So my issue is, I guess, making HE part of the parents "agenda"- whatever that is.
That is one of the harder bits for me to delve into. There is the reality that my kid does not shine when it comes to short term retention of dense information that he does not understand. Which proved to be a bit of an issue at the local primary for the first two years and again with our very brief experience at middle school. He was coming home with a chapter of his geography book to learn by heart in case he was one of the kids chosen to be interrogated on it. Plus the same again in History and Epics, plus masses of technical drawings, plus 20 squillion problems for set theory when the only prep the teacher had done was read the textbook out loud to them. There didn't seem to be any sorting out between his teachers to make sure they didn't give huge gobs of homework all at once.
Sounds awful But.....
As much as the other parents and kids complain, most manage it, by hook or by crook. The majority of an entire nation achieve an education here without the explosive, spitting noises I was making.
So I have to conclude that it is entirely possible that the crumble point for DS was probably me. This did not look like education as I understood it. There was a culture shock big enough to create ructions. I had no idea how to help him becuase I could not get my head around the system. And I think my outrage at the system and the style of the teaching practice probably did him no favours in terms of buckling down and getting with the programme. It is hard enough to get on with heaps of stuff you don't want to do without your mother muttering "your bloody country and it's bloody education shit-stem" at your dad in the background, while crashing her pans as a form of punctuation of her very pointy points.
That's not to say I wholly regret taking him out and using HE as a way to access the British system. He is doing pretty well, he is certainly a lot happier and it seems to suit him much much better. But how you could tweezer apart the extent to which that is becuase it's a better fit for him... or a better fit with me, which then is reflected in his far greater willingness to engage with his learning ? I'm not sure I'd know where to start with unpicking that.
I know I have a sense of culpability in him not having a "bog standard by local norms" education. He does not enjoy it when people take an ears pricked stance when they hear about his educational route. And there are times when I have felt godawful because he has had to feel defensive, or like he has to justify his schooling.
I think I'm going to have to wait till he is on his way to higher ed to know to what extent and in which areas I have either short changed him or given him a much need lifeline. Even if it it turns out fine, I still don't know if I'll ever be sure that I didn't covertly and overtly contribute towards a lifeline being needed in the first place.
On the social side I have no worries. Which is a surprise becuase that actually was the bit I was most worried about. I almost turned myself inside out in a panic in the beginning about that part. But he is a very social kid and it was one of the few areas that with ...
luck (fabby purpose built youth club, like a giant school playground, just without the school, four afternoons a week, attended by the vast majority of the school aged kids in town)
money (mainly on petrol and feeding plagues of locusts hoards of boys in my house)
time (ferrying him about endlessly for sports team fixtures and dropping him of to meet his mates as they mooch from house to house and do "nuffink mum, stop interrogating meeeee !" )
....that we were able to plug any school shaped social gap.
You'd think I'd be pleased about the above.
And I was.
Until he was discovered chatting up a 17yo girl in the library this Saturday.
Right now I'm not so sure I don't want an ”unsocialised homeschooler" cos I am so not ready for this bit. 