I am a primary school teacher and I’m considering home educating my two primary school aged DC. We live in Scotland. From looking around the boards and googling a bit, I can see that many people, including lots of primary school teachers, continue to work PT and home ed. I’d like to describe my situation and my initial thoughts on how it would work and see what people think.
I have lots of reasons that I think HE would be great for my children. I feel the breadth of the current curriculum does no child any favours. There are lots of interests and projects my DC have or suggest and it is wonderful when we have the time to actually do a deep dive into these. I would love to be able to follow their topic interests.
My DC are pretty good academically and as such are not challenged, particularly not challenged to think creatively, due to time demands and high levels of pupil need within classes. One DC is middling in literacy but I know they have a lot to offer in that area and I am concerned that because they are getting by fine, their potential is being missed. There are areas that I know from lockdown that if I get a chance to be consistent with them, they improve.
I am also aware of how much time and energy is taken dealing with behavioural issues in the classroom plus the general work and time taken just dealing with the logistics of 25 + children in the same class. This is essentially wasted time.
Added to this, my children, particularly my eldest child, catch every single bug going and it really knocks them for six, often resulting in several days off school at a time. I would hope that we would have less illness and I would be able to mitigate the impact of illness better than can be managed at school.
Now to my worries…
A big concern of mine is that my children would not be that keen on the idea if I suggested it to them. They really enjoy school. They enjoy being with their friends and are just generally quite laid back and relaxed about the school experience and if I am honest, I think if I suggested HE to them they would say they’d rather go to school. The 2021 Lockdown was hard in our house and I think this will have coloured their view of HE.
I currently work in the school my DC attend. My intention would be to still work in that school on Thursday and Friday. I know no one can tell me for sure, but I do wonder how my HT would react to this. Do people think I would probably have to find a new job? It is a good school and I would not be withdrawing them as I feel they are being failed or are miserable and I would be at pains to make this clear to the HT.
I have a younger DC who is not yet school nursery age. They are due to start school nursery soon and my plan for HE my older two would involve putting the 3yo to school nursery 5 mornings per week (at the school I work at and that I would be withdrawing the older two from). How would that go down? Is that something people do? 3yo is very full on and if I didn’t put them to nursery they would have to be on a screen pretty much the entire time, I know this from our lockdown experiences. My plan is that the afternoons would be outings, cooking, art, music etc and the 3yo would be able to join in these activities. I would be happy to HE when she is due to go into P1.
On the days I work, childcare and HE would be more flexible. I could easily plan and leave tasks for them to be completed them with DH if his work schedule fitted or with grandparents. I think one set of grandparents in particular would be interested in doing gardening, music and sewing with them for one day a week.
Any thoughts on the above points, particularly my concerns, would be appreciated.