Home Education - Primary school - has anyone done it for a short period and then managed to get child back into school?

[Pieinthesky2]

Posting here for traffic as I feel as though I have a momentous decision to make.

DS is in Year 3 and the transition from Year 2 has been horrendous. He has lost all confidence in school, has huge anxiety and causes low level disruption (shouting out inappropriate things) about 30% of the time. We think he had some sort of breakdown from the stress in November and since then, he has been flexi-schooling. I have applied for an EHCP and believe I will get it.

He attends a local state primary who have hardly any experience of SEN and are generally in a very middle class, affluent area. I don’t think they want him at the school.

My DH and I are strongly considering taking him out for the next term and a half and home educating (thankfully we have the means to pay for private tuition which he responds well to). He is academically able and other than SEHM needs - he has no learning difficulties.

I am concerned that he has got into a rut and although he has an amazing teacher (the rest of the staff are a lot to be desired), I think perhaps he now knows he can get away with doing very little work. This has gone on for 8 months and I am exhausted from the stress and strain of trying to manage it all.

Has anyone withdrawn their child from a mainstream school, given them a break and home educated and then moved them to a different school a couple of terms afterwards? I am worried that if we take this drastic action - his phobia about school and anxiety will increase - but I feel as though I have to try something different.

Anyone out there with any experience of a similar situation?

Yes. There is a boy in my dss class, he didn't do half of year 5 and none of y6but then moved into senior school. He appears to be getting on well and gets on well with my dss but I know that's a loose connection.

Yes, 6 months between houses. Worked fine

I have recently done this with my child, who was very unhappy, bullied and had shown behaviours similar to the ones you describe. Our school culture wasn't going to fix any of that. I am now home educating, everyone is more relaxed, we've both reduced our working hours a bit and we can all breathe. My hope is an eventual return to a good, kind school that can see and help with the emotions behind the behaviours. I wish you all well.

Thanks everyone for your responses so far. I am so appalled at the lack of SEN care in some schools - and I do understand why when budgets are cut that schools just want SEN children out.

Anyone else out there with any success (or not) stories? I can’t sleep because of the anxiety.

Bump - am desperate.

Have you taken him to the GP?

Mine have never been to school but one of their friends started school the summer he was 6 and 6 months later is enjoying it. It was his choice to go to school though.

We pulled my daughter out one term into yr 1, she was the youngest in the class and just not ready. Thoroughly miserable.

She restarted (at her own instigation) in September, in yr 4. So missed 2.5 yrs.

She is back at the original school, with kids she was friends with. Interestingly her reading was at age expectation, but her writing was a little behind...we didn't do much/any formal stuff with her really. Her writing was up to scratch by Christmas and she got her 'pen licence' 🙄 which a lot of the class don't have yet. She's caught up/overshot some of the class in maths already. Teacher says her attitude is fantastic and he can tell she's there by choice.

So it's worked well for us. We would happily still have her at home if she wanted, but this is working well for her now.

Our son started last term as well, he's gone straight into yr 2 of the same school. A space came up so we grabbed it.

I haven’t but a friend did. Her child was suffering anxiety after struggling with school for a few years. Took him out for about 6 months, then sent him to another school which allowed flexi schooling and had a more relaxed ethos. Gradually worked on him going back full-time. Worked for them.

I can't comment on SEN because I have no experience. However I took DS1 out because he was bored, frustrated and no provision was made. I took DS2 out because he was being kicked and punched in reception class.

We home schooled for approx 3 years. DS1 went back to school for his first year in secondary and settled straight away. DS2 returned at the same time and has been fine.

My step son was also home schooled for a year and then went back and he has settled back into it.

My two were definitely happier though at home. They talk about it often and both expressed the opinion that they would have preferred to always have been home schooled.

Due to the sudden onset of this, I suggest taking him to the GP, just to make sure it isn't PANDAS (syndrome caused by streptococcus infection, not endangered mammals).

Yes, for a year and a term.. A failing school with poor behaviour, lack of leadership and newly qualified teachers (was a fab school when we joined before the head and three very lovely experienced teachers resigned/retired).

DD is bright/bookworm type but was falling down the cracks, standard of behaviour at the school was worrying. Low level bullying. Teaching poor. School went from ‘outstanding’ to ‘special measures’, SM was inspection after we had left.

Anyway, I cut down my work, took DD out of school, home educated for 16 months, she regained confidence and then went to a different school the same distance away from home in another direction and flew rejoining at the start of Yr4.

Now very very happy at secondary school. HE was definitely the right thing at the time.

Yes, ds1.

He has aspergers but hadn't been diagnosed at the time. The schools joined together, became a BIG academy and went from 3 tier to 2 tier all at the same time, being run by different people than the old setup. Many, many teachers, head teachers etc left and there were a lot of new teachers.

He is high functioning but still needed extra prompting and managed a little more than most NT children, but not much, which generally happened before the changes as the teachers knew him, but didn't happen afterwards. Whenever we spoke to the school we felt ignored and felt like he was more of an inconvenience than a valued pupil to educate.

In year 5 it got to the stage that we dreaded picking him up every day as there was always something wrong, but the teachers weren't managing him. (Eg We'd told them a number of times if they tell the class as a group what to do he doesn't register it as being for him, so they just need to say "xxx, this applies to you too." Didn't need to repeat the whole thing, just address him by name. He had listened, just needed confirmation it applied to him. This had happened before the changes, but not after.)

So a couple of months into his year 5 we took him out to home educate, not knowing how long for, but were intending to move area anyway so were looking to possibly find a suitable school when we moved. He was a happy 9/10 year old then and needed the time out of school, we'd been considering it for a while and knew we had to do it then. We moved the following July so he had 2.5 terms of home ed and started in a little village school at the other end of the country for year 6. The SEN coordinator there helped starting to get a diagnosis for him and he was diagnosed with autism in year 7 (took about a year!), this would never have happened at the old school.

He is now 18, got excellent year 6 sats results, excellent GCSEs apart from English (he's a computer, science, maths geek, not English) and has finally managed a pass for his English after 3 re-sits, and is sitting his A level exams very soon. The time out of school did him the world of good, he needed the break (and he kind of got a choice about going back to school in year 6, even though we pushed encouraged him to try it, but did give him the option of going back to home ed if it didn't work for him.)

I took my son out for a trial at home education due to severe anxiety and after a diagnosis of dyspraxia at age 8. He was struggling. That was 7/8 years ago and home education proved to be the best thing for him. So much so that we home educate our younger son.
But through the home ed community I have seen many different scenarios play out.
Like us many start it as a trial and find it works. Others give it a try but find it isn't for them and go back to the same school, but a break did them good to break the cycle they were in.
Some have had a period of home educating then have gone back to a different school successfully.
And some go back flexi schooling.
I found the thought of staying as we were (at school) impossible but the thought of taking him out so scary at the time. But once we made the decision then all the anxiety and fear about it all just went (his and ours as parents).
I always then felt it wasn't set in stone. If for any reason and at any point home educating didn't work out we always had other options. It wasn't a fait accompli.

Perhaps give it a try and if it doesn't work out then try something else.
Good luck with it all.
The home education board on here was a great support to me whilst making the decision

Thanks for all your responses. It’s really helping. It is such a hard decision. I think he needs the social interaction with school so I am wondering if I take him out and take him to intense therapy (he is adopted) that that might change things. I just don’t want things to drift.