Any experience of withdrawing a child from a Scottish primary?

[SDeuchars]

darleneconnor wrote:

can anyone share their experiences of removing a child from a Scottish primary to home educate, please?

Does anyone know of any HE groups near Glasgow?

I do. I withdrew one child between primary and secondary, which was a nightmare, even though it should have been very straightforward. I also withdrew 2 from primary (P6 and P3) and nursery over the summer holidays a few years ago. My experience was not good, tbh.

IF you want to withdraw from school in Scotland you have to write to the LA Education and Skills department requesting that your child's name be removed from the role. You MUST include an outline of your proposed educational provision and educational philosophy. The council should act within a reasonable time frame (6 weeks or there abouts) and cannot withhold permission unless they have good reason.

Our council took months to comply, despite multiple letters/phonecalls/emails, repeated intervention from Schoolhouse and intervention from 6 of our 7 MSPs. They demanded access to our home many times to: interview both OH and me and, also, our children, to inspect our home for suitability, to inspect our first aid provision, our "classroom area" and workspaces, our equipment and gym facilities.... I didn't give them any access at all. Then they sent out timetables for all the children which we were expected to follow, a list of subjects that we were supposed to teach (with the number of hours for each one at different ages and stages,) a whole load of rubbish about the difficulties of teaching science, book lists, demands that we see social workers... you name it, they did it. They also demanded to see what teaching qualis we had. HA! HA! HA!. I just treated them with the contempt that they deserved and didn't back down an inch. They even repeatedly phoned my husband at his place of work on a daily basis for a while.

it took 6 months to get them off our backs with DS2 (transition withdrawal) and the entire summer holidays and the first month of term with the rest of them even the child in nursery, who wasn't even school age and all I had done was turn down his nursery place.

I suggest the you visit schoolhouse for info and advice, if you haven't already, because the situation in Scotland is very different from elsewhere in the UK.

There used to be a very active Glasgow group that met every week and also organised a lot of trips and things. We could never afford the subs, though, or the travel to Glasgow, so I don't know if it's still on the go. Try asking here

We are in North Ayrshire, if we can be of any more help.

Thank you for sharing, stressedHEmum.

My husband is looking at the possibility of going to Scotland (Edinburgh) for work and we were wondering how that would impact on us in terms of HE-ing, as we are already HE-ing in UK now.

I wonder if we'd have to deal with the Scottish LAs once we moved there and got our children registered with the GP?

Noodle, up here you don't have to contact the LA if you move into an area from somewhere else. So, you shouldn't have to approach them at all or have anything to do with them.

As far as I am aware, there are quite a few families in the Edinburgh area who HE and a few groups that meet up. Again, try the link to the Home Ed forums above because my info about groups is quite old. We are very isolated here because no one else in the area HE's and we can't really afford to travel to Glasgow en masse, so things may have changed. Also check out Schoolhouse for up to date legal stuff and any queries/support.

Thanks stressedHEmum :)