Does anyone have any experience of running/starting a small scale school?

[sorkycake]

x

Not personally, no, but could you elaborate?

There's an organisation that represents small schools. Forget its name. But you could try googling those words.

Human Scale Education

Message withdrawn

Chequers, where is this school on Anglesey?

Message withdrawn

Message withdrawn

It's where I hail from so was just wondering. Still don't understand completely what it involves myself, is it a school started by normal people (not qualified teachers I mean) for a small number of kids, like home schooling?

Message withdrawn

Sorry only just got back online.

Thanks for the replies, Juules I think that's the place I was looking for but couldn't for the life of me remember the words HSE. A few of the HE'ers have been mooting this for the last couple of months and I just wondered if anyone had any experience or heard about it.

The regional HE'ers have formed a group with charity status to allow them to access further sources of funding and we have procured a hall, so I was wondering about the ins & outs of how to go about it really.

Thanks I will check the links out later.

sorky-this might be a daft question but whats the advantage in having a school over, say, an informal arrangement between parents? I'd have thought, legally, it would be far easier to set up a co-op.

One big problem if you have a proper school is the amount of red tape. Also premises can be a real PITA.

(have not done this btw, but know people who have. It did actually fail within a year, I'm afriad-kids mainly ended up in school. )

Yes I think the co-op is probably the way to go. They don't really want to go for formal school structure and want to be tied to the LA even less.

I think it's really the idea of some formal type lessons in a classroom of children, which we do anyway with organised visits, but having the premises now means that within HE circles we are able to offer these much more regularly.

Perhaps it's better left the way it is, informally, between the parents and with some outside folk coming in.

I recalled an article yonks ago in GreenParent about education and remembered someone in their had set up a small school, but I think that eventually failed, maybe it's the same one. I think their funding for the building ran out and they couldn't find anywhere else.

the school i am talking about failed mainly because of the costs of meeting h&s stuff, iirc.

It was also a huge, huge amount of work. You need all sorts of stuff-procedures and contracts and etc.

otoh this is one school, more incomptance than I am aware of may well have been involved.

(was quite recent btw)

How are you doing Filly, is it all starting to make sense yet?

I keep meaning to ask you how you came to study ancient languages.

actually because I was good at them.

Isn't that a stupid reason? I am much more interested in science but at school (girls grammar ) science was ALL copying off the board.

Probably the maing reason for HEing is that I felt pushed into things I was good at, iykwim.

Its all falling into place actually, the only problem is that I AM worried ds is bored, esp as we don't have a car so are a little isolated (that said, we are at groups 2x a week and fit at least 2 playdates in in addition-its not THAT bad).

Do you know it's just clicked with me where you get your name from
teehee Do you have a little friend called gaffsie?

God it's bugged for bloody ages that!

We have a local small school that has been around over 25 years en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Small_School - it was started by Satish Kumar and linked to Human Scale Education. Each family pays a minimum of £250 per term and is expected to contribute half a days teaching or other help per week, including fund raising. They have some qualified teachers, and other subjects are taught by local 'experts' - artists, poets etc.