To think that online school might be the answer

This account too has been popping up all over Mumsnet banging on about Queen’s - bit suspicious! 🙄

Be aware! This is probably just more sneaky self promo. That school has been caught doing this before. Looks like nothing’s changed! 🙄

Queens Online is linked to Cambridge Home School, so if you see posts hyping up either of them it’s worth questioning who’s really behind it.

All the best of luck, Queens looks great as well and I really hope it works out.

If you work who is going to supervise & support them with online schooling?
Who is going to take them to home schooling meet ups and events?
Is your partner a SAHP & prepared to do this?

Because if you have to nag & chase them to do homework what makes yiu think they'll engage with online school?

My experience (my son went to online school during the pandemic as he wanted to keep learning but his teachers didn't provide anything) is that online school works well for self motivated and driven children, but if you had a child who needed constantly pushing it would be much trickier.

I think it can be an excellent option but I wouldn't choose it for the kind of child who has to be nagged to do their homework

Also agree with @LittlePickleHead re Minerva. I too have a child there and they do have interactive lessons and also an individual mentor they see weekly.

Just stop after school club? They get 13 weeks off a year...

The school has both. The headteacher is amazing and spent a long time speaking with my son, getting to know him, getting him out of his shell. She understood exactly the issues that he had with school and why it was so hard, and treated him with such kindness.

In his mainstream school he never met or spoke with the headteacher. The Head of Y7 (also the pastoral care) was part of the final straw with his anxiety becoming completely unmanageable after being called a baby in front of his friends for being upset over a detention.

So in a lovely idyllic world you are right. In reality, my experience is it doesn't happen (at least not at secondary) and the teachers at Minerva know and truly care about the kids. Many of the teachers have moved from top schools because they believe in the ethos, and they also believe that traditional school is broken. The teaching crisis just lends more weight to this.

Once mainstreams school can sort out the huge failing that are leading to more and more children not being able to cope with the environment, then maybe pushing for attendance at all cost will be more suitable. As it is, school is certainly not right for all, is not leading to well rounded confidence, happy people, and for many of us taking action to address that is vital.

My dd did online school for a couple of years. I found it brilliant. She was school refusing, but she coped with online school well.

@LittlePickleHead Schools shouldn't have CEO's. They should have headteachers who know the children and see them, in person.

This.

Imagine doing online learning courses all day every day. Horrendous for most adults, let alone an 11-13 year old kid sat there at a desk all day.

School is about so much more than learning the curriculum and the problems your kids are going through are normal.

Online schooling may have its place for SEN kids who genuinely can't cope, but for everyone else, it's really not a substitute.

Your kids can't just top engaging with the real world. It won't solve problems, it will just create new (and likely bigger) ones.

And actually one of the great things about the school growing is the model means they hire more teachers so instead of class sizes growing, they have more classes, and more mentors, so the level of individual support remains the same.

But it also means more children in the local area for meet ups and to make friends. There is an app for parents to connect which is active, and the best thing is everyone is so understanding and eager to support.

@KeenPanda who have you heard that from about Minerva? It's not true

DS11 is in classes of about 12ish depending on the lessons, with real teachers, who he interacts with (and does breakout groups with classmates to do tasks). Lessons are available as video catch up if you miss it, but for core subjects he has two live lessons a week, and non core he has one. Each lesson has a small bit of prep work (e.g. something to read then a question to answer to show you've understood) and then a follow up piece of work that needs to be submitted.

Every week he has a 1:1 with a mentor who gets to know him and who gives us a fortnightly report on how he's doing.

He has two social rooms a week where they play games which he loves, plus clubs they can choose from.

And next week he's doing a trip where he will be in a group of about 6 kids in person doing an escape room and a visit to a courtroom.

We also met the head and CEO last week with other London parents and kids in person.

So what you've 'heard' isn't my experience, I'm really impressed with the focussed support and how much everyone truly cares about the kids

My DD was educated by on-line school for health reasons. It’s very isolating, they are not permitted to swap contact details with their online classmates for “safeguarding” reasons and they lose touch with their current peers very quickly.

You need to ensure they have some other form of social contact with their peers.

If you’re working from home, you won’t have any opportunity to spend time with them during the workday so no different from physical school. How will you motivate them to work at home without a teacher there?

I think many people undermine the importance of social education in favour of academic. Think of the happiest or most successful people you know, it's social skills that got them where they are in life. It should be the number 1 consideration in making decisions on education IMO. For this reason I am very against home school or online school. Yes, lots of time in school is spent waiting turns or tolerating annoying people but that it true of life in general.

To be a functioning adult you need to learn to deal with large groups, small groups and 1 to 1 conversations, you need to hear opinions different to your own and learn when to say nothing and when to speak up. You need to advocate for yourself but understand that you are no better than anyone else, you need to see things from others perspective and to understand there are different personalities and cultures to consider. Children need to experience life with their senses, they need to see different things, hear different voices and sounds and smell things different to their homes. All of this life learning is lacking in online education.

I think it could be about more than just having social lives outside of school exactly, my friend had friends but felt like an outsider as others went to school, so it might need to be more than that for some kids.

A close friend of mine was homeschooled and has said she wouldn't do it herself, her reasoning is that she feels she missed out on feeling part of something wider than her family, missed out on meeting all the different people who you meet in school who are different to your family etc - very much left her feeling lonely, left out and socially isolated and has effected her self-confidence as an adult.

That's only an isolated example of course. But it has made me think that if I were to consider home schooling it would be very important to make sure children remain connected to a wide and diverse community, have space to play or learn with peers etc so they don't feel they miss out on that side of things.