GCSE from scratch at home for 15 year old

[morewineplease66]

Hi. My 15 yr old daughter has lost the best part of a year off school due to PTSD related to bullying. We have moved area and now need to set her up with either online courses or home tutoring to do her GCSE's. We are looking to spread them out a bit and only do the core subjects to start. Any recommendations as to which to go with? She will need quite a lot of support as she has been out of the educational environment for a while.

[AspergersMum]

he-exams.wikia.org/wiki/CorrespondenceCourses This website has info on distance learning options. I think it also has tutor recommendations but if not, try finding your local Facebook Home Ed and ask for personal recommendations. All the best, hope your daughter's situation is better now.

[Saracen]

Are you looking at spring 2022 for the first few exams? I get the idea you are quite new to all this, is that right?

The trickiest part of doing exams while being home educated is usually finding an exam centre which will allow your child to sit exams there as a private candidate. Exam centres don't have to accept private candidates and many choose not to. This may be even more of an issue in future as last year's exam mess meant extra work for those exam centres which were trying to be helpful to private candidates who would otherwise have been left without grades. (Not all exam centres were helpful, and some wanted to help but couldn't. Many home ed kids were left without exam results last year.) So, even in a "normal" year, getting the exam centre arranged is the first step. That dictates which exam board you'll follow and which syllabus it is, which in turn tells you what your options are for a distance learning programme, tutor or whatever method you use to prepare. You definitely don't want to be forking out a load of money on an online programme to prepare your daughter for an exam she won't be able to sit.

Following the government's decision to cancel the spring 2021 GCSEs in favour of teacher assessment, home ed kids may once more be left in the lurch. It isn't yet clear what will happen. It may be that IGCSEs, usually the preferred option for home ed kids, will still go ahead.

Have a good read of this site to get you started: he-exams.wikia.org/wiki/HE_Exams_Wiki There are forums linked there where you can ask questions once you have familiarised yourself with how it all works. But if you are looking at 2022 exams I would just lurk on them for a while and try to understand it all - everyone will be panicking about this year's arrangements.

[KateW73]

I can sympathise - this is much the same reason we are home educating. I hope your daughter is recovering.

It sounds like you already know this, but I'll write it anyway as it's so important - there is no deadline to learning. One of my aunts was ill a lot all through her school years and left at 16 without qualifications. She did what she needed all later, bit by bit in the evenings after work, eventually taking a degree and becoming a teacher. So anything is possible.

My children have approached exams with a mix of strategies. Some subjects have been studied entirely independently by buying textbooks and workbooks. Some subjects by correspondance courses. Some from online learning providers, even before Covid. And some were in group lessons (but that have switched to zoom since the first lockdown).
It really depends if there are any subjects you or someone else in the family feels confident helping with if you want to try with books alone (the main advantage of that is it's the cheapest way but it also means you can learn at entirely your own pace - you're not forced to complete tasks before the next online lesson). I'm good at maths and there's no nuance when comparing your daughter's answers to what's in the back of the book, so it's fairly straight forward (or at least I think so).
For English, we used a correspondance course with Catherine Mooney (www.catherinemooneytutoring.co.uk/) as she had been recommended by other home educators we know. Her courses are quite structured, in terms of what order you do things in, but you can work at your own pace.

Like you, we are spreading out exams - in fact, we are in the middle of the January sitting for science IGCSEs now. My son went to group lessons for those, as the tutor had access to more scientific equipment than we had at home. However, I'm not sure it's worth making a reccommendation for something you can't access now even if we were in the same area.

If your daughter is interested in computer science, my son really enjoyed the online lessons with Learntec (learntec.co.uk/).

Others have already suggested looking at the wiki pages (he-exams.wikia.org/wiki/HE_Exams_Wiki) and that's good advice. I found it really helpful. There's a lot of information to get your head around, so make yourself a cup of tea for your first browse and go back to it more than once if you need to.

Looking for a local home ed facebook group would also be a good idea as they will be the people who may know which of the exam centres locally are still taking private candidates as well as letting you know if there are any local tutors or group lessons.

Best of luck.

[morewineplease66]

Thanks everyone for some very helpful tips so far :)