private education?

Sparkkee

my ds has a real problem with school. he hates it to the point where he will make himself ill at the thought of it. he is bright and capable, but just really really hates being there.

his teachers say that he isn't being bullied or ignored by the other kids, that he is coping well with the work and that he is academically doing great when they can get him to actually do the work. he's been seen by the school's sen co-ordinator, the teacher and the head of year for evaluation for any reason he might be put off and the school is adamant that there is nothing wrong.

but he actually makes himself sick with the thought of going to school which to me indicates that there is something very wrong. i'm not a push-over and when he gets sent home from school for vomiting (three times last week!) he gets sent to bed, no tv, no extra attention from me, nothing other than extreme boredom. even that makes no difference.

the only thing i can think of now is changing his school. the decent schools in our area are oversubscribed and i don't think i can get him into one this late in the year. there is a very good private school nearby and i'm wondering whether to give it a try in the hope that the added attention from the teachers there will either pick up what is going on or persuade him that school is not actually all that bad.


has anyone taken the route of getting private education for their child and has it helped with any problems they have?

MrsTinks

I was in a private school for the last 4 years of my education but not for any problematic reasons. When we moved here it was the only place I could carry on learning danish and have a european recognised education.
However... my last 2 years of school were not happy times. Whilst I didn't get actively bullied there were definitely the in crowd and the not in crowds, but because this was my 8th school I just never bothered really fitting in with people because I was always of the view that I was likely to move again soon so what was the point? (We were NATO and got chucked all over the place)
The main question I guess is how far from the private school do you live? I had a 45 min drive to school each day and so didn't have the chance to mix with my year mates outside school further discouraging making new friends.

Have you asked your son why he's so unhappy there?

Can you afford the private school?

chalky_75

I wonder how old your son is ? It makes a difference to the reply I would give. Do have quite a lot of experience in this matter and will try and help if I can

beautifulgorgeous_2

How old is he? Once the children are in year 3 the head can agree to go over the allowed class sizes. Even popular schools have spaces sometimes. It would be worth ringing them. If he is young then an innocent comment could have been misunderstood and be worrying him. I don`t know such as "If you lot don`t shut up I will put you in my office, shut the door and throw away the key" IYSWIM. Try a game of imagination such as If you could be an animal what would you be and see if you can find out what is worrying him that way.

duchy

My son has attended both but like the other poster I'd like to know how old he is and how long he's felt this way before commenting

pipkin71

Have you considered home-educating rather than private schooling Sparkkee?

Here's a link to some home educating info:

www.education-otherwise.org

Pipkin xxxx

cazziebo

Yes, we sent dd2 to a private school for a year. Different sort of problem - she was going off the rails a bit and despite excellent support from the local school we took more drastic action. In some ways it worked, in others not so good. After a year she's now back at local school and fingers crossed, things are going well.

I would try state schools first, as suggested by beautifulgorgeous (great name!) There isn't that long to go until the end of the year - can he start at a new school after the summer?

Also, have you tried independent counselling? Might get to the root of the issue..

cheepskate_2

Sparkkee wrote: »

.


has anyone taken the route of getting private education for their child and has it helped with any problems they have?

Hi
We took DS2 out of mainstream school and put him into independent schooling.
Before we took him out he hated school, always crying hating school and counting down the days till Friday.
There were no problems in school that we knew of. It was always a fight even to get homework done and he was struggling a little bit.
He also had lots of friends , but you would never have known it as he would never go up to anyone and play, they always had to make the first move.
He would by my side and never move even with encouragement to join in with his friends.
At that time i just assumed he did not like school, thought there was a problem with him but just assumed it was because he hated school.
The day he went to independent school (1/2 a morning) for assesment , he came home and kept talking about "his" school (meaning the new school) . and seemed very happy to be going .
All i can say is what a difference after a few weeks of the new school, he was the person shouting in the courtyard for everyone to come and play.
Confidence great, well mabye a bit too confident sometimes.
He still hates homework but his education has come on leaps and bounds, probably because he is happy now at school.

We still don't know what was wrong with the old school, but i believe it was the class sizes were too big for my child and he couldn't cope with 66 (2x p1) kids barging in and out to get coats on etc.

If your son is unhappy all you can do is try somewhere else.
Hope you find somewhere where he really likes.

mrcow

Just wondered if you'd spoken to him about the possibilty of changing schools? Such a move could be quite stressful for him as he'd be going into an environment where there are already well established friendships amongst his peers and he'd be losing his existing mates. If the reason for the vomiting etc is a lack of confidence, then moving schools could exasperate it.

If you are worried about how he is doing academically, how about looking into private homework/after school tuition groups before you consider such a drasitc move?

Does he go to any clubs etc outside of school? If so, do you have similar problems there too?

Sparkkee

wow! what a response!

to try and answer your questions:

ds is 8 and in year 3, going up to year 4 in september.

i've asked why he's unhappy and i get the same three replies:
"school is boring"
"school is stupid"
and "because i hate school"
i've tried narrowing down why he thinks that school is boring and stupid, but all i get in return is that it's boring and stupid. that's the same replies as his teachers, aunt, the sen co-ordinator and all the rest have got out of him. whatever it is that is upsetting him so badly he either really doesn't want to say what it is or else he doesn't know how to say what it is.

he has never liked school particularly, but it's been really bad since year 2. he did settle down a bit for one particular teacher, but unfortunately they only had her for one term. this is why i suspect that it's not just school in general as the right teacher has managed to get him to not like school, but not to detest it.

i have thought endlessly about home schooling, but whilst i would love to give it a try, i don't think it would work for us.

academically he is doing well, even with all of the disruptions to his education caused by being sick and refusing to work. he's in the top third of his year group in everything, higher than that in maths. the one area he isn't succeding in is writing and spelling. he really struggles to get his handwriting to a point where it is legible. his teacher and sen co-ordinator have both reviewed him and decided that it is just appalling handwriting rather than due to some underlying cause such as dyslexia.

outside of school he attends cubs and has no problems there. the only thing his cub leader says is that he needs to pay attention more. he has also been to swimming (which was fine) and football ("boring") lessons which he showed no real problems with.

as yet i haven't mentioned moving schools to him as i want to be sure in my own mind that this is a sensible thing to do before i suggest it to him. the last thing i want is to say to him that this would be a possibility and then to take it away from him if he likes the idea!

Sparkkee

cheepskate wrote: »

Hi
We took DS2 out of mainstream school and put him into independent schooling.
Before we took him out he hated school, always crying hating school and counting down the days till Friday.
There were no problems in school that we knew of. It was always a fight even to get homework done and he was struggling a little bit.
He also had lots of friends , but you would never have known it as he would never go up to anyone and play, they always had to make the first move.
He would by my side and never move even with encouragement to join in with his friends.
At that time i just assumed he did not like school, thought there was a problem with him but just assumed it was because he hated school.
The day he went to independent school (1/2 a morning) for assesment , he came home and kept talking about "his" school (meaning the new school) . and seemed very happy to be going .
All i can say is what a difference after a few weeks of the new school, he was the person shouting in the courtyard for everyone to come and play.
Confidence great, well mabye a bit too confident sometimes.
He still hates homework but his education has come on leaps and bounds, probably because he is happy now at school.

We still don't know what was wrong with the old school, but i believe it was the class sizes were too big for my child and he couldn't cope with 66 (2x p1) kids barging in and out to get coats on etc.

If your son is unhappy all you can do is try somewhere else.
Hope you find somewhere where he really likes.

hi cheepskate,

i wanted to reply to you separately as your son sounds exactly like mine.

it's encouraging to know that there may be a happy ending in all of this!