Anybody thinking of HE for child thats been through primary school!

[nettie]

We're thinking of HE ds1 (YR6), I've always been interested in HE but never been brave enought to do it. Our catchment area secondary school has always had a bad reputation for behaviour but was seen as okish academically, its now gone into special measures, so definately don't want to send ds1 there. Theres one school we really like, but not got cat in hells chance of getting in.
there are two other schools we could go and look at that seem to be ok, and could maybe (big maybe) get into on appeal, but still think I would prefer to HE.
The question is though, do we bother going to the open evenings and if so do we take ds. I've already been to a meeting at bad school about it being put in special measures was final nail in coffin [wink}. Can't get to meeting at really good school, but that might be blessing.

I am taking ds to visit local HE group, so he can see what goes on there. Just not sure of taking him to schools.

Sorry about labelling schools good and bad, know it gets some people, to clarify I mean good school ticks all our boxes eg. got sixth form, uniform, on bur route from end of our road, loads of after school acitivies etc

I know there are lots of HE supporters on here. I tried it for a while (during an 8 months stay abroad for work) with 3 children who were then Y6, 4 and 3. Although I'm a teacher I found it very hard - looking at what my dcs do now in Y10,8 and 7 I know I would struggle with certain areas, mainly maths (though I enjoy primary maths, dd1 will take AS in Y11 and there's no way I could give her the knowledge she needs) and science - knowledge and equipment wise I know I'm nowhere near good enough to teach my children all the areas they need to know. It was different for us because I didn't have that support network of other HE families abroad (though the Education Otherwise forum was a great source of support and ideas). Of course if ds hadn't got into the only suitable school round here I might be HEing again right now - though I'd use tutors as needed. There's also the financial consideration of you not being able to work. I'd have preferred to do supply full time in any of the schools round here, dodgy or otherwise, to pay school fees for ds.

My DS is HE - he was at school up till S2 (Year 9) and has been out of school for just over a year now.

There are lots of ways of making sure they get a suitable education - you don't have to teach them everything by yourself. There are textbooks, packaged curriculums, correspondence courses, tutors, Open University, and (what we do) internet schools. It depends to some extent what they are interested in, and what they might want to do later - if they have plans for a particular kind of work then you can make sure they get qualifications, skills, and experience in that.

Other families just allow the child to follow their own interests, believing that they will pick up the skills they need by their own route.

I'm sure you already know about them, but Education Otherwise is probably your best place to start for advice.

One of the problems our local HE group has is that it's full of people with little kids (in fact there are lots of people whose kids aren't even technically school age yet), so all the advice/support is around teaching to read, count etc. They recently tried to get a "10 and up" group going but didn't get enough interest.

I would think that for secondary age you would need to look at some outside help unless you are confident that you can cover all the subjects at an appropriate level. Having seen my Y9 son re-discover his artistic side following our move to Oz and his enrollment in a school that offers a wide range of art/graphics/technology options, I would also be concerned about older kids not having access to a wide range of learning opportunities that I wouldn't even think of. If your only option is a crap school though, I would say with enough determination HE would have to be a better option.