To home educate for year six only

[chocolatefiends]

Has anyone else done this? How did it go?

My DC's school has been great for our family so far and our kids are very happy there, but every year all the Year Six kids seem really fed up until their SATS are over. As far as I can tell, all they do, for most of the year, is practice/revise for SATS. Which feels like an awful way to spend a year of your life when you're 10/11.

Should we just take our kids out of school for Year Six and home educate them? Then let them start Year Seven in secondary school as normal.

What might the pros and cons of this be?

Thanks in advance.

YANBU: home educate for Yr 6
YABU: keep them in school for Yr 6

@Samlewis96 again depends on job or career, what field and how competitive it is when coming straight out of uni at 21 as you may not have a wealth of experience so the academic side is all they can assess on. I had a job, Dh has a career, one of them pays 4 times more than the other.

My son was in year 6 during lock down, didn’t do SATs, but also missed out on all the year 6 activities he had been looking forward to. It had a huge impact on his mental health to suddenly end his primary school years like that, so I wouldn’t want to do it voluntarily

@chocolatefiends I think it's a terrible idea if you want your child to be happy and settled in school in year 7.

The purpose of SATS is, I think, to ensure that the school is teaching them well before they go to Secondary school and to ensure they know what they need in basic subjects. They are not assessing the child. However the fact they exist means that the children who are not at a good level gets lots of extra help and focus from school to improve their standards before they get to secondary school - which has got to be good for the children.

Yes, pupils can get a bit bored of sitting practice papers in year 6. But they don't need to get stressed about them - such stress usually comes from the parents. The fact that you are making such a big deal about them when your child is year 5 (or below) is quite worrying.

My DC got the best, focussed, education of their primary school in year 6 - the school put some of the best, most experienced, teachers in that yeargroup to make sure that all the DC got the best education possible before they left the school and went onto secondary.

If you take them out of school for this reason in year 6 then their friends won't understand why. It puts their friends' parents in a difficult position and they probably won't explain to their children that you are choosing for your children not to sit SATS, and so these families could easily disassociate from you.

It is unreasonable to assume that they will just slot back into these friendship groups in year 7.

Year 6 has so many fun things - school trips, school plays, extra sports etc when the curriculum is finished. There is also PSHE, science, prep for transfer to secondary etc. It is also reasonable for children in year 6 to be a bit unsettled right now as they know they are going to move on from their cosy primary school in a few months and possibly go different ways to many of their current friends - and that is nothing to do with SATS.

Children can also do things outside of school - I assume your DC have hobbies/extra curricular clubs which will take their mind off school?

You do also need to check whether current primary is a feeder to the secondary before you remove your child from it!

If your child was being bullied and it couldn't be dealt with, then that I could see why you might take them out of school until a better solution was found. But not that you don't want them to do some hard work improving their knowledge ready for secondary school and then sit a few tests.

Sorry wasn't clear, I didn't mean the same friendship group going up to secondary but to just maintain friendships is important.

The academic side is important in that scenario but qualifications employers will be looking at are A-levels and predicted/achieved degree class. GCSEs don’t figure.

SATs are terrible preparation for GCSEs! They are five years younger, sitting an entirely different kind of test, forced to stop almost all learning outside of three core subjects. OP, I think it sounds like a brilliant idea. It could be a great opportunity to really spend time with each child, to pursue their interests with them, and get to know their potential, learning style and how to support them in secondary. I would definitely go for it!

@Joyettan "I will be honest, Ds2 thrived in lockdown, secondary school set work and he finished it before lunch because he wasn't waiting for the rest of the class, he could pace himself. There is a lot of time to fill in a school day if you are homeschooling and your child is used to the structured environment of the primary school day."

After that first sentence, I thought you were about to come out in favour of the home ed plan! 😂Lockdown was tough. For most kids there was a lot of "time to fill".

But if they have choices and they aren't shut up in the house, having extra time on their hands is actually a huge bonus! They skateboard in the park with their friends, read, take up extra sports or activities, learn to play the guitar, daydream, do crafts, make big Lego creations. It's brilliant. In fact, that was my ten year old's main reason for resuming home education after trying school for a few months: they felt school robbed them of all their time. While at school there had been less time to play with friends and do hobbies and learn things of their own choosing.

It's true that kids used to having all their time mapped out for them at school may take a while to get used to doing that for themselves. Many kids get into the swing of it within a few weeks, but it can take several months. This is one reason why some parents hate the school holidays: if six weeks isn't long enough for their kids to adapt, they're just bored the whole time. It's common for children who are new to home education to complain of boredom for a while, until they get used to the unstructured time. It's even true of home educated kids - after mine have done a week-long intensive sports or music camp, they rattle around for a few days until they readjust to having free time. That's a temporary problem.

As a secondary teacher, I disagree that 10 and 11 year olds need to spend the whole year preparing for the SATs. They should be enjoying learning.

@Saracen I am absolutely in favour of home ed. I am a sahm who volunteered in a primary for over 10 years so understand lesson planning, plenaries, assessment, high-low ability differentiation, intervention etc. The whole reason I kept Ds2 in school was to pace him academically. He aced his year 6 SATs with full marks in English and almost full in maths. He loved learning, anything, everything. He fills his time consuming information, watches a lot of fun educational stuff and if you have seen West Wing Jed Bartlett is his idol, coming out with bits of information all the time.

OP wants to return her child back into school for year 7 which is why I would be cautious.

@LittleBearPad "The academic side is important in that scenario but qualifications employers will be looking at are A-levels and predicted/achieved degree class. GCSEs don’t figure" GCSEs are a predictor of A level grades. Some A levels have minimum GCSE grades such as science or maths, usually a 6. Cambridge Assessment track this and publish the tables of GCSE to A level grades achieved so you can see how students fare. A grade 6 in maths is likely to see a D or E at A level, actually tracked grades by the exam board.

A spiky GCSE profile can also go against someone on uni applications ie capable but couldn't be arsed with one or 2 subjects interpreted as less likely to apply themselves to things they are not interested in. Unis can and do reject on GCSEs, my own child has 4 A star predictions but was rejected specifically for their GCSE profile which was 9 A*s and 1 A, we think the A did it. Uni entry grades for top ranking unis mean over subscription is guaranteed but they don't take many in on their published entry grade. AAA entry they tier the 3 A stars or more first, then 2 A stars etc. So those GCSE grades help predict A level grades help choose university courses. It all matters especially if you are aiming for a good uni.

I’m a TA in a year six class and I can say, in my limited experience, that we don’t just focus on SATs! We do a set of practice SATs each term and obviously some fluency but plenty of other subjects too including art, pe, geography and history. They’ve already had their residential but we’ve also had 2 school trips with more planned for after May. It’s been a surprisingly fun year so far and, from what I hear, most kids are enjoying it. My dd is in a lower year elsewhere and there’s no way I’d let her miss out on Year 6 but that’s because I know she will love all the opportunities it brings.

In the scenario posted above the poster’s children were seeking jobs post-university.

Post-university jobs will be applied for on the basis of A-levels (to a point) and predicted, or actual, degree results.

GCSEs aren’t particularly important once a child has A-levels and are even more meaningless once they have a degree.

Sats mark officially the end of KS2. They are actually used to predict GCSE grades. This is called progress 8. A child who goes into secondary school and appears to be slipping will get more support than a child who goes in data less. Cold hard reality of our education system and accountability. This is why there is regular testing from Y7 to make sure children stay on their predicted flight path. If they aren’t - it’s sorted. It also means they don’t panic as GCSEs hit - or that’s the plan.

You’d probably be hindering your child without realising it to be honest; that’s before the social aspect.

I work at a “top uni” (RG, top 20, law). It’s not Oxbridge but we have entry requirements of AAA which is the same as Cambridge. In reality we have students with Bs and even Cs on our course and we routinely accept people with lower grades than the entry requirements. Admissions are a mystery but it’s a major myth that you’d be rejected for having ONE A at GCSE. Most Oxbridge students will not have ALL A at GCSE. It will be some other reason or more likely no reason at all - just that his application wasn’t the one he picked.

lol I don’t know what happened with the bold there. Our entry requirements are A* AA I meant to say.

And I also meant to say that at Oxbridge most of them won’t have all A* at GCSE - it will be a mix of As and A stars (not putting the asterisk there in case it bolds again 😂

Not read the whole thread but please don't do this. It's pretty much what happened to my year 9 DD because of covid (lockdown then constant class closures, she missed the end of primary as someone in her class had Covid).

She has so many gaps because of the state of this really important transition year and still gets upset about missing her year 6 celebrations.