Home Education

Lunar_Eclipse

Agree with you Mr Costcutter. If I had my time again I would home educate. People are really opinionated and incredibly emotive on this subject though.

Education otherwise is a great website OP. I would also look at some TED talks on education generally and decide upon what approach you'd like to follow, if you're continuing for secondary education (there's loads on this from the US and Australia - they're seemingly far more advanced than we are.)

kingfisherblue

If you are looking at home educatiing long term, may I suggest that you consider registering your child with Guides or Scouts - she will then have a chance to continue to work with children of her own age, she will learn about teamwork, social interaction, dealing with personality clashes, and many other 'non-lesson' skills. It will help to prevent her from becoming isolated if you do not have a good home education support group that you regularly meet up with.

Mojisola

GarthThomas wrote: »

there is so much more to school than the curriculum.

And a lot of it isn't worth the experience - there's a lot of time wasted in school which isn't lost when you're dealing with one or two children and their work is very focused.

All the social side of things can be catered for in other ways.

GarthThomas

Mojisola wrote: »

And a lot of it isn't worth the experience - there's a lot of time wasted in school which isn't lost when you're dealing with one or two children and their work is very focused.

All the social side of things can be catered for in other ways.

It can be, but I think it's really not worth doing it.

I've also no intention of my wife and I giving up our lives to educate the children, and agree with the posts above that suggest that all too many home-schooled people turn out a bit weird.

It dovetails with my distaste for the idea that your own life should not come to a halt when children arrive. I've seen people who give up nearly everything, including having a healthy relationship themselves when they become parents. It's not for me.

onomatopoeia99

I don't have children, but what would concern me is that, thinking back to my own education, neither of my parents had the necessary knowledge to teach me O level maths, physics, chemistry, biology, electronics (etc), indeed from when I started secondary school, I was learning stuff in those subjects they knew nothing about having both left school at 15.

A million fun activities won't make up for being unable to teach calculus, or thermodynamics, or Newton's laws of motion. How do home educators that were not good at STEM subjects cope with teaching these to seconadry school age children?

Mojisola

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

I don't have children, but what would concern me is that, thinking back to my own education, neither of my parents had the necessary knowledge to teach me O level maths, physics, chemistry, biology, electronics (etc)

We ended up home educating by default because two of the children had health problems that stopped them attending school and the LA only provided two hours of tuition a week.

We were also self-employed so were able to manage better than if we had been working out of the home five days a week.

There is so much available on the net these days that any gaps in our knowledge were easily filled. They found the TED talks and those lectures and other similar sites really stretched them and gave them a very sound base in a wider range of subjects than they would have studied at school.

As they got older, they were able to take courses at the local FE colleges. One has just finished his PhD so he hasn't lost out through not being able to attend school.

Because of their health issues, we weren't able to take advantage of meeting up with other home-schoolers but the parents in those groups often share their expertise in subjects that anyone is weak in.

Unlike some peoples' experience, the adults we know who were home-schooled aren't at all weird.

BucksLady

To say that children who are home-educated are 'weird' is really sad. What does 'weird' really mean and who is 'normal'?

Loz01

I would worry that I couldn't possibly teach my kid the stuff they need in every subject. I mean, I went to uni and consider myself fairly educated. However, I'm 30 and its been a minute since I was in secondary school and I would NOT feel qualified to have a child's education in my hands. How can you be an expert in every subject? I suppose its ok up to year 6 age but after that I struggle to see how people do it. My niece is Year 9 and the amount of work and homework she does is baffling. There is no way I would feel confident to teach her myself, within weeks she would be behind on something.

Savvy_Sue

harrys_dad wrote: »

Are you going to continue to "Home Educate" from September or is she going to go back into mainstream, presumably in a school she was allocated a place for in March?

If she is going to mainstream secondary then make sure they know she is being home schooled for these next few weeks, and that she is invited to all the induction activities that will be taking place.

this is quite crucial.

I'm not sure how helpful all the "I wouldn't do it / How can you possibly do it" posts are. For whatever reason, the OP has made what she calls a difficult decision to withdraw her child. If it is only for the remainder of this term, it is highly unlikely to do lasting damage. And it's possible that initially, all the child needs is to recover from whatever situation has led to this choice.

There is a huge amount of information available about home schooling, and there are local groups of home schoolers all over the place. Some of them will have been doing this for years, and will be only too happy to share HOW they do it, especially with subjects which are beyond their own competence.

pipkin71

I home educated my children and it was honestly one of the best decisions I ever made. We have so many happy memories of all the fun stuff we did, the extra time we spent together and the things they were able to learn. I don't regret it at all.

Have a look on Facebook for local H.E groups. Many parents organise outings or get togethers - educational or social - and then it's a matter of trying to fit it all in.

Good luck with it all