School place registration deadline.

[Esssa]

Anyone else actually kind of relieved that the deadline has now passed for applications to school reception? We are home ed as first choice and if it wasn't for a council leaflet addressed to the household that said 'you may have a child the right age for this' I'd not actually have known when the closing date was. Seems madness when my child isn't CSA until April 2026. So anyone else planning the same for their child?

My older two are 9 & 7 now, but I remember that feeling well. The December/January wobbles are definitely a thing for those of us in the home ed community who decided to home educate from the start.

Welcome to the start of a wonderful journey OP. Have you managed to join local communities yet?

We've looked at a few bits but the local smalls group is pretty quiet and we aren't allowed in the bigs group until CSA so even though we haven't applied for a school place I feel a bit in no mans land.

Ah, yeah, it was like that for us too. I understand why groups prefer to wait until csa, but it's really tricky when you're first starting out. I was lucky that a few more experience home educators, who had younger children the same age as mine, took us under their wing. It's part of the reason that a group of us who regularly attend a local park meet decided to be as welcoming as possible to people considering home ed.

One thing I did when my daughter was little, was ask on our local parents Facebook page, if there was anyone locally that I could talk to about home ed. Alternatively, you could post on one of the national Facebook pages like HEFA or Home Education UK. I also connected with home educators online, some of whom educate in a similar way to me, which doesn't help with socialisation for my children, but really provided me with much needed support.

I'm on the big pages like Hefa and a couple of smaller ones too, they just aren't that local! I managed to make a mum friend through peanut that intends to home ed too and her little girl is mines 'best friend' but we are both in the same boat with them being our eldest and we are winging it. I have a local home ed WhatsApp group that used to go for a nature walk once a week so I might have to ask in there and see if they want to start up again.

We've just restarted a local forest meet here. I hope you manage to get it restarted and can meet some more people x