Some help needed

[TribbleWithoutACause]

Hello,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this but here goes.

My friends little girl (yr6) has been off school due to health reasons, and, it's looking like it's going to be a bit of a long term thing. Her Mum was wondering about home schooling her whilst she is out of school so she doesn't loose out too much.

If she was to do this, where can she find appropriate resorces such as work books and topics to cover?

Thank you for any help and advice.

Hi Tribble, yes, this is the right place to ask!

I assume the girl is still registered at school? If that is the case then at the moment, her education is the responsibility of the Local Authority. If her ill health is looking like a long-term situation then they should be arranging tuition for her, probably by sending out a home tutor. They will supply everything she needs. Many LAs refer to this as "Education Otherwise Than At School" or "EOTAS". If the school is aware of her health issues then they ought to have contacted the LA to kick-start this process. The mum may want to give the school a prod if they haven't done this yet. I think that a child being educated in this way usually stays on the roll of a school and that the parents will therefore want to apply for a secondary school this autumn. The LA will be able to explain the procedure.

There is an alternative to the above arrangement. The mum can choose to take responsibility for her daughter's education herself. This is properly called "elective home education" but many people just call it "home education". The disadvantage to doing this is that the LA is unlikely to offer any help whatsoever. (They are allowed to help, but are not obliged to, so they very rarely do!) The advantage to choosing elective home education is that the parents have freedom to educate the child in any way they see fit, it can be more flexible as the child can work whenever she feels well enough without regard to scheduling issues, and the parents know the child well so they may be in the best position to understand how she learns best.

In England and Wales parents can withdraw a child from school upon demand to begin elective home education. In Scotland permission must be requested from the LA but there are few circumstances in which it should be denied. www.home-education.org.uk/legal-dereg.htm

I think everyone posting on this board are doing elective home education, but there may be people here who have experience of home tuition provided by the LA.

Hope that makes the options clear. I'll be back later with suggestions of websites, resources etc to get started with elective home education if nobody beats me to it!

BTW the school and LA have bee very tardy about this. I think it is after 2 weeks off school that the school is supposed to pass the case on to the "home education" team. So you friend should contact the school and the LA and express her concerns. Here is the government information as a starting point.

Mummytime She has been off a lot longer than that, she was off a lot of last term and hasn't been back yet. She's been through her consultants as well, so they have a bit of an idea of whats going on.

I'll speak to my friend and maybe do a bit of detective work myself. Her other child has had similar issues and I think they had a bit of a fight on their hands about their educational needs. Eventually though they did get sorted.