Homeschooling for an unknown period in Scotland

[4PawsGood]

We’re thinking of taking DS, age 13, out of school until a place comes up at a different school. This could happen in a week or in a year.

So I want to sign him up for, I guess, online schooling. I don’t know where to start with this - do some require you to sign up for the full year? Do we need to choose one with a Scottish curriculum?

I will obviously be finding local groups for the social/enrichment side of things but just need advice on the online academic side.

There's lots of home ed groups on Facebook. Sign up to those and see if there's anything local to you as they can provide lots of resources and local activities. We do various online lessons from different places that we sign up to a term at a time, for maths, English, history and science. And then I do the rest myself. There are online schools that provide the whole curriculum but generally they require a years commitment. The only exception to this is my online school which I think is a term at a time, although I think there's a sign-up fee too.

Thank you. We’re happy to pay, but not for a year if he only uses it for two weeks.

I’ll have a look on Facebook.

If it may be only for a short period, perhaps it's better either to ask his intended new school what they use, and get the same books and follow along with that at home, at least for a few subjects such as languages where "gaps" in his learning would be an issue?

Or come up with your own learning programme. To fill a while which could be short, it might not be worth going to the effort of concocting an entire curriculum and deciding (e.g.) which is the best maths programme for him etc. You could instead do self-directed learning ("unschooling" or "autonomous education"), or project-based learning (e.g. if your son has always wanted to learn more about Japanese history, let him cover all subjects by relating them to Japanese history).

By the way, have you looked at the legal process for home education? In Scotland, you need the consent of the Local Authority to withdraw a child from school for home education, but that is meant to be a straightforward process and there are few grounds on which it could be denied. See SchoolHouse.org.uk is the national home education charity, and they can help you with that.

Thank you. It’s hard not knowing how long it will be for!

Yes, I’m on the case with the official side of things. I think