my 14 yr old hates school

[autonomy]

Hi everyone this is my first post so plz forgive any oddities. My 14 yr old son has never ever liked secondary school and i just don't know what to do anymore to get him to go. i have a precourt meeting at school next week because he has missed so much school, i have no idea what to expect from that. He has a statement of sen, also long term medical difficulties, innappropriate behaviour at times and he is socially immature and small and skinny for his age. He finds school life and work very difficult and he intimidated by older bigger children and very anxious about going to school on certain days. At the moment he's been going in everyday apart from wednesday. I am seriously considering home schooling. i would like to hear from anyone else who is in a similar situation what have you done? and anyone with any advice as to what they think about my situation as i really do not know what to do now.

Hi autonomy,

I would suggest you visit www.education-otherwise.co.uk. or give then a call.
You'll get lots of advice and you can be put in touch with your local eo person and find out about local HE groups.

School is just not for everyone, yours is a common tale.
I understand that with a statement it is not just as simple as de-registering, but EO will answer that.

I'm sure you'll get lots more answers, there are lots of us on MN.

Actually I've just read the website and it is just simply de-registering with SEN statement!

Ooh, you could do it today!

Good luck!

Where in the country are you?

From a practical point of view, because he's in a mainstream school you could simply deregister him from school and start to home educate him. Him having a statement doesn't make any difference to that, it would only be different if he was at a special school, which doesn't sound ike it from your description.

You would probably find that the LEA will be very "involved" with you though, since they know that he has already been missing school, and they often worry more that you would maybe not be giving him much education but just trying to stop them hassling you. I'm sure you're not, but you can see that they worry about people doing that, so they'd want to check that you're managing ok even more than they would usually do.

But once he's out of school, you can focus on whatever things you and he agree on - that will depend on what things you think he needs to catch up on, or things to help with his plans for after school. You just have to make sure he is getting an education suitable for his age, abilities and aptitudes, and his SEN - people on here or other boards would be able to help you think through what that is and how you're going to go about it.

If he's hating school, not going, and not getting much out of it when he is there, than I think educating him from home sounds like a good plan.

I home educated my three children with SEN from the ages of 13, 11 and 8.
Was the very best thing I could ever have done.

My son-the eldest, like yours hated school from the very first day.

There are thread on websites about home education, books on home ed and how to find other home educartors locally to you. Also threads about actually deregistering. I'll go bump them all for you.

There is a Home Education Special Needs website and a book on Home Educating Special Needs children.Details are included in the relevant threads.
Hopefuly they will give you food for thought. But please don't feel like you have to read masses before home educating, you don't. It might be useful for you, but if things are that bad, then don't hesitate. We found out about home education one day and deregistered the next! I knew whatever I did for my children it had got to be better than school was for them at that point!