Want to flexi school 4.5 yr old - can we?

[onetowatch]

Hi

Really grateful for any help.
My 4.5 yr old dd is bright and doing well at school (mornings only so far) - but - is due to start full time in January and we feel: a) she is too young! she only turns 5 at the end of July 2011! b) she loves the outdoors and the school just doesn't do much. c) I am a Forest School leader / have an MA in outdoor development / we as a family are very outdoors and feel learning outdoors is an important part of learning which just isn't done at her school.

So, we would love to home ed her on say, fridays (doesn't matter which day - we could ask the school which day is best)

We are moving house & school in the summer anyway, so she would start a different school next year. Don't want to home ed full time (and she wouldn't want to, she loves spending time with her friends at school, but keeps saying how much she misses her nursery, which had an outdoors curriculum)

So - can we do this?
Are we legally allowed?
How do I approach the school?
Would they agree?
Are there good websites for information?

Sorry for long post, but I feel she'll be missing out on a crucial bit of her childhood if we goes to school full time.

Thanks for any help!

legally she doesn't have to be in school until the term she turns 5, so you could do it until then.

in fact, if her birthday is end of july then yes, you should be ok i think???

once they are 5 and full-time at school it's up to the headteacher whether or not they allow flexi-schoolinh i believe

thanks,

I know legally she doesnt have to go to school until 5, but I didn't know if we could do it when she is in school 4 days a week already. I suppose we just talk to the teachers!

We did explore the option of keeping her at the outdoor nursery until 5, but they weren't keen, and all her friends from her year group there are in school now, so it would be a backward step to send her to nursery with people she considers younger than her (while her friends are at school)!

My friend has an august born boy who struggled in reception. He didn't want to stay for the full day, so my friend didn't make him! For the entire yrR!

It made her very unpopular with the staff but she stuck to her guns, and they couldn't do anything as her DS didn't turn 5 until just before starting yr1 anyway.

sounds good - anyone else actually done it in reception year? read up on it now from the home ed website, got the legal position, but don't want to be unpopular with staff or cause problems for school or dd - just want to work with them to get best of both worlds.

Legally, she doesn't ever have to go to school :)

good point!

f I was a teacher, it would really irritate me, thsi assumption that you can just dip in and out of school as and when it suits.
Really precious behaviour and very disruptive to children. Parents underestimate the effect on the child of not being in the flow with everyone else for the duration of the school day/week.

I agree with moondog, I'd do one or the other. Maybe home school until she's a bit older?

yeah, agree there is more to think about. suppose it is a bit precious. or is it principled in that our children only have one childhood and we wouldn't be doing our best if we didn't give her the chance to learn outdoors when it is something i teach? we have issues with the school in that they said when we looked around that they did loads of outdoor learning, but they haven't in practice.

i dont have time to offer the school forest school teaching (2 younger ones to look after) but could do it for my kids.

will talk to the school and see how they feel

nothing to lose from talking to school

there is no reason for the teachers to feel irritated or annoyed with you for wanting to do the best for your child

there are schools round here that are perfectly willing for you to basically send your child full or half days or only a couple of days a week for as long as it suits them.

you have to do what works best for your child and if the school are happy to have her part time then i fail to see that there is any problem

thanks

she has been mornings only from sep - dec (school policy for summer borns) so hope they may be understanding if we don't want to do full time until she is 5. she gets so tired and grumpy in the afternoons at the moment so not sure she's ready for 5 days full time yet. doesn't seem she'll be awake enough to learn in the afternoons anyway!

I think it's worth discussing it with the school, but I can't see how flexi-schooling can work for the school as a whole, or for the child who is doing it. The ideal would be for school to just happen less...but it doesn't, so by flexi-schooling she'd miss out on lots of things at school.

I don't see why HEing would mean she wouldn't see friends? Does she spend a lot of time playing with her friends during the short amount of time she's there anyway? Surely playtime isn't for that long?

There's no reason why a HEd child couldn't have just as many friends, but actually have more freedom when they're playing than they ever could in school.

AFAIK if you are in England/Wales you can flexi-school, if the headteacher agrees. I don't know about Scotland, but am told they have slightly different laws ref Home Ed.

I know of several people who have flexi-schooled and it has worked well for all of them. You might need to advise the school on what code to write in the register, so your child isn't mistakenly listed as missing without permission.

Best of luck

ok thanks for support

we're going to try and talk to school in jan armed with lots of info

how do we find out the code for the register?

should we talk to lea before the school? or other way around?

sorry for spelling typing with bf'ing baby in one arm

Talk to the school first - the decision lies with the HT, not the LA.

The register code is B (educated off-site). See www.teachernet.gov.uk/_doc/13903/Absence%20Data%20-%20Absence%20and%20Attendance%20Codes%20Jan09.doc

thanks sdeuchars
didn't find that info on the home ed website so really useful thanks!

Flamingo... do you not think it depends on the child?

I have no experience of flexi-schooling myself, tho have considered it. But a good friend flexi-schooled her eldest for a really long time and he absolutely thrived on it!
afaik there were no problems with continuity or anything like that and he had a good band of friends despite not being there all of the week

I was effectively flexischooled when I started school. Things were more relaxed in a rural school back in the mid-70s. There was no formal arrangement, but I simply wasn't ready for full time school even aged 5. My mother says that I just used to be EXHAUSTED (and apparently I really enjoyed school when I was there) and so every week she'd just keep me at home quietly with my little brother, or take me to playgroup with him or whatever, usually on a wednesday or thursday.

One week when I was six, my teacher grabbed Mum on a friday and said "big week for Ommmward this week, wasn't it?" "huh?" said my Mum. "Well", said the teacher, "she just managed a whole week of school"

Did it stop me being a high achiever academically or socially? Not so as you'd notice (waves degree certificates)

I totally don't get the way people often universally condemn an arrangement which might be fantastic for a particular child at a particular time in their life. I wish lots and lots of people flexischooled when their children would thrive on it, so that it simply became the norm for families for whom full time school is not the optimum at a particular time.

aww

lovely story thanks ommmward

sounds just like my daughter

loves mornings at school, bright, energetic at school, doing really well with learning, lots of friends, runs round the playground madly and faster than most of the boys

just exhausted every afternoon, asleep on the sofa

will definitely talk to school in jan

makes sense for us to look after her this way t'il she's 5