Home Ed through GCSEs/Flexischool - How difficult is it to organise?

[glaurung]

As per the title really. Has anyone done this? What are the issues? How receptive are schools likely to be to the idea?

Dd is yr 11 and her school closes today.

Haven't done it myself since my 18 yo home educated throughout opted not to do exams, but I've talked to a lot of people in and out of the system.

I've got a page on my website about home educators taking exams as private candidates with links to the home educators exams wiki and the yahoo support group for home educating families taking exams
edyourself.org/articles/exams.php

I've also got a page on flexischooling, but I have to say it's not very common and is found more often at primary than secondary level
edyourself.org/articles/flexischoolingconference.php

A third option could be to look at your local authority funding a college course, again more info here
edyourself.org/articles/APguidance2011-12.php

Sorry for all the links, just rushing out the door and quicker to give urls than paste stuff in!

Thanks Fiona, that is just the sort of info I was after. Flexischooling would work really well I think, with a mix of me and a private tutor or two covering the subjects not done at school. I'll be talking to the head next week and try to sell it to them. Knowing the thing about school registers looks pretty useful. She has done quite a few of the controlled assessments already, so, providing these can be transferred somehow to a friendly exam authority (and this needs to happen next week), homeschooling proper could work too.

DS did a kind of flexi-schooling in what would be Year 12 in England - he essentially just came home for one "column" of his timetable, to allow him to focus on a music qualification. The school were fine about it - we went in to discuss it with the Head, and I think his main issue was how to set it up without setting an easy precedent to let others ask the same. The things which I think helped to swing it for us were that -

1 - there would be an adult at home to supervise him
2 - he would be working towards a recognised qualification

That meant the school could have applied the same requirements to any other requests, and weren't opening the door too far!

It's worth thinking about it from the school's perspective - they will always be thinking more widely than what's best for that one child, because they have to weigh up how tricky it would be if lots of people liked the idea. So, as well as explaining why your child needs this, try to make sure you can show why the school won't have any difficulties if they allow it.

Thank you AMIS, very good points. Fortunately I work evenings so am at home in the daytime and she definitely will be working towards something recognised so I will use your arguments.