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Find advice from other parents on our Homeschool forum. You may also find our round up of the best online learning resources useful.

Original poster

Home school gcse . Help needed

10 replies

Notoschool · 07/02/2022 13:02

Hi we have been through a really hard time recently so much so that I made the decision to deregister my son.

Hes 14 year 10. I wanted to find something on line for GCSE. maybe something similar to distant learning . I was wanting to roughly know what I should expect to pay. I'm also worried about paying/signing up to something that's not the right thing for gcse .

I have joined a couple of home education groups.

OP posts:
user1471443411 · 07/02/2022 13:14

I did this with my eldest daughter - the best advice I can give is don't spend too much money before you have worked out which method of learning suits him best. My daughter turned out to prefer online live classes, but she had a lot of trial and error before finding tutors that she liked (ASD so can't stand listening to lots of people's voices). Lots of tutors/companies will have samples of their courses on their websites or may provide a short course so your son can do a trial to see if he gets on with that particular course.
Have you joined the facebook group for exams? Here's a link if not
www.facebook.com/groups/HELinksUK.IGCSE
There is also the wiki page
he-exams.fandom.com/wiki/HE_Exams_Wiki
If you say what subjects you're doing I might be able to give some recommendations.
As a rough guide, I would say about £300 per course, but then the exam fee is on top which could be up to £200. You might not need a course for every subject - depending on your son's motivation he could just study from the textbook for some subjects.

Saracen · 07/02/2022 13:15

Here's a wiki explaining the whole exams process for home educated kids. It's complicated, but there is plenty of help available from other home ed parents. he-exams.fandom.com/wiki/HE_Exams_Wiki Are you on Facebook? There are numerous national and local FB groups where people chat about the pros and cons of different subjects, exam boards, exam centres and so on.

There's no need to jump in too quickly, especially if you are signing up for anything which requires a commitment. Take your time and let your son recover.

You're wise to be wary about signing up for the wrong thing. It's important to find something which suits your son. There are other options besides online school. And a trap which HE parents sometimes fall into is signing up for an online course which prepares their child for an exam which they cannot actually sit - make sure there is an exam centre which takes private candidates for the exam you have in mind. The online school usually does not handle arranging the exam centre for you. I even knew of one online school which was knowingly signing kids up for a course aiming towards an exam which would be obsolete by the time they had finished the course - so it would be completely impossible for the kids to sit the exam!

SkipThisStep · 07/02/2022 13:18

I was home educated throughout secondary school and did my GCSE's through the National Extension College which is distance learning. I highly recommend them, I got all As and A*s.

HomeEd2021 · 08/02/2022 09:33

For distance learning providers there is a long list here:
www.tutorsandexams.uk/our-learning-partners/. Some are better than others - look hard at reviews before you sign up.
For subjects where there is a practical/fieldwork element, it's tricky to take them as GCSE, and more straightforward to take the equivalent IGCSE e.g. sciences and geography. The wiki linked above has details by subject.
There are lots of free or cheap resources on the web e.g. Seneca, bbc bitesize and
cognito. Subscriptions to my-gcsescience and conquermaths are also not too dear and may be worth it.

languagelover96 · 09/02/2022 08:55

Lots of tutors/companies operate online. Tell us more. Do not waste money. You can find cheap workbooks and free online resources as well. Look at reviews and qualifications etc.

Mumforlife83 · 13/02/2022 17:19

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Saracen · 13/02/2022 17:54

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Avafrombbc · 15/03/2022 11:18

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1989Jane · 23/03/2022 11:08

We use EDClass to support our son in his learning. They have online teachers who my son speaks to on camera and receives help. Another website we use is edclass.tv which is a £9.99 subscription for hundreds of video lessons that follow the national curriculum and supports him in his gcse preperation. I hope that helps.

Molly1986 · 23/06/2022 16:09

Hello:

This post is probably a bit old now but thought I would reply in case it helps!

My name is Molly and I am an English teacher. I have been working on a YouTube channel for a while and I have some resources on it which you might find useful.

I also provide tutoring services online but I am not trying to sell you those.

I add videos to the channel as often as I can.

I also have a website where I post free resources.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA3_oRDhUYVs8H66ScFx2pw

checkmatetutors.co.uk/

Cheers

Molly

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