Home Schooling Year 10

[antsypants]

Hi

I'd really like some advice/words of wisdom on how realistic it would be to home school my daughter (14) through her KS4 GCSE period?

She's struggling at mainstream school, 60% attendance and dropping due to severe anxiety from being bullied in her first year of high school, she did try kings interhigh for a period of time but struggled with doing the classes and not being able to follow along... we got her into a new mainstream school in Sep and after an initial month, it's back to not being able to go.

Ive been trying to keep her up to speed by doing her lessons they leave on Google classroom and via YouTube/EdPlace etc... and this seems to be the most productive way.

I'd love to hear if I'm being deluded in thinking I could push her through this period at home and just pay for her to sit her exams... I'm not a teacher, but I've got the benefit of working for myself from home.

I'd love to hear from anyone doing this period or who has done this. And anyone else of course 😊

There are many different approaches to doing exams while being home educated. It's a complicated subject. In fact, many parents say that figuring out how to do it - which subjects, which exam board, where to sit it, how to prepare for it, when to do them and in what order - is actually more work than the academics! You certainly don't need to be a teacher. You need to be organised and motivated and ready to seek out the information you need.

The good news is that other home educating parents are tremendously helpful. Also, doing exams from home provides much more flexibility than school. Your daughter could do them at whatever age suits here. There are no required subjects, so she can do the ones she actually needs for whatever she hopes to do next. HE kids typically sit fewer GCSEs than schoolchildren, often just enough to get onto the next level of education, which is usually five or six. Also, it is common to spread them out over several years to reduce the stress. They focus on one or two or three subjects at a time, sit the exam, and move on to the next ones.

Facebook is the place to go for local home ed groups and detailed subject-specific discussions on exams. If you meet up with people who live near you, I'm sure they would be happy to talk to you about how they do it. Some kids like to do a subject with an in-person group led by a tutor, which is more sociable than doing it alone. Your local college may have some suitable courses, either through a dedicated 14-16 programme, or alongside older learners who haven't yet passed their GCSEs. Or she could wait and do some "catch-up" GCSEs at college after 16. The choice of subjects at college will not be as good as at home or at school, however. But it might be part of the picture.

Good advice from Saracen.

Just wanted to add, lots of colleges now do courses for 14-16 year olds which often involve 2-4 GCSEs and some vocational courses alongside. Almost all are 1-2 days a week.

Home educating parents are nearly unanimous in saying that you need to put your child's mental health first. If school is fuelling her anxiety, then it makes sense to do something else. It may be that she doesn't come out with a large number of GCSEs with top grades by the age of 16; if so, she can tackle that later. There is no deadline for getting an education.

The school system is quite rigid in demanding that all kids do as many GCSEs as possible all at once at exactly 16 years old. It may well be that that isn't what your daughter needs. It wasn't right for either of my kids, and I'm really glad they didn't have to be pushed through that at the expense of their well-being.

Thanks so much for the advice, I hadn't thought about the fact that you wouldn't have to go through the actual exams as the schools do.

Appreciate all of your time 😊

Following - I have a Y9 DS who is trying so hard to attend school, but it just isn’t working out.

I would like to make a decision before the end of the school year about how he will get his GCSEs, so this thread is super interesting!

Main barriers in my mind are …

• His motivation for working at home. I don’t want daily battles.
• Money to pay for courses and exams
• Time! I freelance, which makes the whole thing theoretically possible, but I do have a lot of work to do sometimes!

Will read any more additions to this thread with interest!

We started home ed in year 10. You don’t have to do as many gcse/igcses as you would in school (or any at all). We looked what my son needed to get on his chosen college course and aimed for that. He sat 2 in Y10 and 3 in Y11 with good results and is now at college. When I first took him out of school I had planned to take an extra year for gcses if he had needed it.

Google home ed exams wiki for loads of info.