Thinking of home educating my DD

[Governoress86]

Hello all,

This is my first time posting in this section.

Due to the current pandemic I am really considering home schooling my DD, however I am worried about the social side of things as she is an only child. She is currently in year 6.

DD says she likes school but will jump at the chance to have a day off or on a Sunday shebsays she doesn't want to go back to school.

My reason for wanting to take her out is because me and my partner have asthma so are classed as vulnerable. We also have vulnerable parents albeit we are not seei g them at the moment due to restrictions. There has also been a case of covid in the school and also I don't think enough measures are being put in place at the school I.e so many parents congregating at the school gates, children mixing with other years.

Me and her dad have still not decided if this will be a long term thing or just until the pandemic is over.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated especially from people with experience of home schooling with an only child.

[Ohalrightthen]

If you pull her out, they will not hold her place, so if it doesn't work for her she will not necessarily be able to go back to the same place.

Would you not send her to secondary school?

[WhoseThatGirl]

Asthma generally doesn’t make you vulnerable. Do you just feel more vulnerable?
I think if you only reasons are 1 case in your school you have asthma and your parents, who you don’t see, are vulnerable then YABU. If you think home education is the best option for all long term then YANBU under normal circumstances it isn’t difficult to expose her to lots of varied social situations with children of different ages and backgrounds.

[Ickabog]

How did she cope at home during the lockdown?

[Governoress86]

Thank you for your replies.

DD coped really well during the lockdown. She preferred it as she could learn at her own pace and she said that she liked how say for English she didn't have a set time for that lesson so she could concentrate more on the English project than the limited time she had in school. As with not seeing her friends, again she didn't seem that bothered. She spoke to friends via text messaging and phone calls and used Microsoft teams with her school class however she rarely messaged on there .

[purpleleotard]

Do you have any experience of teaching?

Do you have access to the curriculums / lesson plans for the subjects you will be teaching?. maths, english, a foreign language, history, geography, biology, physics, chemistry, sports.etc

Are you prepared to dedicate what will be huge amounts of time to educating your daughter?

Have you the diligence to carry this through for many years?

Do you have the facilities to have a learning space?

Her friends are going to be at school, only available out of school time.

An acquaintance 'home educated' in reality just let the girl do what she wanted. The outcome was she couldn't read or write at 12.

[NK346f2849X127d8bca260]

I have home educated dd since Y7 she is now studying for 7 GCSES.

You do not have to follow NC, although if plan is to return to school at some point i would probably do so.

There are lots of home ed groups for advice if you are on Facebook.

You are welcome to PM me.

[Diverseduvet]

Teaching is not easy, especially when they get to secondary curriculum. Are you able to plan, teach and assess in every subject and make sure she's making progress? I'm sure theres a good reason but 7 GCSEs is not a great amount.

[NK346f2849X127d8bca260]

My adult dd is asthmatic, she nursed covid patients in the care home she works in and recently tested positive for Covid antibodies, she has no idea when she had it.
Home education is a good option for some but not sure if removing because of worries over asthma is a good one if that is only reason.

[idril]

Ignore the people who talk about teaching. Home education doesn't work like that - especially for secondary. But it is correct to say that it is a huge commitment to home educate well and it can be costly depending on what resources you use.

However, from what you say, I'm not sure home education would be the right decision. Your daughter says she enjoys school. Jumping at the chance to have a day off is not indicative that school is wrong for her. It's most likely just the change and novelty that she likes.

The social side of home education is normally not an issue. However, at the moment, even seasoned home educators are struggling because so much is restricted at the moment.

[NK346f2849X127d8bca260]

Diverseduvet most home educated children only take 5/6 GCSES as for most colleges that is enough to get onto A level courses.

I spend several hours a week planning work for the subjects she self studies for and i pay to get assessments set and marked by tutors and she is doing very well.

I also home educated her older brother, he is now at university studying Microbiology.

[Diverseduvet]

Thanks I didn't know that. I think it's a shame they dont get exposed to more subjects at GCSE level, to widen their choices.

[Krook]

I am an ex-teacher with a home-ed child. I do very little teaching so ignore anyone who says you need teaching experience. If you have a child who is generally self motivated it's more about facilitating their learning than teaching them. You don't need to do any specific GCSEs although maths and English (language) are advisable. The great thing is that as long as you can find exams centres to accommodate you, you can do any combination of subjects, unlike at school where choices are limited.
There are some that are very difficult to arrange (music, art, PE for example) but not impossible.

[NK346f2849X127d8bca260]

Diverseduvet we are restricted in choices re GCSE subjects, so that is a downside of home ed, but for my dd it hasn't been.

[eddiemairswife]

I wonder how HE parents cope with science experiments, or don't schools do much practical science nowadays?

[idril]

@eddiemairswife

I wonder how HE parents cope with science experiments, or don't schools do much practical science nowadays?

I have one schooled and one home educated child. The schooled one says that practicals consist of watching a teacher do the practical (badly). My home eduucated child watches them done well on youtube.

[Gibbonsgibbonsgibbons]

Urgh you don’t need to be a teacher to HE!

I would start by thinking about what kind of HE you are interested in doing it could be anything from full time NC “school at home” to “unschooling”. (& it will change as you figure out what works best for your family)

Everything is very quiet just now my kids normally do several “after school” type activities plus HE group meet ups - all of these are off currently. They are keeping up with friends via FaceTime & minecraft but there are no opportunities to make new friends just now which would make it a hard time to begin. OTOH my friends tell me that the HE Facebook groups are full of new HE parents (I don’t use FB) so maybe there are opportunities to at least make contact with people in a similar situation

My experience is that HE works best for people when it is a positive choice rather than a forced choice.

I HE my three children & it’s fantastic for our family. Good luck!

[Saracen]

My guess is that most of the people posting on this thread have no experience of home education! Many home educating parents are former teachers, and they usually report that their teaching experience is irrelevant to home education. If anything, they have more to "unlearn" as a result of their background.

Teachers need many skills which we home educators don't. They need to be able to manage dozens of children in one place at the same time. They have to try to engage all those kids in learning something which certainly won't be of interest and at the ideal level for every single child in the room. They must work with kids they have usually known for less than a year, whom they only see in the context of school and with whom they can rarely if ever have a long one-to-one discussion about topics which matter to the child - in short, they don't know the children like their parents would. Days out must be planned meticulously as the adult:child ratio is challenging. They are answerable to parents and to Ofsted and must produce documentation accordingly and communicate with parents about a range of issues including allergies, behaviour, homework, illness, and bullying. They have to implement a single curriculum (which they may not even have chosen for themselves) for the entire set of kids, whether or not they think it suits an individual child.

I am in awe of teachers, who do a very difficult job. Home educating parents use an entirely different set of skills. We generally see ourselves not as teachers, but facilitators. My eldest child's main interests were subjects about which I knew nothing, but that was fine. I helped them find the resources they needed for what they wanted to learn. Across the whole home education community, both locally and nationally, there is an impressive skillset and people help each other.

[Saracen]

To be honest, OP, your daughter may be lonely being home educated during the pandemic. This is not usually the case for most home ed kids. At the moment there are many restrictions on us in terms of meeting up with each other and with our friends who use school.

That doesn't mean you should necessarily rule home ed out. You may still feel the benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

The fact that your daughter was not thoroughly miserable when separated from friends during lockdown suggests she will probably be okay. It is somewhat hard to predict, however. Over time, she might start missing the chances to play with other kids. We had friends who were perfectly content alone from March to August and then started wanting to meet their pals again.

One convenient thing about your particular situation is that your daughter could stay out of school for the rest of this year and then start high school in Y7 alongside all the other new starters. There would be no issue then of her losing her school place or feeling like the odd one out when she does return. And some schools push the SATs preparation so hard that parents feel like Y6 is a write-off educationally as their kids are getting drilled relentlessly. Our local home ed group always gets a few families joining us just for Y6 for that reason, with the intention of sending their kids back to school the following year.