AIBU to take my 12 year old out of school for 18 mths to HE....

[Reddragon116]

and then send him back for GCSE's - he is board rigid with the lessons in year 8 and starting to get stress migraines. Does what they cover in years 8/9 lead on to what they do at GCSE level ?

Hi fuzz

Sounds like it is going well, I'm so pleased for you.

OP

I would report your thread and ask it to be moved to H.ed boards as there are lots of us other there.

Sally your poor boy. You are doing the right thing for him at the moment, definitely/
.

Ha! He's not that willing - Brenda - some things like English and History he really does like, so that's OK [but he'd still rather read Twilight than Much Ado]. He's pretty reluctant with Maths. And he's never, ever eager to get up in the morning to get going. But being reminded that he doesn't have to start every Monday morning with PE helps!

Thanks loofah!

The thing is, sometimes these threads are good to not just be soley on the HE board, particularly if it is something someone is considering.

You will get viewpoints from all angles which is really quite beneficial. Yes, you will get some raging Anti HE'ers who will never see why we do/did it, but also lots of people who would love to but cannot.

The HE board, lovely and supportive as it is, doesn't always see some of the tougher sides to HE.

But certainly I would not have posted it in AIBU

The migraines are definately down to the stress being bored from year 8?
He has seen GP / opticians etc?

Sally - your poor boy

Is he okay now?

You don't, necessarily, announce (in HE) "we are doing Science now" - it tends to be very much child-led and sparked by their interests.

One of my friends has NO rules for her DCS (aged 3 and 7.) No bed times, no set meal times, and doesn't explicitly teach her DCs anything. That's an extreme example of course, but it does appear to be working well for them.

I don't think that a child being bored is a great reason to HE; I don't think stress migraines are caused by boredom either. But I do think HE can be wonderful purely in terms of education.

In terms of other aspects of life, it just depends.

I think it's a great idea if a) he wants to b) you do your research really well c) there are lots of opportunities to socialise d) you can personally spare the necessary time to teach and e) you can afford to not be working.

If you meet that criteria he could do very well learning on a 1-1 basis or in small groups.

Thanks mytartanscarf - he's very relieved to be away from that environment and he is happier, but it's knocked his confidence badly and that will take some time to come back from. He's dyspraxic so not confident anyway, and visibly clumsy and nervous, which is why he was such an easy target.
Agree with you about HE offering wonderful opportunities. We met a 13 year old girl at weekend, who left school at 8 having been put in special needs class and told she was very behind. She has read and read and read. She knows a lot about French poetry. Her latest passion is French New Wave cinema, and she's learning songs in French from a load of the films and accompanying herself on the guitar. Favourite director is Truffaut. Her dad is an artist, and is going to help her produce her own films. She just gets on with her own projects, according to what she wants to learn. She may be unusually motivated, I don't know. At the moment we're following a much more structured programme with DS.

The current year 8's will be the first year to go through the new exams, whatever they may be called.
May be worth bearing in mind.

Must be hard having such a stressed/bored little boy. I take my hat off to you to have thought of HE, it must take some serious discipline from all parties.

It's the current y9s - just for info :)

I remember reading a newspaper article about a woman who was told her DD was dyslexic, in about year 3.

She withdrew her for a year and educated her at home. She would (for example) ask her DD to write a story and circle all the spelling mistakes and get her DD to correct them using a dictionary.

When she went back to school, she was apparently no longer dyslexic!

mytartanscarf you seem to have had the quintessential HE experience. I'm curious, how would you describe your parents?

My DS school has said that they are now covering GCSE level work in Y9 In order to prepare the kids for Y10-11. Particularly in maths and English which will be the new style exam at the end type of GCSE. Your son will do more of the new style ones so might be detrimental to keep him out inY9.

This is really interesting, may I ask some questions please as HE is a new area for me.

1. How do you teach chemistry, or things that require complex equipment or chemicals that you cannot buy from the high street?

2. If my DS was like some of the children mentioned above, like the girl who gets on with her own projects, how do such children cope when they go to work & have a job including elements that they find boring or that they don't want to do? Do they cope OK with just knuckling down & getting on with it?

3. If you HE up until GCSE but unfortunately you are an inefficient HEdder & your child fails because you haven't taught all of what they need to know, what happens then?

I wouldn't say I did, really, Goodbye. Believe me, there were many things they got wrong - very wrong.

Notably, m mum was very much the formal, sit down and learn it type. This led to a lot of upset as they worked FT. They would get upset and angry and frustrated when I didn't "get it" immediately and would shout, I would cry (I was VERY young!) and it led to a lifelong problem in numeracy.

My dad seemed to and I believe did genuinely enjoy spending time with me. He was a very intelligent man with a vast wealth of knowledge and loved to share that knowledge. Our interests weren't always the same but he loved to learn from me and I from him. He brought books home - huge amounts of books about nature, fiction books, books about history - I used to visit the library weekly with him. One thing would always lead to another: I remember reading Tarka the Otter with him when I was about six and that led to about three months' study on British wildlife, as well as the hunting habits of the aristocracy, which in turn led to life in the early nineteenth century being analysed! Yet I don't remember one "lesson." It was just reading and drawing and talking.

My mum - was very loving in her way but lacked patience! Had very high standards. My dad was far more patient and understood children. He was more content to "roll with it", I think!

Magrats - not sure about Chemistry.

To answer your second point - of course we do!

Third point - same as the many children who are failed by disruptive behaviour in their classrooms or by teachers who either aren't up to the job or who are too pulled in every which way to commit to one child. They don't pass!

AND they worked full-time? Jeez. I'm extremely impressed.

Are they sort of beatniks?

I can't comment on HE, but do check with the school(s) that you are thinking of sending your son back to, as lots of schools begin teaching GCSEs at the start of year 9. It's worth having that info to help inform your decision.

With regard to Chemistry, i bought one of those good quality chemistry sets and we had a right old laugh doing some of those.

Others we just read all about on science pages, so you can still do it without any problem.

Plenty of people HE and work FT in the US.

I went to school from reception to Year 3. That was when they both worked full time. My Mum was permanently convinced that I was brilliant and needed help to be more brilliant and would make me study at home in the evenings as well.

I think I was seven when my dad's mum died (he had already lost his dad) and with the money he inherited he and my mum bought a house in the South of France. We spent eighteen months there and then went back to the UK. I was in Year 5. There was some big problem with me getting into the local school so my mum's mum looked after me. I started back in Year 6. :)

I went to secondary school as "normal" but didn't attend much after year 9.

Magrats

I'm not sure about the Chemistry as my dd has done a little bit but just normal play stuff you can buy in shops, like bath bombs, crystal making, etc
There is a sciency H.ed parent on here though and they go to lectures and institutions
Some are able to access through clubs either H.ed groups or none H.ed groups.

your second point, I can only answer for our situation.

Even though dd is only 11 she has known what she wants to do and fitting in with a normal job and routine would have been difficult for her even if she had received a full school education.
She is starting school in September but even that isn't a normal state school

Your third point is hard to answer really.
However, I have heard and met H.ed dc who have taken GCSE's outside school and once again have been motivated by self learning rather than being taught by a teacher.
They also have the scope of all subjects so can choose what they want to do.
Also remember they don't have to take compulsory subjects as dc in schools do and can work at their own pace. There is also no need to take 11 - 13 either, as universities only ask for 5 GCSE's anyway.

Yes, all subjects are cumulative to some extent. At one end of the scale are maths and languages: you do need to cover all the syllabus in the younger years to be ready to start preparing for GCSEs in year 10. But in all subjects the stuff you learn in Year 8 and 9 is taught with an eye to laying the foundations for the skills needed at GCSE - so for example in history you will not be tested on any facts you learn in year 9, but the essays you write in year 9 will be designed to help starting you to approach the subject as you will need to in year 10 and 11. Also doing exams in the earlier years helps you to learn how to take them later. I think that it would obviously be possible to cover all the syllabus at home - but it would be quite hard work for any one person to be familiar with the material to the extent required to teach an intelligent teenager.

To put it bluntly OP, the fact that you don't have any idea what KS3 education entails (whether or not it 'leads onto') GCSEs and the fact that you don't know the difference between 'board' and 'bored' makes me think you're not ideally suited to being a young person's sole educator.

If you are keen to have an input into your son's education why not spend time with him after school discussing his work with him so that he can find something of interest in it and not be bored all day? Or set him projects to do outside school, or take him to museums and plays and what not and discuss them with him? Taking him out of school is very unfair to the child imo.

Thanks for your replies, I don't have the confidence to HE. I went to a very strange independent school myself that didn't follow the curriculum & I'm conscious of gaps in my knowledge, for example I didn't study chemistry/physics/science/RE/geography/sex ed at secondary level at all. I have zero knowledge of the periodic table for instance. I did needlework instead....& Music at GCSE, there were no options & I couldn't choose my subjects.

And although I'm educated to degree level there's a whole strata of basic stuff that it seems everybody else learned at school that I didn't & I'm scared to death of repeating that for my DCs if I home edded.

Subjects like maths and languages will certainly be building up to GCSE. English lang/lit will also be building up in preparation for GCSE. Other subjects will be building a general skill set but could probably be skipped if you have a very bright kid.