11/5/23
Home schooling. UK London
I would love my son who is 13 just to attend school part time and for the rest of the week he'd be home schooled.
What is the likelihood that the Westminster state school he attends will refuse it ?
I am a disabled stay at home single parent so I am available to help out at home finding resources and keeping an eye on things.
My son hates his school he seems quite anxious to go in and was sniped at and bullied - though not as bad as it used to be since the school intervened.
It's a long day at school too- this one finishes later than most other secondary schools.
It's a very big school and mostly the pupils are from other nations and are mainly muslim ( we are not, we are christian )
We wonder if socially that's why he feels a bit out of place .
He still hates this school and we have names on about 7 different schools waiting list !
There's probably not a cats chance in hell securing a place for most schools as they seem to be well over subscribed ( for an in year placement at Year 8 )
My boy is possibly slightly on the ADHD spectrum ( but doctor thought he was ok ) Definitely intelligent .
As a primary school child he was practically at genius level- no kidding ( but school seems to have dulled his brain over the years since then - I noticed it straight away )
At present he does do his home work but takes forever to do it ( he is easily distracted - so I keep yelling at him and I try to get him to focus !)
He's meant to be revising for some upcoming pre ? GCSE test ( he's not started GCSE study just yet - that's meant to be in year 9 )
He's not doing this very much. Says to me " it's all in my head - don't worry ! "
He has a high reading age of 17+.
His last school report - he was above average for all the subjects.
We actually managed to leave the current school and did an induction day at one of the very few local schools that had a place available.
To my son's horror and my dismay - It was even worse ! the classes were even more disruptive, the kids rowdy outside of classes and the teachers were totally apathetic. My boy was convinced he'd learn nothing.
So we declined to take the school place and reverted back to the original secondary school !!
Theoretically what one learns at the school - we could expand and possibly speed things up at home ?... as for the subjects he partially misses at school, possibly the school would give us the curriculum details they followed so we could then keep up at home using resources ?
I assume though the school will say a flat out no to part time schooling.
So if and a big IF we went the whole hog and did full time home schooling - we'd obviously need to follow a certain curriculum from online resources etc, but would an examination be supplied for these things learnt and where and how is the child tested to achieve the qualifications ?
When I called up Westminster Council to ask their admissions department if they'd "look in" keep checks on progress etc and supply advice regarding home schooling and the impression I got was "No" you're on yer own .....
So all in all;
Any suggestions, advice, ideas - views would be much appreciated.
Thank you .