to home educate due to not getting a decent primary place?

[fluffymouse]

Reposted from home ed to get more responses.

Dd (4) did not get a place at our local school, which was our first choice, to start reception in September. I'm absolutely gutted. I felt that this school would really suit her, and the schools which still have places are terrible (London).

I'm on maternity leave and seriously considering home schooling her for a term, deferring her entry to less preferred school till December, and hoping a waiting list place will come up in the meantime.

Dd is extremely active, excellent motor skills, but speech and language is a bit behind (awaiting salt referral). We have tried gently introducing her to numbers and letters, which she is also learning at nursery, and she is making slow progress in recognition of these. She however hates picking up a pen. While she is able to write her name she usually refuses.

I was planning to do learning in a manner that suits her, through activities, going out looking at things etc as I know she would struggle to sit still. I however worry this would leave her I'll prepared when she does start nursery. I will also have a baby, who will probably be crawling by September!

Any thoughts? I am very new to this.

Your entire post is absolute crap sparechange, just so you know.

OP, there's some sensible advice here but I suggest you also take a look at the Home Education board here on MN to get a few pointers and insight .

Thank you for the advice.

Yoanswer the questions: no I do not have a teaching background. I will put dd on waiting lists when they open shortly, we missed a place at our preferred school by metres literally. I have gone to see local schools with places. I desperately want to like them, but I don't see any of them being a good fit yet.

Finally no this isn't an attempt to manipulate the lead into giving me a place at my preferred school. I know it won't make a difference. This is London though, and I expect there will be quite a bit of movement on the waiting list.

I do sympathise my dd didn't get a school place I wanted. It is a stressful time particularly facing other mums whose offspring got in. They ask what are you going to do when you are reeling and haven't got a clue.

Home ed if you wish but it doesn't influence anything re school places.

If long term home ed isn't a possibilty i.e you will be going back to work after maternity leave then don't reject the place offered as you could be left with no place at all.

Is she at nursery. You can keep her there until legal school age (term after 5) Just let them know as they may assume she is leaving in summer. Your 15 hours funding continues legal school age.

Other option is to start the disliked school and keep her there if you/her like it or move as soon as a wait list place comes up.

You can also go on wait lists for other schools.

FWIW we went private but only one child and up north so fees are less than nursery fees. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise - DD is 9 and thriving in a school we wouldn't have considered had she got in.

I did reject the state place as there were no circumstances I would have sent her there. Took several months and numerous calls/emails for the LA to remove her.

Once bitten twice shy though we have moved so she is catchment for 11 when she will go into state secondary!

I told my DH if I'm not happy with my girls education I will home school them. When we moved house after the deadline my DD's got into a "good" school DD1 didn't learn a single thing that year I was about to take her out but DH said to apply for the other school (1st on our list) it was full. I went in spoke to the head she wrote a letter saying they could make room for her so we won the appeal.

DH doesn't really want to home school but I would love to!

My worry about sending her to a school I don't like then moving her after a place came up at preferred school would be that she would already be settled with friends, and it would be a big upheaval. For various reasons she was been to numerous different nurseries already, which I feel bad about.

I don't think private school is an option, for the primary reason that all the London private school places are already filled I believe due to very high demand.

What do you not like about the school she has been given?

If you are on mat leave, can you afford not to go back to work, or are you limited until January to home ed? If that's the case, then you might potentially be moving your DD from nursery, to home ed, to 'bad' school in January then moving again to 'good' school when a place comes up. If you can't home ed long term, you might be better just sending her to the 'bad' school and hope a place comes up where you want to, rather than her miss all the 'settling in' that happens during the first term of reception, but then have to send her to that school anyway.

If she's not a child that copes well with 'change' adding in a few months of home ed might just be adding additional 'change' into her life that you don't need to do.

That's an interesting way to look at it dinosaur

I will need to go back to work January at the latest.

I saw that home ed might be like an extended summer holiday, as I will be having dd full time over the summer after her preschool closes for the holidays.

I will probably defer entry by a term to a school as a back up option.

Hakluyt it is always controversial to say why I don't like a school, but the local school available had 60% of children who do not speak any/very little English when starting according to the head. The intake is very deprived, with very low attainment on entry. I think dd might just coast while they focus on teaching other children English/bringing them up to minimum standards.

"Are you a teacher? Do you have any formal early years training?

Unless you do, the worst primary is going to better than someone with no experience, assistance or guidance. Sorry, but you are going to be really distracted with the baby, and the lines between parental discipline and teacher discipline are going to be very blurred for her."

What a load of shit.

If I were in your position I would accept the place at the school you dislike and make sure you are on the waiting lists for all the schools that you would prefer your child to be at. However, I would not actually send my child to that school in the hope of getting a place elsewhere.

There is a lot of movement and changes in school class arrangements before the start of term in september, especially in London. People regularly register at private schools whilst also applying to a state primary that they consider acceptable (usually very oversubscribed and they typically don't get into) The LEA still places those children somewhere. Once those parents reject their child's LEA place and go with the private option (or vice-versa, accepting LEA and rejecting private place) then spare places start to open up and children on waiting lists to private schools leave LEA places open to other local children too. Essentially lots of shuffling and changing before the September, based on a significant number of children having 2 places available to choose from. (one private, one state)

Children are not legally required to attend school until their 5th birthday, and many parents choose to send their children to school part time (flexi-schooling) or wait until Christmas/Easter/Child's 5th birthday before sending their child to school. (or deciding to home educate) Parents of summer-born children do this more frequently as their children are typically just not ready for school just after their 4th birthday.

You do not need to be a teacher or have any particular skill to home educate your child. Have a look at the home education groups for under 5's on facebook and there are lots of websites out there explaining the different type of home education available. A few extra months at home with you is not going to damage your childs education in any way. Many other countries don't send their children to school until they are much older, so you can be confident that they will still have the potential to excel at school when they do go.

If you have the time to Home Ed maybe you could compromise by sending her to the school she got into and then maybe trying to encourage extra learning on weekends and in evenings to make up for any shortfall.

Until she gets there you really don't know how she will do. She may get the best teachers there, she may thrive in that environment and you may find that she improves speech-wise. Or you may not. Give it a try first OP and then decide.

It absolutely terrifies me that you need no teaching qualification to legally be allowed to teach your children. You let them learn what they want? Seriously? How on earth is that going to work when it comes to passing their maths GCSE?

An acquaintance of mine has decided to remove her daughter from school and home school her. With the best will in the world, because she means well, this woman is in no way capable of educating anyone. She left school with no O-levels (or maybe one) then did a succession of bar jobs until she got herself pregnant, twice. Her written English skills are appalling. The sole reason she is taking her daughter out of school is because she refuses to behave there. There's nothing wrong with that kid that a bit of discipline wouldn't cure - she's never had any - yet because her mother doesn't want to deal with her tantrums any more, she's removing her from school and setting her up for a lifetime of failure. That kid will leave "education" with no GCSEs, just like her mother, and probably repeat the pattern when she's old enough to get pregnant.

That aside, I despair of people who think they can teach complicated concepts to kids while having no understanding of them.

My nursery takes children up to the age of 5, few people take up that option but it is there. If your daughter is settled and happy there you could see whether she could remain there for a few months as an alternative.

You'd be surprised to know that research shows the children of parents who would not be considered 'well educated' are the children who achieve the best outcomes with home education compared with formal education in a school.

I'm a teacher myself, and I was very surprised to hear this, but the evidence is solid.

CheeseFlavouredDiscs that's really interesting, why do you think that is? Don't want to derail but hopefully still on topic because it speaks to why some experiences of home ed are more successful than others.

Maddie how your friend home educates is not necessarily indicative of how everyone else home educates.

I have a 'good' university degree (as well as good GCSEs and A-levels). I'm only saying this to counter your example.

I don't believe reception concepts to be particularly complicated either.

This was the position DH and I took - if we didn't get a school we were happy with, I'd home ed.
If I were you I'd read around the subject, research any local groups and don't panic! You don't need any formal qualifications.

A good book to start with is "Free Range Education" by Terri Dowty.

I didn't say it was indicative of the way everyone does it, but that she's allowed to home educate at all beggars belief, and therefore the system is flawed at its most basic level. That kid has no chance. Sure, she might be calmer and not throwing tantrums every day because she can't behave in school, but she's not going to pass any exams, and she's not going to get a decent job, and and and.

How on earth does someone who, for example, can't add up without a calculator, teach concepts like algebra or trigonometry to GCSE standard? More to the point, how do they teach them so the child has an understanding of them, if they don't comprehend it themselves? It's impossible, surely. To teach something effectively, you need to understand it.

maddiehayesfan, I home educated my youngest two for four years for a variety of reasons. When youngest went into school in year 4 his teacher had just moved to keystage 2 after being in keystage 1 since she qualified. At the end of the year she said to me, "You have made me feel that I have been wasting my time for the last 20 years." I asked why, I thought she was a fantastic teacher and couldn't think why I had given her this idea. She said, "I have realised that I have spent years trying to get 4 and 5 year olds to do things they aren't ready to do yet and that if I had just left them alone till they were 8 they would have done it so much more easily."

If I compare my older two and younger two the big difference was that the younger two were so much more enthusiastic about learning. We spent the four years they were home having fun, not doing much educational stuff but they were learning it was just different stuff they were learning.

They both did well in the last 3 years of primary, went to a good grammar school and got good degrees.

Oh and I left school at 15 with no qualifications.

A lot of modern home education is done using internet resources, many of which are free or very cheap to subscribe to. 'Reading Eggs' is the one I always hear about.

You don't have to be able to teach to GCSE standard. Many HE children go to college to do GCSES. Or they study curriculums on line.

Maddie

why do you think a child wouldn't pass exams if H.ed, lots of children do GCSE/IGCSE/ A levels etc. Why would they stand no chance in life?

You'd be amazed how many DC drift through school without grasping basic maths & literacy maddie .

IME teaching your own KS1 child is like pushing at an open door. They are naturally so enthusiastic - whether they are objectively 'ahead' or 'behind' or whatever.

Maddie

why do you think a child wouldn't pass exams if H.ed, lots of children do GCSE/IGCSE/ A levels etc. Why would they stand no chance in life?

I said this child won't. Because her mother, the woman who plans to "educate" her, for all the good will in the world, is as thick as two short planks and the child is coming up to the age where she'll start to study for her GCSEs. There is no way in hell this woman can educate anyone to pass exams. She can't even spell.