Cost of Home Ed

[Piglette]

We are considering HE but I'm worried about the extra cost. Does anyone have an idea of the additional expense of HE over school? - it must be substantial as text books seem so expensive, not to mention trips out etc. This shouldn't be a deciding factor as DS's education is what matters, but how can it not be an issue in our current economic climate? Are there any free resources available? especially if loosly follwing the NC with a view to taking GCSEs - how much does it cost to take those? So many questions..!

It depends how you do it! If you go buy loads of workbooks, textbooks, and other resources in the shops then yes I imagine it would add up very fast. But there are loads of resources on websites, or second-hand textbooks etc on eBay or even Freecycle, plus your local library. You may not get the exact textbook and the newest version that you're looking for, but you will be able to find plenty of low-cost alternatives that cover the same areas. So, if you make a detailed shopping list of exactly what you feel you need, it's likely to cost, but if you are flexible and adapt to what you find then it doesn't have to.

Same with trips out - there are likely to be plenty of interesting places to go in your area which are free, you don't have to go to the expensive ones - they aren't any "better" from an educational point of view.

If you do want to go with GCSEs, then there will be a fee for entry to each one - I think around £30 each one when DS did them (IGCSEs in a private school). But they don't have to do these if cost is an issue - leave it till a year later and they can go to college and do exams for free.

the thing about trips is that it's best to find a) cheap/free ones or b) choose a few favoured places and get season tickets. We probably go to "attractions" of various kinds (zoos, historical places, science museums) 2 or 3 times a week, and the total annual cost of membership for ALL the places we go, for the whole family, is probably about £150 a year

I can't tell you about text books - we don't use any at the moment. But charity shops are your friend!

Frankly, if you have a good broadband connection and a reasonable laptop, the costs are minimal. People sometimes do a lot of trips etc, but you don't have to.

Cost of transport to places(meetings, trips, etc.) needs to be factored in too, as it can add up.

I've been thinking of home educating my children for a couple of years now, but cost is the biggest factor stopping me. It's not just books etc. it's also the cost of heating the house during the day. Basic factors like that.

Heating the house during they day - people do that?

We had no choice but to home educate our three children, as the schools simply did not cater for their SEN, and they were very unhappy.
However it soon became our lifestyle choice!

We home educated three children from the ages 13, 11 and 8 right through their teenage years.

When we first deregistered we tried everyting going with our local HE groups, and we mostly get those at educational rates, but some things are more expensive than others and with three children, costs soon mount up.
However we encouraged the children to decide on their priorities, they knew the set up in our house and our finacial situation.......we were on a very limited budget.
It hasn't meant an end to their social lives at all, it just meant we had to budget carefully and make choices.

We have always gone to home ed camps and gatherings, so they became our holidays and I slowly built up the things we needed for camping.
We use Travelodge sales and sun newspaper holidays for other trips.
We used Megabus to London for £1 each way and became very canny at looking out for bargains!
The home ed community has always been helpful in pointing out bargains and ways to do things cheaply (99% of home educators I know are on a limited budget!)

Shopping on a budget was part of maths in the real world in our house!
We no longer have a new car...or even a nearly new car. I drive a very old car and just replace it (with another old banger) when it costs too much to repair.

We used charity shops, ebay, amazon second hand and freecycle for our educational supplies.
Family gave the kids money for presents.

We don't heat the house in the day, they wore lots of layers and we were out a hell of a lot.

Cooking from scratch is cheaper than buying decent ready made, and is part of chemistry and nutrional studies in real life!

the of course you can take out the costs of school.
All that pressure to have clothes/trainers/sports kit with a label, literally disappeared as we walked away from school
The school uniformas alone used to cost me a fortune when they were in school. Then there were travelling costs, cost of trips, requests for charity events etc etc.

We either used the OU for qualifications instead of GCSE/A levels, or had one child who went into college post 16 and did them for free. (our experience would suggest the OU is by far the better option) OU takes the childs income into consideration when looking at funding.

In essence, I'd say that HE costs as much as you are willing to spend.
For us the biggest factor was that I gave up my career to do it and took part time lower paid work. But for us the pay off has been worth it a million times over.

When compared to unhappy children in school every day, give me broke and happy any time!

We are pretty structured and do use quite a lot of resources so I probably spend about £300 every August for resources for the year. However, as we are using textbooks rather than workbooks, these will be used for all 3 DCs. When DD has finished with stuff, I sell it on to other structured home educators.

However, sometimes you get bargains - Currclick have some pretty cheap stuff and Scholastic have a 'dollar download' offer on at the moment!

That includes Family Membership to English Heritage as well!

Out of interest, what age can children take OU courses from?

Also it is worth asking for HE discounts at places. We recently wanted to take the DCs to see a theatre show which was prohibitively expensive for us (something like £22 for adult and £17 per child times 3). We got £10 off per child which made affordable as a one off event.

And they will learn a huge amount about another culture as part of it, as well as enjoying it hopefully (going tomorrow).

I agree the cost is a "how long is a piece of string question". Increasingly the cost of fuel and parking I guess may be what limits our out and about trips.

And I guess with cuts filtering through lots of the places you would like to go will be closing, or at least not giving much of a discount.

Timewastine, I personally know of children who have started with the OU at 13, my own daughter (previously diagnsoed with severe dyslexia, who started to read at 13) begab a starter course at 15.

That's very interesting julie, thanks.

It's great to know what options they have with regards exams as that is one of the main questions people have.
I'm not currently planning to HE DS (2.5) although I'm very open to it in the future.

I'm dithering majorly between HE, flexi or full time school (DD1 is due to start this sept), but days like today always move me towards HE...

We started off with a lovely leisurely breakfast listening to and chatting about the news, then DD1 helped me get the clothes and nappies etc together and we got DD2 dressed, then ourselves. I did a bit of my job on my laptop while the kids had a little play, then we made a packed lunch.

Jumped on to the bus and metro (using my travel pass, which is £77 a month, but I use it every day pretty much) to Sunderland winter gardens (free entry), where we spent all day wandering about, talking about plants while actually feeling and smelling them, looking at exhibits in the museum, making up stories and generally having a great time. DD1 looked out for signs to help us find our way around, found where we needed to go on several maps, worked out how long we had to wait till the next bus and metro, talked to various people on the way (including a lady on the metro who refused to beleive she is only three as she was so confident talking to adults - :) ), took pictures using my camera phone, worked out how different life would have been in the 1930's, and so on...

So, £2.75 for that days worth of bus pass (I should probably include the price of a child bus pass in this, as she will need one soon, but not sure how much they are, although both non-catholic schools nearby are bus rides or long walks away, so I suppose that is more of an expense of living where we do), the cost of the packed lunch (which we would still have with school) and a feather pen that DD1 asked for from the giftshop, and I defy any reception class or nursery to give that kind of education in one day.

Of course, there are books and so on, but tbh I can't see us buying more then we would if they were in school, and there is always online to print off anything extra you might need, and of course the library (kids can usually order any book in print for free, or at least they could last time I worked in a library) Plus I work selling kids books, so we'll never have a shortage of them :)

The main cost worry is that I will be limited work wise - I'm working hard to get my bookselling up to the point where I am earning good money from it, but obviously that does take time out of the day.

i suppose if u think about how much we have to spend on uniforms..we can use what we save on that to cover somethings