WORRIED ABOUT HOME ED

[t2scooby]

Hi ds is 14 years and in Yr10. He is also being bullied and is now at the point of refusing to go to school. he desperatley wants me to Home Ed him but have no idea how to do it.

I am single parent and i work full time from home, money is tight so buying all the curriculum packs is not going to happen. However my son is interested in training as a mechanic and needs 5 GSCE's for either college or apprenticeship. We both feel it would be important for him to continue with his GSCE's but do not know where to get the relevant teaching resources from or how hard it will be to find somewhere for him to sit the exams. I am terrified that if he has no qualifications at 16 he will not be considered employable and be able to get work. Can anyone offer any advice please.

Firstly the working issue

• Home ed isn't tied to school hours so fitting in the two should be doable.
• Your son is probably old enough that on the whole he can work independently. I work from home and have 2 much younger (5 & 8), follow a fairly structured path and it's doable.

GCSE's

• One idea would be to leave GCSE's to 16 when they can be done free at collage and spend a couple of years building up confidence and practical skills, perhaps try and source some work experience. Although it is worth noting that around here at least a lot of collages only offer resits from 16 so do your research.
• Contact your local HE group and find out what support and advice they can offer. This will vary massively from place to place but ours offers tutorials in Maths, English, Chemistry and Biology to GCSE level and with the help of a sympathetic LEA access has been arranged to 2 exam centres.

Money

• Home Ed doesn't need to be expensive. GSCE's can be done for the cost of exam entries, printing costs of the syllabus (downloaded online), and a decent textbook. And you will save on uniform, school lunches, bags, school trips etc. Also many of the costs of equipment/materials (decent calculator for example) you would still need to pay for if he remained in school.

My advice would be to find a local group and speak to them. The ease of sitting GCSE's varies so much across the country that you need to find out what the situation is locally before making any decisions.

Thanks for you reply. My sons bullying is pretty intense and he is a bit of a wreck suffering panic attacks, skin condition etc so your advice is most gratefully received. Do you have any ideas where is would be able to download the syllabus from.

There are lots of different exam boards so is rather complicated.
We are still a long way off being at that level so don't have that many links to hand.

But it may well be worth joining this list and asking there
groups.yahoo.com/group/HE-Exams-GCSE-A_AS_L evels-OU-Others/

hi

i presume your son is still on the school roll? has the local authority offered home tutor/exam access/college place/online study instead of school?

for what it's worth the government is currently considering making it much easier for 16 year olds to take maths and english GCSEs in college at 16, so if this comes to pass, then alternative scenario is you deregister your from school, he's out of school doing practical vocational work experience type stuff and rebuilding his self-esteem etc, then goes to college at 16, does basic GCSEs in a year and then whatever he would've done with 5 GCSEs at 16, only a year later.

hope this makes sense!

hi

yes he is still on the school roll, i currently have him off sick whilst i decided how to deal with all this. incidently, he was off school very poorly las week and the bullying continued through abusive phone calls, texts and facebook defacing. this just pushed him over the edge.

he does currently go to college one morning a week which we intend to continue. he is also keen to continue his studies from home and either take gcse's or igcse's. i need to get off the fence and decided whether to deresigter him and get him set up to take igcse's at home or see what the school can do for him without him setting foot on school grounds again. it's just all very daunting and i'm terrified in getting it wrong and messing up his future.

thanks for the info about college i think that will be back up should all else fail.