Thinking about HE, where to start?

[verybored]

I have 3 boys, DS1 is 14 in year 9, DS2&3 are 6 and in year 1.

I am thinking of HEing DS 2&3, not DS 1 as he is now happy at school, although it hasn't always been so!

DS1 has never really suited school, has spent a lot of time bored, got into trouble, moved schools and now, soon to start his GCSEs and is starting to settle.

DS2 & 3 LOVED reception. Year 1 is making them miserable. Most of the day seems to be about crowd control. They both love maths but don't do enough of it for their liking and get upset that the lessons aren't enjoyable. They just don't seemt o be enjoying school and DS3 especially seems to be switching off to learning, which is really worrying me.

DS3 has an awful teacher who DS1 also had. She shouts, doesn't actually want to be there (has previously told pupils this!) and is bloody useless. She makes DS3 feel crap and although he isn't a very confident child, the nurturing in recveption did wonders for him.

They are both struggling with bad behaviour in their classes. They are naturally compliant children (not necessarily at home!). They get upset by what goes on at school, and I have seen evidence of them copying at home.

DS 2s teacher is lovely, although inexperienced. However, both boys seem to have the same issues which is making me realise its not just the teacher that DS1 and 3 have had that is causing the problems, although I think this is compounding the issue for DS 3.

Neither are particularly engaged with literacy at school. They don't seemt o do anything fun, nor are tricky things explained to them.

The really concerning thing for me is that year 1 was where it all went wrong for DS1 and it's taken him til year 9 to get back on track. They are all very different children, but even so it worries me.

I have though about HE for a long time, but what really worried me is, how will I know what to do? I am not a qualified teacher, but I can plainly see that whatever they do at school for 5 hours a day isn't teaching them much.

What if I remove them from school and they end up illiterate, or want to go to secondary school but we haven't covered everything? What stops me buggering it up majorly I suppose?

We have parents evening soon and I will be discussing my concerns (not about the HE) then. We have also considered moving schools to a lovely school that we moved DS1 too, but feel that the issues of behaviour and boredom could still remain.

I know lots of people are very anti HE and I would be terrified of proving them right, but at the same time I can see the spark disappearing from my boys and it's horrible

I have though about HE for a long time, but what really worried me is, how will I know what to do? I am not a qualified teacher, but I can plainly see that whatever they do at school for 5 hours a day isn't teaching them much.

How could you possibly do worse than what you've described? You can take it one day (month, term, year) at a time - if you or they decide that they should be back in school, then the LA has to find them a place (not necessarily at the school you want, but that is the same for any time you are looking for a school place).

While they are so young, there is no specific thing you have to do. You do not need to do reading schemes or workbooks or any of that stuff. Life is very educational for a 6yo. We did lots of cooking, craft and music at that age. That covers a lot of reading, maths and science (measuring, weighing, following instructions, seeing changes due to heat/water/beating, mixing paint).

What if I remove them from school and they end up illiterate, or want to go to secondary school but we haven't covered everything? What stops me buggering it up majorly I suppose?

Why should they end up illiterate? I guess you read to them and they see you reading and writing? They will want to copy at some stage. What home-educated children don't have to do is go through boring beginning readers with one word per page or be made to feel stupid if they cannot do the decoding by the end of year 1.

I'm not sure what "everything" you think they need to have covered for secondary? Anyway, KS2 maths and English papers and workbooks are widely available. If you want to check where they are against school when they are 10, then you can easily do so. If they want to go into secondary school then they will be old enough to decide that they want to be up to speed with the others and therefore to work on it.

Many EHEd children now do IGCSEs as independent candidates. Some of them study one or two subjects intensively for 6 months and then pass the exam very well. What is examined at GCSE level does not need to be studied slowly over 11 years if you are doing it within a family.

Please read some of the threads on here and then find a local group and meet some EHE families.

There are threads on here with websites about HE and Books on the subject, I'll bump them for you, so you can start reading them

Interestingly it's said, (and my persoanl experience would agree) that a quater of home ed parents are teachers.......which says a lot about what they think of the staten schooling system doesn't it?
But that does mean that 75% of us are not qualified teachers, but happily you really don't need to be a teacher to home ed your own children.
Teachers need to get a set amount of information into the heads of 35 or so children, in a limited time.

We on the other hand, get to enjoy life with our own children, without limiting the time, and without having to limit our children to the National Curriculum!
Instead we can run with whatever interests our children and for as long as it interests them!

There are probably as many ways to home educate children, as there are families doing it. Some people do school at home, others do as we did and completely follow their childrens interests, faciliatating whatever interests them without preplanning. Then there is just about every combination in between.

Have a look at the book thread, but I'd particualry suggest you look at Alan Thomas' books about how children learn at home.

You see home based education doesn't have to look like school at all, children can and do learn as they live life.
If you or I were enthusiastic about something, we're very keen and nothing stops us learning, often informally, through reading books, watching TV/DVDs, on the internet and by talking to others.
The same thing happens to children when they are freed from the constraints of school.

My children were home educated through their teenage years, they are all at FE college or Uni now. I was talking to our youngest about gaps in her education the other day.......something that she was concerned about when before she satrted college.
She is astonished how little her college peers know about things, general knowledge-especially politics, how little they know of what is going on in the country as a whole and in the world.
she knows she does have some gaps-but now says that it is obvious that everyone has gaps in their education. No one person can know everything, she just has different gaps to her peers.

and one of her friends said, just the other day: "SO..... whilst I was sitting for years, in a classroom I didn't want to be in, being told what to do, by someone I didn't want to be with, doing tests and exams and working very hard......you were watching TV, running in fields, camping, going to the theatre, living life and having fun while you leaned......and you have still ended up in exactly the same place as me.....and you are the one getting straight distinctions....?"

My dd2 just said "yes, thats about it"

However you choose to home educate, I would urge you to 'Deschool, to get school out of their system and yours!
I liked this Deschooling article too, even though it is an American one, the ideas stand.

Find some home ed groups locally, chat to folks there and get a flavour of what life can be like.

Then take time to see where you are, and you can begin to choose the life and education that suits you all.

However you choose to home educate

Thank you, you are confirming my 'good thoughts' about HE.

If your children have ever been to school you may well know the pain that is the Biff, Chip & Kipper reading books. My children are not being taught to read at school. That seems to be what we do as homework. We then also have to read these hideous 'story' books, so we can fill in the reading diary, so they can go up a reading level. All the school is doing is providing hideously boring material.

These books are certainly not giving them the impression that reading is worthwhile, so we try to do this from the library and reading Roald Dahl books to them, in the hope that they will want to read these books when they are able.

The boys love maths workbooks and do these at home when they want to.

They have lists of spellings to be learnt, which we also do at home, to be tested at school. They are not covered at school so if we didn't do them, they will still be on the first set!

I have also filled in the gaps in their phonics knowledge as I noticed they were hitting a brick wall with the reading as some of the phonics sounds hadn't got through to them, but as they seemd to have moved on at school, this hadn't been noticed.

I feel like most of what they have achieved at school is because we are going through it with them at home.

If we did HE, we wouldn't struggle for school places if we changed our minds but I am worried about mucking them around. It seems that schools are very rigid, and if you miss something, then you won't get to do it again.

I'm rambling now, I know! My other problem is DH isn't keen, although I know he is also very concerned about school and the effect it is having on their personalities.

On an entirely selfish note, I would also dearly love to get away from the school gate mums, deciding which children are worthy to be friends of their little darlings!

Thank you Julie (xposts). I have been very interested in the whole 'deschooling' issue as it's something I notice about all my children in school holidays, especially the summer break. They change considerably over this time, almost like they start to relax.

I will look up the Alan Thomas book, thanks

I am not sure if this is any help to you, but my son is also 6 and we are following the K12 system. It is an American system, but it is nothing short of fantastic. We do Maths, English Language & Phonics, Science, Art and History/Geography. They send you all the materials you need and every day you log on to your timetable (online) and it tells you what lessons your child will have for that day. It is very good at explaining how to teach the various concepts to your child. From my son's point of view, he loves it. He was quite naughty at school and easily distracted. However, he loves K12 and looks forward to the lessons. I like it because it is very structured but you can tailor it to your child's needs and move at your own pace. For instance, I am trying to push Maths with my DS, so instead of 1 Maths lesson a day, we do 2 or 3. You just change the timetable online and it remembers. The lessons are made very interesting and appealing and my DS hardly ever gets bored.

Here's the website if you are interested: www.k12.com. Happy to answer questions if you have any.

Wrote this before some excellent posters posted, but here it is anyway.
You?re suffering the same fears of many contemplating leaving the system. It?s sort of healthy in my view as long as you don't let them rule you.

Why would they end up illiterate? Would you watch and do nothing in the unlikely even this was happening? Of course you wouldn?t. :)

Many children arrive in secondary schools having not covered everything, they catch up well enough, should your's wish to return to the system, (the bigger problem may be arriving knowing ?too much?) and many children arrive from other countries with little comparable education and not even a full grasp of the language being used to teach them.

A large number of Home edders are autonomous, but plenty of us are structured or semi structured and there?s many ways to approach home ed, there is no one right way.
What we?ve got in common is a decision to take personal responsibility for our children?s education whatever way we do it.

Many of us start of rigid and thinking we must do x,y, and z by this age/stage/ etc, and always be directly comparable to what would happen in school, before realising this isn?t the best way to educate a child, especially when there?s freedom to do more than just stuff a curriculum in before examining them at x age, and declare levels of success or failure.

It boils down to fitting suitable education to the child and family, rather than fitting the child to an education system.

I?m not a teacher, poorly educated in formal terms, with little cash, but I?m now facilitating IGCSE?s and A/S levels currently for one of mine, (he?s done very well in all but one of those he?s already taken).

Not having the confidence of a good education myself, my choice is reading the national curriculum so I know roughly where their ?cohort? is, following their interests and tying things together so they get a much broader than just the national curriculum education, reading plenty of bumf on education and syllabuses (and SEN?s in our case) and take what?s good for us, chuck out what isn?t, and adapt it to meet SEN?s, and with the kids input, create a personalised education that works well for them and leaves all options open. Whatever I don?t know, I go off and learn about until I know enough.

Am not suggesting you need to do this, just trying to show you it?s perfectly do-able at this level by anyone capable of reading up, who cares enough to do it.

I admire the autonomous folk a great deal, and most of our h/e friends are autonomous, but it didn?t suit us and our needs, so we chose a different path, and that?s the beauty of home ed, you can create whatever path works best for your child/ren instead of declaring them to have failed what works for any majority.

What stops me buggering it up majorly? Care and concern for their welfare. Same thing and same ?skills?, that stops me buggering up parenting too majorly. :o

PS, as I write this, son's English syllabus work is being vaguely interrupted by a nosey lama in a neighbouring field. Beats the hell out of what we used to call classroom disruption! :)

I just want to add that I think 'De-schooling' is a load of bollocks: it is important to maintain the momentum and you should start Homeschooling the very next day after you withdraw them from school.

Just my opinion.

Unfortunately for my DS's, there is no momentum - other than that of learning bad language and sitting bored at a table with work that is meaningless.

Thanks for all the advice so far, I will have a good look at all suggestions

My 'momentum' comment was aimed at parents who take their DC out of school then plonk them in front of the TV for 6 months in an effort to 'De-school' them.

Oh I see. God I don't think I could stand 6 months of cbbc!

Emma I'd sayt it's it's horses for courses, if you're going to autonomously h/e, it's probably essential, for structured h/e, maybe less so.

I've never met anyone plonking a h/e kid in front of the TV for six months mind.

Not everyone has a good momentum to lose, for some by exit time, it's become a round of learning support rooms, secretaries offices, corridors or wherever else they can be sent where they're out of the thick of it.

Mine (ASD) likes things to be ordered and know what's happening and when, but came out in a bad state unfit to learn, (he was actually sent home as no longer fit to be there, so I'd had no planning time) so our decision was to declare an official holiday of six weeks, to de-stress and prepare a 'next stage' (including for me!) It turned out to be perfect amount of time for us, it allowed us to 'catch our breath' and by week six he was clearly ready to engage. I honestly don't think there is a correct amount, or lack of amount, that fits every child.

Verybored, you?ve btw reminded me of the terrible trouble with school, Biff Chipp and Kipper and the child who already knew about Apatosaurus?s , which was to quote ?the first interesting thing in ages? Arghhh??

It may have been an Allosaurus thinking about it, but either way you've just reminded me how much trouble a child can get into for being interested in things other than 'what they're here to learn'. Not being able to 'be like Wilf and Aneena' caused lots of grief too.....

Wish you well in finding what you need to make decisions. :)

I think there is only one thing you could do which would seriously screw up your children's education, and that is to somehow turn off their natural enthusiasm for learning. Wherever they are educated, if they emerge with the belief that education is something that must be done to them, which they have to be made to do because they wouldn't enjoy it, that it must be done in a certain way at a certain age and that they are thick if they don't/can't conform to a specified timetable for mastering particular skills... in that case they will have been let down, and may never recover.

On the other hand, if they emerge into adulthood as confident people with a passion for learning and the belief that they can tackle whatever they want, then the world is their oyster. If they lack a particular skill and find they need it, they will learn it.

I have forgotten the details of a programme for teaching reading to adults in deprived areas of the world, when they'd never had any formal education before. I think it was said that they learned to read after about 40 hours of individual instruction. I'm sure the success rate in adult literacy programmes in this country is nothing like as good as that.

Why? Because the former group know they are competent people. They've proved themselves able to earn a living, repair their houses, look after their families. They know the only reason they are illiterate is that they haven't learned to read yet.

Meanwhile, the latter group have experienced years and years of being made to feel like failures. They "know" they cannot read, having spent so much of their lives staring at the little squiggles, most likely having started at an age when it was not going to come easily to them, because they were simply too young. They "know" learning is not fun, having been told so many times that they must do it before they will be allowed to do something fun. Having spent most of their time sitting indoors being made to "learn", they haven't had the time to develop the practical skills which would boost their self-esteem.

As JustGettingOnWithIt says, there's no reason to suppose your sons will end up illiterate. I'm just saying that even if you let your imagination run wild and took the worst-case scenario and supposed that they did end up unable to read, this would not necessarily be a disaster... so long as their self-confidence remained intact. Most skills that take years to acquire at school can be learned in very little time by a person who is motivated and confident. There is no deadline.