How many hours a week do you have to be teaching them for ?

[TheOriginalNutcracker]

Is there a set minimum ?

Have lots of issues going on with dd2 atm, and looking into home schooling, but I work 25-30 hours a week, so not sure I could do it.

Dd2 is 13 btw.

[FionaJNicholson]

There are no set hours or times. Here's a link to the Government's Home Education Guidelines, see 3.13 media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/e/guidelines%20for%20las%20on%20elective%20home%20educationsecondrevisev2%200.pdf

I would say it depends on your job and on your daughter, and would involve factors such as:

how draining your job is
how compatible your job is with tapping into local home education groups and activities
how much planning you have to do for your job when you're not actually at work
how flexible your job is
whether you can swap/reduce your hours
whether you can do any work from home
how much holiday you get
how self-reliant your daughter is
how much your daughter enjoys her own company

[Saracen]

Some parents like me do not teach their children at all, but instead let them learn under their own steam about whatever interests them, giving them help or advice only when they want it. This is called "autonomous education" (or, in the US, "unschooling"). It's a fairly popular method in this country.

Other parents do teach their children for varying numbers of hours, typically far fewer than they would do at school because the individual attention is focused on exactly what the child wants and needs to learn. Also at home you miss out all the time spent changing classes, waiting while the teacher disciplines other children, waiting for the teacher's attention, etc etc. When a child is too ill to attend school in the long term and the Local Authority sends a tutor out, the LA is only obliged to supply a minimum of five hours a week of tutoring, and the tutors report that this is generally enough to keep the child caught up with his classmates.

So I think that the more important issue is not whether you will be able to spend enough time educating your daughter, but whether you and she are comfortable for her to spend long stretches of time on her own. If not, then there might be ways to address this, for example by finding other people for her to spend some time with while you are out at work. At any rate, if the school situation is intolerable, then even if being home alone isn't ideal, it might still be better for her than school.

[FionaJNicholson]

this may never have crossed your mind TheOriginalNutcracker but...over the years I've taken lots of calls from parents who are thinking about home education and I've noticed that some parents are looking for a group where their child can go without the parent or for reciprocal/co-op type childcare/tutor groups where the children go to different homes on different days of the week.

And I generally say that while this might end up evolving into an arrangement after everyone has known each other for quite a while, it's not really how home education works, in my experience.

Just had to get that off my chest, probably massively irrelevant, sorry!

[musicposy]

I work quite long hours compared to most home educators I know, probably about the same as you, OP. I squeeze work in to a few days where possible. Mondays I do 12 hours +, then maybe 6 hours Tues and 8 hours Weds. The rest of the week I rarely work.

DD2 is 13 and very self motivated. She's been out of school since she was 8 so has got pretty used to it. On a Monday - my busiest day - she gets on with work herself. It generally works very well. We do have the odd hiccup when I am not there. She's in the middle of GCSEs at the moment and had a real crisis of confidence this morning. I came home at lunchtime (I teach in school Monday morning) and she was crying because she'd got in a state over a past paper. It rarely happens that she gets upset but if it does she is alone in the house and has no one for support. Because I was working again almost immediately until quite late tonight I haven't had time to sort it out - and she has the GCSE on Wednesday. So it does have its downside and I do feel guilty about the Mondays sometimes.

We do find ourselves working on a Saturday and Sunday quite often because of the time in the week I am busy. But at least we have that flexibility.

It's tiring, working so much and home educating. I get almost zero time to myself. However, it was easier before we did the GCSE route - it'll get easier once the exam session is over this summer. I think if we were completely autonomous it would be easier too.

[marjproops]

mine depends on how much DC can manage. shes autistic and has a number of other difficulties.

some days we can get 3/4 hours done, other days one hour, however, i 'sneak' education in by, for example, a programme on discovery about physics/history/geography etc etc. atm theres a series on American history she loves.

she watches 'something special' every day too for her makaton lessons. (we dont watch tv all day tho!!!! but if shes having a bad day thats the only thing she can manage)

and she loves copying writing out of her favourite doctor who book so shell get some paper and start and that ends up in her writing folder.

so there are ways to do it.

im fulltime with her so we can be flexible.