What do I need to know before I make an informed decision about HE?

[ChocolateSquonkyEggs]

dd1 off school today. Think we have a bullying problem. Again.

Am happy to HE her if that is what she wants/possible.

Do I need any formal qualifications myself? If so, any particular subject?

Can she still do GCSEs if I HE?

She is in yr 9 at the mo - is this a reeeeeeally bad time to take her out of school?

Anything else I need to know.

Not too worried about her socialising, btw, she has a large circle of friends out of school, and there are other HE-ers in the area that we could mix with.

Any advice/comments greatly appreciated, I would like to know what the options are before I discuss it with her.

Hi - that sounds like you've been having this problem with the school for a while. I assume you have little confidence in them being willing/able to do much about it.

You don't need any formal qualifications to be able to HE - all parents have the right to educate their child themselves if that's what they want. You just have to arrange an an education "suitable to her age, abilities and aptitudes".

If you and she want to do the GCSEs, then you still can, although it can be trickier to arrange because of needing coursework marked. There are ways of doing it though, or other equivalent qualififcations like International GCSEs which don't need marked coursework and just have an exam. Or you can leave it until she can go to college or do OU courses, or not do any qualififcations at all...

Year 9 is no better or worse time to take her out of school than any other - if she's suffering then you have to do what you can to help. Do you think there's a possibility the situation will get much better next year? Her choice of subjects, and what set she's in, might separate her from the bully during class time, though obviously that's not all of school.

The best thing to do is probably read up all you can about HE - the biggest websites are Education Otherwise and HE-UK. There's huge amounts of information on both of them, but they'll give you a really good idea of both the legal side and how different families go about HE. It can be very varied - some are quite formal with separate subjects and work towards qualififcations. Others are more "autonomous" and the children learn about things as they get an interest in them. Others are somewhere between the two.

Thank you.

I mentioned it to her and she was: NNNNOOOOOOO!!!!!!! I love school.

So I asked her about the bullying and she said "What bullying?"

So I said "well, why are you off school then?"

she said "because you told me we were going to have a talk"

I said "yeah, about the bullying"

She said "what bullying?"

It turns out she's been pre-menstrual.

She loves school.

We did have a problem last year with bullying, and I have to say that the school were fantastic, they switched everyone's classes around this year so that she didn't have any of the bullies, and it really seemed to have worked.

That was why I was so concerned when I thought that it had started again - it seemed like nothing the school did was making any difference, which is why I immediately assumed that the only way to solve the problem was to HE.

Obviously, there is no problem.

But thanks very much for the info, sorry to have wasted your time.

Any ideas on what to do with a teenager who is neither ill nor needing parental support for the day?

I'm glad it was so easily sorted! Nice to hear about a school that has dealt effectively with a bullying situation for once - we often get people looking into HE after a long and hopeless struggle to get the school to take them seriously .

Just enjoy the chance of a nice day together!