This is a genuine question

[captainpeacock]

How can you home ed a child to GCSE level when if they are at secondary school they have a teacher qualified in each particular subject that they study.

Not an expert, although my eldest is 10 so would soon be going to secondary.

Some parents hire tutors to teach those subjects that they don't feel confident with. Many do their GCSEs through open learning/correspondant colleges such as NEC. Some choose to do open university courses instead.

Since HE is often child centred, there is often no need for the child to take 10 or 11 GCSE's in subjects that they may never use again. They can streamline their education, doing only those GCSE's in the subjects that are necessary to gain access to Uni and study what they really want. Many also choose to study IGCSE's as they are favoured more by Uni's.

As I said, I haven't really approached that stage yet, so others may explain more!

Well my children are now 21, 19 and 16.
Didn't teach them anything.
Instead we facilitated the learning experiences they were interested in.
When you have a joy of learning and are really interested in a subject, you simply want to find out more.
That's how it works for me anyway, and that's how it works for hundreds and hundreds of autonomously home educated young people.

Our son followed his own paths for several years after leaving school aged 13. Just before he left, school predicted he "might achieve grade Ds at GCSEs, if he works really really hard."
Instead we deregistered him, he began to learn through living life and following his own interests.
He chose to go to college post 16 to do two GCSEs. He got Grade Bs.
He then used those two GCSEs to get into another FE college to do A levels. He got Grade B in those as well.

Our daughters chose not to do GCSEs at all. Youngest started her first Open University starter course at 15 and achieved all of the outcomes, putting her at degree entry level I am told. She has now used her OU courses and life experiences to get into college in Sept to do BTEC equivelant to 3 A Levels.

But then again she may not go, she may instead continue with the OU and use those courses to go straight to a brick and mortar Uni (we know several Home Ed young people personally who have done this, including one young man doing Law at Oxford right now) or maybe she will do her whole degree through the OU.

Others HE families use distance learning courses. You get the package and you work through it.
Some use tutors.
Others just download the curriculum and work through it and then enter for exams as an external candidate.

You don't have to have 11 years of schooling to do GCSEs
You don't have to have GCSES to do A levels
You don't have to have A levels to go to Uni.
There are other ways.

A large part of teacher training is about crowd control and classroom management.
Don't need that when you home ed.

Some of the things my children have become interested in have been beyond my knowledge. So we have either learned together or they have charged ahead with their own internet based research or we have found someone who knows what the children have wanted to learn.

does that help at all?

You seem to be coming from the viewpoint that learning is only possible when transmitted from teacher to pupil. This is a fallacy. In fact this is possibly the least efficient way of learning something, especially if combined with extrinsic motivations.

What they all said....

Why are you asking this question?

Well, my daughter is 13 and we are doing three GCSEs next year, Maths, Biology and Geography. I did maths A level, Geography O level but have never done Biology at all. Of all the subjects I would say I am "teaching" the Biology the best. Why? Because it's new to me so I am really interested in it, so I am keen to go through it with my daughter.
Notice I use the word "teaching" very loosely. I am really there as support, as a sounding board, and as another head if she can't work something else herself. Because mostly, I don't teach at all - my daughter reads, and researches, and finds out what she needs to know for herself. Sometimes we do experiments together or go out photographing things to help her remember. Sometimes we just read and chat together.

Just because I never did this at school, just because she is new to it, just because I am not jaded by teaching 1000 other pupils a year the same thing, doesn't mean we are not capable of doing this thing together. In fact, I think she could have a pretty good stab at it without me at all.

It's hard to get your head around when you are so used to a system where everything is spoon fed to you, but learning this way is tremendously effective and successful.

Thank you for your replies.

Onefunkymuma I am asking because it genuinely interests me. Home Ed isn't something that I am able to do as unfortunately I cannot afford to give up work and I don't think that it would suit my children on a social level. I am definitely indoctrinated into the spoonfed idea of education and couldn't get my head round how home ed worked. I didn't realise that you didn't have to have GCSEs/A levels to go to uni. I also didnt' realise that the OU did courses that children could access.

I just wanted to know how it worked at secondary school level.

julienoshoes, your children's life and education just sounds idyllic

unfortunately dh and I both work full time just to pay the bills so it's not going to happen for us

but I think it sounds so lovely, the way you've done it. So many people are afraid to trust their kids but that's what you have done obviously so well.

'and I don't think that it would suit my children on a social level'

I know it varies from area to area and depends on what a child wants, but the following is from the list of activities and workshops that youngest daughter has done during the last year-it is part of the report I sent to the LA.

Some of thee things happen on a weekly basis and some are one offs during the year, all are with home educated or schooled peers.

We usually get educational rates of entry into places when it is term time, which is how we manage to make the small budget stretch but we also do drive an old banger and do without holidays apart from home ed camps and bargain travel lodge stays)
The other advanatsge of using places like the skainting rink in term time, is that the local home ed group mostly has it to ourselves.

Think you'll see that for us, as for many home educators, socialisation is not a problem.

Card games
Bowling
Gold award from RYA, in sailing.
Swimming
Ice-skating
Rugby
Canadian canoeing
Kayaking
Body Boarding
Bell boating
Surfing
Rock Climbing
Abseiling
Zip Wires
Assault Courses
Orienteering
Grass sledging
Bike riding.
High ropes courses
Camping- during several home educating and public camps and festivals. Mixing with hundreds of home educated peers nationally.
Travels nationally to stay with other home educated peers.

Festival of history day-covering British history, from 4AD to 1945.
Visits to various local stately homes and museums

?Shakespeare for Kidz?
Royal Ballet
Musical theatre, concerts and recitals throughout the year.
Local Museum and Art Gallery-various exhibitions throughout the year.

Sings in a choir.
Bulgarian, Georgian music.
West Gallery and Shape Note music
African church and folk songs
Sings with a band. Has played live ?gigs? locally nationally at festivals and public venues.
Drama lessons and public performances at local Theatre
Guitar playing.
Drumming.
Music Studios-performing, mixing and editing.
Keyboard and piano lessons

julienoshoes I entirely didn't mean that comment as criticism. Like I said I don't think it would suit my dcs, but won't tell them about it in case it is what they would prefer as we really couldn't afford it. As slowreading says, it does sound idyllic.

Captain I didn't take it as a criticism, but thought I would show some of what we do get up to as very many people assume socialisation is a problem.

I was happy to answer a very reasonable question.
It took me ages to get my head round the whole idea TBH-especially this autonomous home ed lark!

I like the majority of the population, had been indoctrinated into believing you had to be taught and going to school/being schooled was the proper way of doing things

I am forever grateful for fellow home ed families having masses of patience with me and showing me differently!

I truly believe that information about home based education being a legal viable option should be out there for all families. Then every parent would be in the position to make an informed choice about what is right for their family at that time.

And thank you, yes for us it has been idyllic! We have had such a great time with our kids, I'd happily do it all, all over again and best of all, the 'children' fully intend to home educate their children totally autonomously from the start, so we must have got something right!

Julie,

When Mr. Badman came to our group, (Kent) I raised that point exactly about HE being a viable choice made known to "everyone", not as in most of our cases, something that we come to as a last resort after years of struggle!

It's the child that gets themselves to GCSE level, teachers are just facilitators as home ed parents are.
Have a look at www.littlearthur.org.uk
If you want your child to sit exams there are plenty of test centres around.

we are onto gcse now and have bought the syllabus book and we just read thorugh and look up extra resources on the internet etc and go over the old past papers which are freely available to download on the internet, including answers. Then we look at finding exam centres and away we go.

If a particular topic needs extra input then we ask a tutor for a couple of lessons, if we need it.

We are doing IGCSE's which are all down to exam only, so no courework to be handed in and marked, but is also very possible to do this too.

Also there are lots of online lessons and gcse courses you could follo if you wished.

You really do not have to have a teacher in a certain subject to be able to pass a gcse.

Poopscoop, are you just doing it yourselves, which IGCSE textbooks did you buy? Think IGCSE is a good way to go because of coursework.

Captain ... I went to school but didn't really "get" science or quite a bit of maths. I was in the top sets but basically still learnt most of what I needed to know for GCSEs from revision guides rather than the teacher. My parents actually wrote to the school to say that I wouldn't be coming in for the "revision" courses in the last few weeks as I would be revising at home. I've always needed time to find things out myself rather than learn the way the teachers teach things. (I got A*s in science by the way and A in maths).

I also found it really hard to learn in an atmosphere where many children don't enjoy learning and tease enthusiastic kids. There are so many good books and resources around, kids who enjoy learning can easily teach themselves to GCSE level IMO. I needed teachers for A levels but then I happened to get really great teachers for these.

I loved English and history but this was mainly because my parents encouraged me to love good books and take an interest in history. In fact my primary school actually discouraged me from reading because apparently I had to complete the boring reading scheme first.

I studied history at Uni and I would say that I have no worries about teaching to GCSE level in any academic subject. I may not know as much as a maths teacher etc. but we could learn together and it's one-to-one tutoring! I would struggle a bit in the practical subjects and French but again there are so many resources out there. And studies actually show that even if you don't have a degree, kids who are home educated usually do better academically than schooled kids.

Alice
www.ifnotschool.blogspot.com/

chatterbocs - we have bought the longman IGCSE book for biology and have managed to get through most of it together. For maths we use an online tutorial. It really is possible to do, as I have not got a vast array of O levels myself.

A great deal of our learning is still done out and about visiting places such as museums and other places of interest. My son can absorb much more from being out and about without too much time spent staring at books.

Is it the conquer maths or the www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/primary/default

Sorry that last link didn't work.
www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mepres/allgcse/allgcse.htm

conquermaths - it is fantastic. If you are a member of Education Otherwise you get a very hefty discount. Have done the online version and also got the disc version of keystage 3 and 4. This is all you need to do the IGCSE maths.

You can try it for free, there are a good few tutorials to try. It gives you a good idea of what is involved. Also done in bitesize lessons which is just enough not to get fed up and you can just log in a do a lesson or 2 whenever you feel like it. It marks your work andgives you a percentage result. If you get stuck at all, you just replay the tutorial until you can understand it. I hated maths but have found this right up my street.

Bear in mind the tutor says 'terrific' and 'excellent' all the way through which makes me laugh! He also has a rather lovely voice!

Poops, has any of yours sat the maths IGCSE yet?

My DS aged 12 will be taking it this november.

Thanks for that Poopscoop!

Have been thinking about this for ds, also aged 12, but didn't know where to look

Many thanks

you are welcome