your advanced CRB check, most likely be health and safety assessed by the same people who check child minders and also hold the correct insurance for having children in your home- all things to factor into your cost/price.

Another thing to factor in price wise would be possibly having to place your own baby into daycare to enable it, our youngest is 13 months old and HE'ing during her needy days is a challenge- we work around her but if I was paying someone to be doing the educating for me I'd not be happy if they were having to schedule around a baby.

Good luck with qualifying, my DH is just finishing the first year of his primary teaching degree.