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I am quite frustrated with the early school starting age in the UK. When DS was 3 a primary school teacher friend of mine said she would love to home educate if she found a couple of parents who would join and do it together. At that point I had never thought about it and worried about social aspets and being academically behind in later years. In the meantime that friend has moved away.

We asked our local school whether DS could start Reception one year late and were were told yes, but he would then have to join Y1 - we didn't. DS is 6 now and in Y2, aged 4, he went from refusing to read and do maths with his teacher to being an average reluctant reader at age 6. I don't think the system has done him any favours. And I wish I would have been braver and kept him out during the infant years.

How did you get into home ed? How and how long do you do it for?

Hi, i don't think school works for all children, we are autonomous and will carry on that way tell DD wants to do something else. DD has never been to school, she's not 5 tell November.

Yes, I can now see that school is not for everyone, especially the UK system, forcing 4 year olds to read and write. I don't think 5 year olds should be in school yet anyway, but how do you know she wouldn't love it?

My DS (now 6) never really liked pre-school or nursery, despite him being open and chatty. My DD (just 3) is very shy and just started pre-school 2 mornings as she kept asking to go to 'school'. We were worried she might be overwhelmed and stayed with her for as long as she wanted us to make sure she is happy. Two weeks on, and she wants to go every day and doesn't need us as soon as she walks through the door - I would never have thought!

With DS I feel we got it wrong and I feel he would have been better out of school until age 6 or 7 at least.

My ds is 4.5 and would have started reception this year. He is reasonably bright and easily able to cope with more academic work. However, we don't feel that he is suited to the school environment. Although the first year at least is very much designed to be "learning through play" there is still a fair amount of structure to it. There has to be to maintain some sort of order in the classroom and he has proved to us that he wouldn't be comfortable in that environment. He can handle structure in short doses but all day every day is just to much for a four year old boy. We tried him in a holiday camp for a day over half term because one of his friends was going and although he enjoyed himself, his behaviour was a complete disaster!

We are reasonably structured for home educators with young children. DS does reading practice every day (he asked to read at age 3) and we tend to spend a little time on maths/english workbooks too each day and the rest of the time on games, crafts and practical projects.

Hi Gabid, i don't know if she would of enjoyed school or not, that's not really the point, there are many things that she may enjoy and may never get to do. She does enjoy herself every day and gets to do what she wants, not what some one else thinks she should do.

Tarenath - that's great. It seems you are doing the right thing for your little one at the moment.

I have DS(6), DD1(3) and DD2(2). None of them have ever been to nursery/school. We decided to HE because we knew many families who did it, and it just seemed like too exciting an adventure to pass up.

As for how, it doesn't look like we do much really I guess. I do 5-10 minutes reading practice with DS most days, verbal maths as we go along, he taught himself capital letters and I spell out whatever he wants to write. At some point I'll start more formal letter practice with him to check he's forming them correctly, but again that will only be 5-10 mins.

Aside from that they play a lot, DS goes to swimming and beavers, we do drawing and painting and cooking if I can stand it, go to the library, park, forest, do stuff at church, see friends and family, read lots, listen to music and story CDs, watch cbeebies and nature programmes, dress up, talk, play games...

I wouldn't change it at the moment

Hi I have just taken my 7yr old daughter out of school to home educate her.
The headmaster from her former school is putting the guilt trip on me to try and get her back into school. I have given him the de-registration letter but he wants meetings. The one yesterday reduced me to tears of frustration, i felt like a gibbering wreck. How does everyone start with home education?
I have been and spent a fortune on books but still i feel like i am in the dark.
Any help would be very gratefully accepted.

for a start you don't have to have any such meeting with anyone.
You have fulfilled all of your responsibilities by deregistering her formally.
He's just bullying you.
If he gets in touch again, just say "Thank you for the offer, but no thank you we do not need any such meeting with anyone from school as we are now home educating her"
Say goodbye and put the phone down.

Of course you feel like you are in the dark-everyone does.
You and your daughter need to get 'school' out of your systems!

Don't worry about doing any thing formal at the moment at all. Put those books away for now-and go and enjoy yourselves together again!
Kick leaves in the park and you'll find that learning is happening without trying! maybe you'll collect leaves for a collage, watch birds migrating, look at the clouds, talk about the wind.
Go watch fireworks and you'll probably find her asking who was Guy Fawkes-and why do we burn him.
Maybe you'll read her a book about it.
Maybe you'll bake some cakes to enjoy after the fireworks show-maybe you'll go buy the ingredients together and weigh and measure them out and talk about how adding heat changes ingredients into cakes.

Then look back and realise that you have already covered some science, maths, and history.

aged 7 it really is that easy!
Have you found Muddle Puddle the website for home ed families with children aged 8 and under?

Hi mamble

I don't want to be cynical but schools have a census in January every year and for every child on their books they get a unit of funding which is somewhere around £4,000.

I agree, up to age 7ish you wouldn't need many books to give them what they need. What about later, when they get to their teens? Do you have a row of specialist tutors?

How do you de-register a child? It sounds very easy and you don't seem to have to justify what you are doing at all? On the other hand, parents are taken to court and fined/sent to prison for not sending their teenagers to school. Couldn't they just de-register them?

To de-register a child, you write a letter to the head of the school informing them that you are de-registering your child for the purpose of educating he/she at home. The school then have a legal requirement to inform the LA of the child being taken off roll.
When I de-registered my grandson, I changed my phone number as the school followed up the de-registration letter with constant phone calls.

There are many different ways to home educate, probably as many as the families who do it.
Some do 'school at home' and some are totally autonomous/informal/unschoolers and then there is just about every combination in between. Each family finds what suits them.
We were totally autonomous, where we followed the children's interests totally-all the way through their teens to FE College and onto Uni level.
We didn't have a wealth of tutors lined up-we managed almost everything the children wanted , sometimes by learning alongside them. We did employ one specialist tutor for music theory as we have one child who appears to be really good at music-but having been severely dyslexic, until the age of about 13/14 ish words and letters were still moving and spinning on the page. When that happens to notes it is impossible to read music. And she was blessed with parents who know absolutely nothing about music whatsoever. So she needed the tutor to help her catch up-which she did very efficiently.

We rarely bought anything new either, we've been on such a limited budget so everything was acquired for free or very cheaply from car boots/charity shops/freecycle/ebay etc.
All three are doing very well in Higher Education now.

It is easy to deregister a child. You just need to send in a letter informing the proprietor/HeadTeacher of the school that you are taking back responsibility for your child's education
You do not need to inform the LA-that is the school's responsibility, and you do not have to justify yourself at all.

If you stop and think about it, it is always the PARENT's responsibility to make sure the child receives an efficient full time education, and most parents hand over the delivering of that education to the state-that's why the parent can be sued for not sending their child-who is a registered pupil at a school, for not sending that child to school allowing them to receive an education.

The law in Section 7 of the 1996 Education Act states:
Parents have a right to educate their children at home. Section 7 of the Education Act 1996 provides that:
“The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable –
(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b) to any special educational needs he may have,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.”

It is the otherwise bit that allows us to home educate.

So yes in the point you made, a parents could deregister the child from school-but of course they would have to know about home education first wouldn't they-and in the majority of cases the parent simply is not informed of this right-but sometimes they wouldn't want to do it anyway.

I have helped a couple of families who have reached me, to do just this, and those families are now very happily and successfully home educating.

Tarenath - just wondering at what age/stage or if at all your DS would spend a day following an imposed structure ?

Given that he can't follow for a day at a holiday camp at 4.5, would he be encouraged to try again next year or at a later age ?

Or will he go on through life not having to contain his behaviour and function as a team - in which case how on earth could he ever be employed ?

notatschool - what you are describing sounds exactly the same as most parents do during evenings and weekends with their school attending children - how would it be different for your children if they went to school ?

rosemaryandtime, there are very few country's that put there children into a formal learning setting at such a young age, however the vast majority remain employable.
the difference between having fun after school and not going at all are different to every family, to me it means DD does not get tired out doing stuff not of her choosing,
she is not seen as failing because she has no interest in reading yet,
she does not have to conform to "playground" rules.

Each to there own really.

Its not really each to their own though bebanjo.
English law requires that regardless of the setting, children are provided with an age and ability appropriate education (1944 Education Act).
The description given by notaschool doesn't seem to me to met the needs of a 6 year old, so what I was thinking and enquiring about was what else HEing a 6 year involved in addition to the things she had listed, which are the out-of-school stuff that schooled children do.

I think notaschool's description is idyllic, practical and doable. Access to siblings and parent all day long, possibility of discussing anything that comes to mind and a spot of reading and verbal maths each day too. I bet her children are happy and thriving, what could be better than that?

What could be better than that ?

Age appropriate academic challenge in a nuturing enviroment with access to resources and the stimulation of older as well as younger peers.
The provision of wide ranging subject matter delivered in a bias-free enviroment ,english,science,modern foriegn language,religious awareness, PE etc

An outstanding primary school OR a well planned and considered Home Learning enviroment.
Not the list of "HE activities" that notaschool gave.

RosemaryandThyme, an 'appropriate education' is not the same as "a school education". The activities described by notatschool are very typical parts of a home education, and make up "an appropriate education" as required by law. You are making the mistake of thinking that because most children DO get their education in a school environment, that a school type education is NECESSARY or even DESIRABLE. It isn't.

Not making that mistake at all.
As I wrote "an outstanding primary school OR a well planned and considered Home Learning enviroment" can both meet the legal and moral educational requirements.

Wow, ok, so your question was, how would it be different if my children were in school? 

We wouldn't have so much time with each other. We would all lose 2 hours a day due to the school run. If we did do those things they would be squeezed into evenings and weekends, and we wouldn't be able to take advantage of quiet periods at museums, parks and farms, beautiful weather days, or go on holiday when it's cheaper. I don't know what other parents do, but TBH I don't even know that we would be doing so much else, as as bebanjo said, they would be tired and I wouldn't be as motivated if I thought they were getting all that in school. 

I base our HE model at the moment on the experience of many HE families and the philosophy of many educators and European countries who have concluded that the later the better as far as starting children in formal education is concerned. Indeed, I would have good grounds for continuing in this vein indefinitely, as the report "How Children Learn" by Alan Thomas of the Institute of Education concludes: "informal learning remains, as it is during those first years of life, a commonplace, unremarkable and yet astonishingly efficient way to learn."

Fortunately RosemaryandThyme you are not actually my children's self-appointed educational guardian. I know seeker is always saying that HEers are too defensive and unable to admit that HE is not absolutely perfect in every way, and sometimes we may come across like that. But frankly, your implication that my "home learning environment" is not "well planned and considered", and that I am educationally, legally and morally (???) failing my children, is rude, judgemental and thankfully wholly incorrect. 

RosemaryandThyme, the things that notatschool mentioned are also meeting "the legal and moral educational requirements". That's where you are making your mistake.

No school forces its children to read and write and do maths at the age of four. The foundation stage has now brought UK primary education in line with european, where learning through play is how they do everything.

If you choose to repeat at home what they do at school for free, by all means do that.