We need your help

[KrazyKelpie]

HI everyone,

We have been home educating our 2 children for 8 years now and luckily for us the process has gone great and we have not had to reach out for assistance. Until now.

As we are sure many well-meaning parents have experienced here, we have endured snide comments from many people around us regarding our approach to homeschooling. Probing questions, unsolicited criticism and opinions; things we never asked for but nonetheless had to listen to, making us question if we were doing the right things or not. It is hard dealing with this at times, and we are sure you know what we mean.

We originally started homeschooling because we were not happy with the quality of education provided in the schools in the area we lived in. It was our fault, as we lived there for work, couldn't easily move away and so adapted to this by choosing to provide our children's education.

Then, 8 years down the line and our eldest is 13 and we are having to consider putting them into school so they have time to settle in and do their exams.

Suddenly, a new career opportunity comes up that allows us to relocate to a beautiful area in Scotland with "good" schools. We do this, and caving to peer pressure and expectation, make the difficult decision to put both of our children, the 13 year old, and our 8 year old, into the schooling system.

A new home, a fresh start - it seemed like a good idea. Deep down, I think a lot of the previously mentioned criticism had got to us, as we were told that our kids wouldn't socialize properly with others, or not adapt to a normal work day etc if we didn't eventually send them to school. We had always been confident in how our children could communicate, but we, as their parents, are not the most outgoing of couples and therefore have never had a big friendship group. As a result we didn't want this limited social circle to ultimately hold our kids back - even though we had never seen evidence of this to suggest it was a problem.

So the kids started school on the 19th August, and much to our relief, they take it all in their stride. The eldest made new friends the first day and seems to be doing well. The 8 year old seems happy enough. But unfortunately we feel like we have a big problem that we never expected.

The 8 year old, in the Scottish system, is in year "P4". We were told he would be better there because he was home schooled and so he could settle in easily (his birthday is in November so he will be 9 soon).

He is now doing work that is what we were teaching him at least 2 years ago.
He isn't remotely challenged.
He is being sat next to naughty kids to help them behave.
He is being told to escort naughty kids to and from the toilets because he behaves so well.

The stories he is telling us about these kids... he is frustrated because they are just shouting and screaming all lesson next to him. He is completing his worksheets within 5-10 minutes anyway, but the teacher is stopping him from turning to the next page because "we aren't doing that until tomorrow".

I know all of this work is way below him because I can see evidence of it via the "learning journals" I am being sent - sometimes after 21:30 at night by the teacher. He is being sent home with storybooks that are of a complexity he tackled over 2 years ago and can read with no effort at all.

My 13 year old (S2) is finding his school days extremely easy. Every other week he gets told to "read" as an English lesson. He has an optional 2 hour lesson about the sea where he is given a chromebook and told to google about it. In design and technology, his group have been told to use AI to help them complete tasks. He is sat in maths lessons completing his work before anyone else because he was doing it 2+ years ago.

We are now having to make our children do extra work after school to keep them at the high level we already had them working at. because neither institution seems interested in challenging their abilities in any shape or form.

In many ways I am sure some may wonder what is our problem - if our kids are doing so well why not just leave them be...but we have worked so hard with them over the years to help them push the boundaries of their learning, it just doesn't seem right letting that go to waste.

So here we are, genuinely with no clue what to do next. Realising now that the 8 year old will miss out on the development opportunities that our 13 year old got (as we assumed he would get this through the school system) has come as a bit of a shock to us.

So what do we do to improve this situation? We are secretly hoping someone can tell us that our 13 year old will get put into high level groups where the kids aren't constantly interrupting lessons and where they will be appropriately challenged - but is this the case? Should we suggest flexischooling so we can continue to actually challenge him appropriately?

Will our 8 year old start to get harder work? Do primary schools adapt in that way, or should we be looking at moving him up to "P5" immediately? Or should we just take him out of school completely and start him when he is 13 like our eldest, as this entire experience has left us very disillusioned with the UK education system...

The funny thing is, is that seeing our 13 year old breeze into school, make friends easily and not feel challenged at all, has given us newfound confidence in our approach to homeschooling, because we are now literally seeing proof of it working!

Sorry for the long post - we just really wanted to give everyone a good understanding of the situation and our mindset. Any suggestions are welcome, as we are genuinely in a situation where we just don't know what to do, but feel very unhappy just leaving the situation as is.

Being homeschoolers for an extensive time, and never being in a situation where we had to deal with a school or take our children out of school, this all feels so unknown to us. We naturally want to keep an eye on our children's development, and the thought of it simply stagnating whilst we willingly allow it does not feel like an option for us.

Has anyone had similar experiences to this, and what did you end up doing about it? (Thank you in advance!)

First step. Talk to the school. Have you done that yet?

I’d say if you child has been homeschooled they have benefitted from 1:1 teaching that the other children haven’t had that advantage. So yes, they probably are further ahead, I don’t think schools have the capacity to be producing lesson plans/work for just a single student though. In a private school there might be more capacity for that, but teachers are limited by what they can do.

The thing is, what do you hope to gain in pushing them further ahead, they will have to take exams and go to uni at the same age of the others. What are you expecting the outcome to be.

I think once they get to A level/highers standard the work is more intense and they won’t find it so much of a breeze.
I would think once they’ve done some exams/assessments they’ll be put in higher groups.
Will they allow you to do flexi schooling?
Spending a lesson reading is something some schools do.

If it was me I would have a good think about what you want the outcome to be and also what interests do the children have beyond school that could be developed and will help them - sports, music, coding? What does the eldest think they might want to do?

I would absolutely contact the school and put a stop to the babysitting other kids, it’s a policy lots of schools have and they need to be told to stop. Lots of us have experienced it and had to contact schools to make them move children.

Hi TeenToTwenties, we certainly will be doing, but part of the motivation to post this question was to see what should we be asking them about?

We are concerned about overreacting to this as we are aware we are only 3 weeks in and don't want to cause a fuss if it's not necessary. Also, we don't want to insult anyone by saying they are not catering to our kids requirements when e.g. fridaynightzzz has noted that this is something they simply don't have the capacity for.

We were looking for opinions here first, and we are already being given plenty of food for thought, so thank you to you both.

As we have zero experience with the schooling system, we are genuinely unsure what is worth discussing and what isn't.

Thank you for the tip regarding the babysitting other kids - using this as an example, we had no idea if this was normal practice or not, so wanted to gather opinions here first.

when DD went to secondary she was placed next to a troublesome girl (it was post covid bubbles so all the time) and I had to email and tell them it wasn’t on. The teacher did agree (and the girl was excluded within a few weeks anyway).
I would say that your child isn’t there to manage another child and about how it’s having a negative effect on them.

Using well-behaved children to help manage behaviour of the difficult ones was totally standard when I was teaching. We used to rotate who sat with who so the well-behaved (usually) girls weren't with the same bothersome boys for too long.

You can certainly raise with the school that your younger child is being used to manage the behaviour of others. It’s not ok.

re the level of work - it’s pretty standardised at that age and it’s unusual to split classes by ability groups at that age. If a child is really super ahead to the point it’s an issue in the classroom then the teacher may provide harder work but this is usually of their own bat.

there was a push about a decade ago for provision to be made for gifted and talented (ahead) children but that has largely petered out.

That's good to know fridaynightzzz thank you. We have a sort of open afternoon we can go to next week so we can mention it then. We didn't want to upset the teacher (in case this was considered normal) so you have given us more confidence to tackle it.

We are clueless when it comes to how schools work with never having anything to do with them until now.

All advice is welcome.

We’re in Scotland. I know there is a cost to it, but we opted for the private system after years in state schools. The difference was immense. Our previously unchallenged children were working to a higher level and constantly challenged

StrugglingAlong75, we can see if they rotate where our child is sat tomorrow - hopefully that is the case and there is some method in the madness!

You could request that there is some way for them to access work at greater depth when they complete the set work. The teacher may be able to facilitate that for core subjects at least. It needs to be something they can fetch and explore without having to bother the teacher in lesson time.

Brackenandbrave,
We have the capability to push our youngest ourselves if we were to remove them from the school and start homeschooling again.

The only reason we can say this is because our eldest is proof that what we have done has worked well for them, however I don't think we have the funds for a private school (not looking for sympathy) - but we have looked at alternatives such as "Scottish Highers Online" which would definitely be possible for the eldest, but we are unsure if this is the right path to take yet.

Thank you for your thoughts though. All this input is just what we needed - before having a knee jerk reaction to our situation and then regretting it later.

RaininSummer that is a great idea - it may seem obvious to some but we are really struggling to come up with ways of articulating these issues without it sounding insulting to the schools. We don't want to make enemies of the teachers and that is why we chose to effectively "vent" our thoughts here first. Getting real world answers from people with experience is so much better than us just hammering ChatGPT!

I’m afraid this is the Scottish education system… very low expectations academically and behavioural.

Are you near the border and could send them to an English school?

NinetyNineRedBalloonsGoByAgain unfortunately not! We moved from England and love it here, but we are a little surprised at how badly behaved the kids are in the classes. We are probably just naive... We didn't expect any of it to be perfect, but have been surprised by the lack of focus on core subjects here.

Does anyone think there is any value in trying to move our 8 year old up a year? They are currently the eldest in their year but could have been one of the youngest in the higher year. They seem to be more mature than the kids they are with (frustrated with their behaviour), but this choice was made because in theory it was meant to make it easier for them to settle due to coming from a homeschooling background. Once again, we have no idea if this would be the right thing to do or not.

It seems like your kid's age wouldn't have been too young for the next year, so why not ask the school to transfer?

Muu9, we can certainly look at that as an option for the youngest. If they are still happy being in school, that is probably the best option at this moment in time.