Home educating in Year 11 after school closure

[WestCountryDweller]

Has anyone home educated for year 11 after their DC’s school has unexpectedly closed? Slightly daunted by the idea but it looks like we’ll have no other option, due to a very long travel distance to alternative schools, on top of having to adjust to a different school and potentially different GCSE exam boards.

DD is bright with no SENs and we would be using tutors for subjects that we don’t feel confident with, and cutting down our work hours to focus on her. We have explored exam centre options, which look doable.

She would then move to a local sixth form for A-Levels, which was always the intention anyway.

If you have the money for tutors I'm sure it will be fine.
Presumably she's halfway through her GCSE courses? Have you checked if she'd still be able to take GCSEs or would need to switch to iGCSEs or different exam boards?

Yes, she is halfway through GCSE courses, although hopefully will be a bit further than that when the school closes at the end of the summer term, according to some of the teacher’s predictions.

As I understand, you can take GCSEs privately but iGCSEs are often taken instead due to the lack of coursework. None of her subjects have coursework and more than half are iGCSEs anyway. We will, of course, check as soon as possible that the exam centre that we have in mind does them all. Please correct me if I am wrong though because I am new to all of this - thanks!

Make sure you join HEFA (Home Education for All) on Facebook if you haven’t already. Read all the guides. The LA could still give you a hard time. I don’t see why you can’t manage if you find tutors and she is motivated. Pick your exam centers first so you know which boards you need to focus on. CGP are excellent for revision and text books. You’ll need to be signing her up for exams around September this year for the summer 2027 sitting. Check exactly how many GCSE’S she’ll need for the college entry, you can potentially drop some as there is no legal obligation to do any! So doing 10 costs a fortune and may not be necessary. Good luck.

I think usually English lang, sciences, and geography have to be done as iGCSEs. And languages are harder to do as you need an exam centre that's able to do the spoken element.

iGCSE’s are usually taken by Home Edders as there is no coursework / practical requirement as getting these assessed can be tricky. Sometimes the content can be different, it sounds like she’s already on track with some so I’d lean into finding an exam Center that does that board already rather than switching now. You may have to travel stay overnight for the Center/exam but I think that would be better than having to restart content learning.

Is this a State school or private?

As I understand, our LA are fairly sympathetic towards HE but we will deal with that when we get there. Local state schools around here are all full and very spaced out (we’re rural) so I’m not sure that they would want to try to force her into a school anyway.

We have the CGP books already. We have another DD a few years older and so having been through GCSEs at school already, do at least kind of know how it all works.

We are aiming to keep to the existing nine GCSEs, as she has started them all and is doing well, although her language may have to be taken at a separate centre some distance away, so that may have to be sat at a later time.

What are all of her year group doing? And the teachers losing their jobs? Is there any chance some of you could come together to get you all over this hurdle?

I am sorry this has happened to your DD.

She isn’t doing Geography and the rest are all iGCSE already luckily. Language, I think will have to be at a specific centre separately, later on.

Sounds like you are in a good position then. Really most of the course content will have been covered by the end of Y10 and a lot of Y11 is revision and mock exams. She may do better with less social distractions at school and more 1:1 tutoring 😂

I think that we have found a suitable exam centre within daily travelling distance, still not that close but nothing is where we live, so we’re used to travelling. French will likely entail an overnight stay further away, so we think will likely have to be done later, luckily it’s not an A-Level choice but seems a pity to drop it completely after her hard work so far.

Private - she’s spent most of her education in state but this was a fairly late move due to her state school being terrible. We still don’t regret the move after seeing the state school’s 2024/2025 GCSE results though, it’s really struggling. We probably would have done home ed instead if the private school hadn’t been available to us, as have a lot of children locally.

As the situation is beyond your control talk to the LEA, it’s possible they could arrange for the French exam or even all of them at a local school. I know DD’s school had home ed kids sit exams there by special arrangement

A lot of her year are going to another particular school but they live much closer to it than we do - we already travel quite a long way to the current school from the opposite direction to that one. I also have some misgivings about it based on what I’ve heard in the past.

Teachers all made redundant, I feel really bad for them as they’re all great. We are putting out feelers for tutoring from a couple of them but obviously most of them need to figure out to do themselves next first.

I would look at online schooling, rather than home schooling, eg Minerva or Cambridge. They run school days, just like during COVID, and do proper structured lessons. Many of them are geared to IGCSEs. This takes the pressure off you trying to find tutors. A friend's child is at one and is thriving.

Have you looked at any of the online schools? That might be an easier solution than having to juggle all of the different tutors yourself and would give your DD some sort of community around her.
I am sorry that you have found yourself in this position

Thanks for all of your replies, we are currently trying to work out all of this ourselves and so it’s really helpful to have some reassurances that we’re heading along the right lines.

The social aspect is also a concern, as not sure if she’ll be up for joining home ed groups, due to her age and the relatively short period that we’re doing this for. However, she does at least still have some local friends from previously being in state school, and will need to knuckle down rather than socialise lots in year 11 anyway.

In response to this and the other post about online schools - would that actually work when she is already well into the syllabuses for specific exam boards and even where they are the same, maybe taught in a different order? Asking because I hadn’t considered because I assumed that would be the case.

Also it would probably then make more sense to move her to that now, which we don’t want to do because we want her to be able to finish the year where she is - for social reasons, to minimise disruption/allow her to adjust to the idea, and to cover as much content as she can during the time that is left there.

I know someone who used an online school for their children after an international move. They rated it highly. I wonder if that’s a possibility given you’re looking at employing tutors anyway. They used this one

kingsinterhigh.co.uk

15/16 year olds don't tend to go to home ed groups anyway, they hang out with their friends or do extra curricular clubs, youth clubs etc.

You would definitely need to check with the online school which exam boards they use.

The Government are so utterly spiteful screwing over children and teachers like this, unforgivable.

Hi, you will need to start looking for exam centres in September some book up really quickly, locally we now only have 1 private school offering private candidate exams around (20 places ) as another one is closing in July who also offered them , a tutors and exams centre that is out of county, and the LA also offer couple of exams in English lang and maths online . Good luck OP EhE year 11 is do able you just need to be on the ball with booking exams

Thanks - yes, that’s my plan, there are basically two options I think, so I am going to see which is best as soon as possible. All other state and private schools around here seemed to have stopped doing them completely where they did previously (having spoken to some already) and so I’m guessing that the remainder will fill up quickly.

Sounds like you are getting to grips with it well. The home education exams wiki is useful; don't be put off by the clunky interface due to the hosting service: https://he-exams.fandom.com/wiki/HE_Exams_Wiki

Another option for her to learn the material is with local in-person tutor-led study groups for home ed kids, meeting once or twice a week. There might be one or two near you which happen to match subjects your daughter is doing. Some kids really enjoy learning alongside others. They tend to be done intensively over a single year, however. That reduces disruption from people moving in and out of the area or changing subjects, and also reflects a popular approach to HE exams in which people spread them out over several years, studying a few subjects intensively before sitting the exam and moving on to other subjects.

If you engage tutors, make sure they are familiar with the particular exam your daughter will sit so that they cover the correct syllabus and are familiar with the marking scheme in order to give her good feedback. Another way to get mocks marked is with an independent marking service. We used MarkMyPapers for English Language because we couldn't figure out how to mark my child's mocks accurately. (Maths is more straightforward, so we did that ourselves.) They were very helpful, and IMO good value for people like us who were using a DIY approach instead of tutors or online schools. You download a past paper from the exam board's website, have your child sit it at home under exam conditions, and send it off to the service for marking and feedback on how to pick up extra marks.