When do I need to start making a plan to home ed?

[OverdressedtobeDepressed]

I know it’s not going to be soon, DD is 6, currently year1. My plan has always been, primary education (unless she’s specifically struggling or not enjoying it) then home education from secondary age.

I don’t have any experience of home education so I’m asking here just so I know I’m prepared😂

What materials will I need? How much roughly does it cost? I’m lucky enough that DH earns enough that I won’t need to work so I have the time and energy to home educate the kids, but I want to make sure I do it right.

maybe if someone could give me a run down of what a typical day/week looks like for home education that would be amazing 🥰

If you can't afford to go on a summer holiday, maybe you should be planning to get a job rather than home educate.

You are massively limiting her career options if she has no qualifications.
Did you dislike school ? Are you projecting your own negative experiences onto her ?

This. These threads always get filled with "but what about socialisation????" nonsense; home ed groups on Facebook etc are better patrolled.

listening to an alternate view about what your child will be missing out on to help you make a decision is a good thing, surely?

This.

Also you can take them out for a week every year, no one cares

It's rarely helpful to listen to non-home educators pontificate about what they think home educated children will miss out on, because they're almost always wrong.

Another point to consider is the vulnerability you face from financially depending on your husband and your own career stagnating or declining.

There are never ending posts about women finding themselves high and dry following a divorce they could never have envisaged.

Would you prefer an echo chamber?

I don't see why you're making these assumptions. It's going to be a self fulfilling prophecy. Would be better to try and move somewhere with better schools I'd have thought.

Op has said if dd wants to go to secondary she will be supported with that choice.We had ds1 who was home edded for majority of primary years and then he chose to go to secondary. We have ds2 who was home edded for majority of primary years and chose not to go to secondary.
Some good advice on here op re looking at online groups.

Could you share the study you mentioned above?

I would caution against assuming the secondary school is always a disaster, for my son it has been the best part of his education journey so far.

As wrong as it is to listen to those who home educated pontificate on the evils of school, as they are almost always wrong too!

But will that choice be heavily influenced by the OPs opinions of school?

Het daughter will be very aware of her mum’s thoughts around attending secondary school which will influence her decision.

I know lots of families who home educate. For some children it is 100% the best option but for others it most definitely isn’t.
Discussion and alternative opinions should be welcomed.

Exactly!!

while I don’t disagree with your post I think it was the OPs tone that has possibly riled people.

Home education is not a choice I would willingly make, but surely OP is going the right way about it and that should be encouraged? Secondary education must be difficult to deliver effectively at home, particularly if you want to head towards GCSEs. OP is asking years in advance for advice on how to do it properly which means she is likely to do a far better job than someone who suddenly decides, or is forced by circumstances to think in year 6 that home education is what they want to do.

Yes OP's own preferences might push her DC towards wanting home education, but that can be said about most choices we make for our children. It is difficult to present an impartial choice to a child when as a parent you are so convinced of the benefits of one option over another.

Those who home educate usually have experience of school; the same can't often be said the other way around 😉

In general though I agree, but it's rare you'll find home educators criticising all schools - more the school system and the schools available in their area, or the reasons why school isn't appropriate for their child. I never look at other kids and think "their lives would be so much better if their parents home educated them" (in fact, I don't want that, because I like that we have the run of places during the week 😂), but I know it's the right choice for my daughter and I'm always happy to support someone else who thinks it might be right for their child.

Absolutely. OP, what you are seeing on this thread is a taste of what you'll hear if you mention to friends and acquaintances that you are considering home education. It is very strange that those who have no experience of it have such firm opinions. People tend to let their imaginations run wild. Or they generalise from the one family they know who home educate.

You will have plenty of opportunities to discuss home education with people whose knowledge is limited to the school system, and they may well have information about school which you might find helpful. However, you are wise to focus on discussions with those who DO know about home education. Most of us know not only about our own family's path but also that of dozens of even hundreds of friends or acquaintances.

You can get that on this forum if you can filter out the noise. Not all threads here get hijacked by non-HE parents as this one did - I think it depends whether it happens to get into the "trending" list. Some threads here are fairly quiet and civilised 😁If you prefer a "closed" forum instead, Facebook is the best place to go. Most home ed Facebook groups are restricted to people who are already home educating or seriously considering it.

There's lots of really excellent groups on Facebook, some will be specific to your area which is really useful to do group work and meet ups.

Look in to flexi schools, and home Ed groups, online classes etc. All will support you in areas that maybe you lack knowledge!

And think about whether you want to enter them for exams as you will need to find an exams centre that will take external candidates.

Read lots of books as there's so many approaches to home Ed, you'll need to find something that resonates with you.

At most educational stages, home education can cost as much or as little as you can afford and want to pay. There are many free and cheap resources available. Of course, there will be expensive things which catch your eye also. Your child could have a pony and a dedicated room in your house in which to learn and go on a world tour with you if those things are within your budget. I do know people who have all of the above. I also know families who home educate on very little money, and their kids get a great education too!

The point at which that is less true is GCSE preparation. GCSEs aren't compulsory and some kids don't do them (one of my kids did just two and the other isn't doing any), but most kids who are able to do them will want to. You will have to pay
A fee to the exam board,
A fee to the centre where your child sits the exam, and
The cost of whatever resources your child uses to learn the material. This could include books, subscriptions, online schools, or tutors.

Depending how you want to do it, whether you can find a cheap exam centre, and how much specialist support your child wants and needs, you'll spend roughly £100 to several thousand per exam. However, most HE kids do fewer GCSEs than they would at school. Five or six carefully chosen subjects would often be enough to get them on to the next level of education or into work. One popular approach is to spread them out over several years, focusing intensively on one or two or three subjects, sitting the exams, and moving on to other subjects the following year. A bright academically minded child might dip a toe in the water by sitting an exam in their strongest subject at 12 or 13. Those who struggle more might start at 16 or 17. It makes absolutely no difference when you do them, so there is a lot of flexibility to suit individual needs.

There are a few options for those who can't afford to pay anything for GCSEs. Returning to school in Y10 to do them there is a useful backup plan, though IME relatively few families find it necessary when it comes to it. The GCSE curriculum is fairly self contained, so you don't have to be matching school closely in the previous years in order to jump in at Y10. But you definitely don't want your child to have to join school much later than the start of Y10, as the system is so very inflexible that you cannot really be mirroring it at home. So that is the moment at which you'd want to decide which way to jump. Colleges often offer a small fixed set of "catch up" GCSEs to those who haven't got any, which your child could do after 16. Some colleges will also take kids part time or full time to do GCSEs before 16. The subjects will be much more limited than you'd get via school or home ed, but it's free.

I would actually suggest that you offer your daughter the opportunity to try home ed in Y6 if she wants. Here's why.

Usually, trying home education for a few terms or a year runs the risk that if you don't like it, you may not be able to get them back into the same school because it might be full. Or in the case of Y7, your preferred/nearest secondary might be full and you would have missed out on the chance of a place there. That risk is gone if you home ed for Y6; if she doesn't want to continue with home ed then she could just go to secondary as usual.

Your daughter may well want to experience high school, possibly even if she doesn't expect to like it. Kids are curious, and everyone "bigs up" how exciting secondary is, so she may feel left out if she doesn't start. If she does want to check high school out, it's less daunting to be the new kid alongside all the other new kids, i.e. try it in Y7 instead of later. And then if she's not loving it, she will face the question of whether to leave. That may feel like a huge decision if she doesn't actually know what home education is like. Nobody does know what home ed is like until they try it! But if she's already had a year of home ed, she can make an informed choice to stay at school or leave. It won't be such a scary decision. Fear of the unknown often keeps kids at school longer than is good for them; some kids can be having a truly horrific time at school and still be afraid to leave.

Some (not all) primaries do endless SATs drill in Y6, with little real learning and lots of stress for the kids. Every year we see a few families join our home ed groups who are home educating for just that one year because their child was hating being hothoused for SATs.

Y5 and Y6 are often the start of very painful friendship issues at school, especially for girls. Such problems do exist outside of school, but are far less troublesome. There are aspects of the school environment which make friend issues more prevalent there than elsewhere. So your daughter's currently happy social life at school may be turned upside down later on. It may not, but be alert to that possibility.

Anyway, it's great that you are looking into this now, and then if your daughter would benefit from home education earlier than Y7, you might start earlier.

I do have a job 🥲

I didn’t dislike school, I had plenty of friends, didn’t get bullied, didn’t have any real negative experience in relation to the school itself. I developed extreme anxiety in my early teens, and the pressure of having to attend school, knowing it could financially impact my parents, risking fines, sentences.. having teachers come to my house to physically bring me to school when I was extremely anxious and didn’t want to go really did have a negative impact though.

Ultimately, DD will have a choice and her choice is respected. My absolute priority is her mental healthy though so if she decides it’s not for her, for any reason at all then I’ll take her out no questions asked. Hence why I want to prepare myself for home eduction, know what I’m doing and how to run it just incase I need to🤷🏼‍♀️

No, because I’m not verbally bashing school to DD. I’m protecting her against my experience, part of that is not putting in her head that she might have the same experience. I wouldn’t risk that. I have my own opinion of course, but I don’t voice it to DD because I know that’s unfair and sets her up for failure essentially.

DD missed years of school as she was unable to cope. I would still advocate for school, she wanted to go and still feels like she missed out on so much. She’s in sixth form now and happy as is glad she was able to go back into school first as she knows her teachers/students.

I imagine the cost is trying to help her experience all the things school offer, sport, theatre, art, music, DDs secondary offered lots of enrichment activities for instance.
If DD is particularly good at science or maths are you equipped to help with that. I did most of the maths with DD and I struggled. If she hadn’t dropped science we would have needed tutors.