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Home ed

Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

starting home ed year 9??

9 replies

coccyx · 20/02/2011 12:23

We are returninmg to Uk after 5 years away. My oldest will be starting year9. We are going back to a small town where there is 1 grammar school and 1 comprehensive. Son is average ability but i am not keen on the comprehensive. He has been following a british curriculum whilst overseas and doing ok.
I am very interested in home educating him. We have friends in area so socially not being excluded.
AM i insane as I have 3 other children (primary school )
Any opinions

OP posts:
earwicga · 20/02/2011 17:24

What does your son want to do?

Tinuviel · 21/02/2011 02:03

I think it's a decision that your DS needs to be involved in but no reason why you shouldn't HE. If you want him to do GCSEs, I would say that finding an exam centre would be useful so that you can space the exams out over a couple of years.

Saracen · 21/02/2011 02:33

I suggest you join a HE email list for the area, and start finding out what's available locally for home educated kids.

When are you returning? Will there be time before the autumn for your son to meet home educated kids in the area and perhaps look round the school to help him decide what he'll like best? Or is he already quite keen on home education?

Here is a wiki that may interest you, about GCSEs and alternatives for HE children: www.home-education-exams.org.uk/ There is a linked Yahoo group which may also be helpful. There are a lot of options and I'm sure you'll find it quite possible to home educate him.

coccyx · 21/02/2011 06:03

He seems quite keen on home educating. He is lucky to have some friends in area already, we will have a look around the school and in the meantime i will do some research. Thanks for the link, it is hard to know where to begin.

OP posts:
Saracen · 21/02/2011 12:30

Well, if you're keen and your son is keen then there will no stopping you!

Many people recommend that a child have some time off after coming out of school before doing anything academic. Home education is quite different to school and it's good to have a break to adjust to the freedom of it. This is called "deschooling" and may be more important in the case of a child who has had a traumatic time at school.

If you aren't comfortable with that, another simple start is project work. You could let your son choose a few topics which really interest him - Warhammer, say, or cricket - and learn all about those topics. You'll find he ends up covering a great many subjects that way. For example, he'd be doing maths in using the right scale to build Warhammer sets the right size, or in working out his favourite cricket team's statistics.

Some families continue like that indefinitely. Even if you want to move on to more formal planned learning, then starting informally can give you time to have a good look round, maybe borrow some different resources to try them out and figure out which approach and which materials would suit your son best. People rarely have it all perfectly planned out before they start - or if they do, their plans may soon change as they discover what works and what doesn't!

Luckily you have plenty of time to find the right way forward and experiment with different ways of learning. Unlike a teacher, you have nobody looking over your shoulder wanting to assess everything you are doing at frequent intervals. You can take a relaxed long-term view. Lesson plans are optional!

Saracen · 21/02/2011 12:35

Forgot to explain, the reasons I suggest beginning with either a break or else topic work are that there's no commitment, little planning (unless you want to), you don't have to buy a load of stuff at the outset which you might decide you don't like, your son will be very likely to enjoy what he's doing, and you can move on to something else whenever he's ready.

FionaJNicholson · 21/02/2011 20:06

Hi

I am new to the forum and this is my first post.

I live in Sheffield and have a 17 year old who has never been to school. I've also been a long-term volunteer with the home education support charity Education Otherwise.

Does your son know what he wants to do when he is 16 or 18? Does he have any special interests/skills?

It's not straightforward to do GCSEs outside the school system because of the business of controlled assessments and also finding an exam centre which takes private candidates.

More information here

edyourself.org/
edyourself.org/groups/
edyourself.org/articles/helaw.php

coccyx · 22/02/2011 10:57

He is very artistic. I have heard about international GCSE's. the more i read about home educating the more I think it may be the way forward

OP posts:
musicposy · 26/02/2011 00:02

We've done a mixture of IGCSEs and non-coursework GCSEs and found the whole thing pretty straightforward. My DD1 is 15 and takes her second batch of them this year. She has 3 GCSEs/ IGCSEs already and all being well will have 7 by the summer. :)

Welcome Fiona and coccyx, I'd go for it!!

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