Homeschooling Advice Please

Person_one

Is moving a possibility?

Nicki

Depending on your older child's medical needs, there may be scope for having the younger's priority changed for the school you want. If your elder child is (or was) statemented or has a recognised disability, then the local authority should classify the entire family as having social needs and if there is a good reason for the younger one to attend the primary school, then he should be in category 2 priority. (Category 1 is top priority and is for children in care, category 2 is statemented children and children with a documented social or other need, category 3 is siblings and category 4 is the rest, at least in iur area). There is a tiny little box on the local authority admission form which says "does any child in the family have a disability or statement". I initially missed it when applying for a reception place for my youngest until the helpful head of a popular school pointed it out to me and told me it applied to us.

kingfisherblue

I believe that the organisation Education Otherwise is helpful for those who want to homeschool. I don't have any personal experience though.

kingfisherblue

I believe that the organisation Education Otherwise help those who want to homeschool. I don't have any personal experience though.

GwylimT

At my last school we often had homeschoolers come in to use our facilities as obviously you cannot obtain a science GCSE without access to a lab. Unfortunately for them their parents just didn't have the subject knowledge or techniques necessary to deliver a quality education, so it was very very rare for any of them to pass.

If it was very short term it is something I may consider, but only if I was desperate as I wouldn't want my child's education or socialisation with a wide range of children to suffer.

How does your son feel about his school?

FBaby

Is your child unhappy in the school? Do they want to be homeschooled?

Is the education they are receiving so bad that he would be worse off continuing there until he gets a place somewhere else than being educated at home, if you are so unsure about it being the right thing for them?

System

I have experience of several children who were home schooled. I will never forget seeing a boy of 4 reading Black Beauty. 3 of the 5 children went on to university eventually.

The girls in my opinion did well out of home schooling but the boys were like loaded springs and were like wild animals when they met other children.

Not something I'd recommend on the basis of what I have seen.

indsty

I have known some wonderful young people who were home schooled, they qualified in the fields they wanted to and are a credit to their parents (one is a nurse, another a trainee solicitor). I think it does all depend on parental attitude. School only takes up about 6 hours of the day, and only in term time - the rest of the time social interaction comes from the parents, youth groups, scouts, guides, football etc. It is however, an almost full time commitment and gets harder as the children get older and want to gain formal qualifications.

Spendless

You do know that a school waiting list isn't usually 'fixed' don't you? If someone also wants that school and they have a qualifying criteria that is higher than your own then they will jump ahead of you in the queue as you have already found. For that reason I'd look into what Nicki has said, as special needs are often a higher qualifier than any other.

Re socialising at out of school groups, I really found with my 2 that the huge majority of clubs they didn't mix with a variety of other kids, the kids they went to school with were the ones at the clubs and often the clubs themselves separted them by age. My 2 with a 3 year age gap between them were never in the same groups for example. The one exception I have found to this is the drama group my daughter attends, children go to it from all over the borough, the kids circs range from ones on a very limited income to the kids of professionals who attend private schools and the age group is the largest ranging I've come across at 4 - 20.

olgadapolga

This thread has made me really quite cross. There has been a totally skewed opinion of home educated children based on limited contact with them.

I know a lot of home educated children. My own children are home educated - only my eldest went to school for the first three years of her "school career" and it was completely disastrous. Her "education" was very, very poor.

I'm afraid that the rubbish about "socialising" is exactly that. My children are not isolated, they have lots of contact with lots of people of every age and background. They will happily approach anyone with questions, or to challenge a statement they don't agree with - something I have rarely seen in school-educated children.

The whole school environment is totally artifical - it is the only place in the world whereby huge groups of similar-aged children are lumped together. It isn't like that in the real world. When you start work, or go to college or university there is a huge variation in ages. When I went to university the age range was from eighteen to early fifties. I've known a lot of people who've left school unable to cope with colleagues of different ages; they saw older people as someone to defer to, rather like a teacher.

My children aren't tied to working at the pace of the slowest in a huge group - they work at their own rate and therefore learn more as a result. They have dedicated, one to one tuition. For areas I am unable to deal with, they have external teachers. My children are far more pleasant than their school-attending peers, something I have noticed with many other home-educated children. I have to say that my children are probably better educated than their school-attending peers as well and that is purely down to their own love of learning, I merely facilitate it. They are not restricted to learning just the subjects in the national curriculum - because they learn more efficiently we can extend their education to many more and broader areas of interest. All of my children will be taking their GCSEs early, which wouldn't happen if they were at school. They are also learning about life and how to cope with everyday and unusual situations which they may not be exposed to in an artificial school environment.

To the OP, I would say that you need to look into home education thoroughly. I spent a long time investigating it and met with home educating families and communities before deciding to go ahead. Yes, I was worried about actually going down that road but I can honestly say that it was the best decision we made and none of us regret it. I would also say that we never intended for home-education to be a short-time stop-gap until a place was available at a school of choice; for my family it was always a long-term, permanent choice and we have adapted our lives to accommodate it to ensure that our children have the best education we can provide (which the local schools were incapable of).

As for those who have only seen poor results with home educated children, I would suggest that a lot of that is down to the parents. It does require a lot of dedication and effort. Home education is hard work and it can be worrying but it is amazingly worthwhile.