HE at secondary age - bad idea?

[soupdela]

DS is due to start secondary in sept - he has mostly enjoyed primary but definitely a bit less with each year he moved up and yr 6 has been a real grind since xmas with preparation for sats. Anyway, he is going to local secondary rated 'outstanding' by ofsted but also pretty notorious for bad behaviour and run-down facilities. I promised him that if he is not happy we can try HE but anyone got experience of starting HE at age 11+ - is this exactly the time they need to integrate more? He's an only child so could get pretty lonely...? Grateful for any advice

HE doesn't mean stuck at home all the time though - there are Home Ed groups and lots of other extra-curricular activities etc.

I know that they can take GCSEs independently, if you were worried about that. Not sure about much else though, sorry, hopefully someone else will!

no reason why it wouldn't work well. Where do you live? Let's find your local support network

Well, we starting HEing our daughter at 12 and it's worked out really well. It was a very scary decision, though! Educationally, very much easier than I predicted.

She has lots of friends, both home ed and schooled, so the social thing hasn't been an issue at all. She's much happier than she was at school, by a long shot.

She's still very much a typical teenager (she's now 14) but she seems more balanced than a lot of her schooled friends that age. She did a year at secondary and that was enough for me to be very glad she's not in that environment every day now.

Oh, and like your son, she loved infant school, enjoyed junior school, but seemed to like it less and less the older she got.

ooh can we find my local group please?

dd is 15 and yr 10. Has come out of mainstream due to bullying issues and we are struggling to get structure. I looked at Education otherwise but all seems a bit confusing tbh.

thank you

You have to tell us where you are (county or town) for us to help with local contacts.

When I first mentioned HE to my mum (a primary school teacher), she thought it was a fantastic idea and wished she'd done it with us four. I said 'I'll probably only do it to secondary school level'. Her response what that, in her experience of teens, secondary school is potentially more damaging than primary school!

I know lots of HE teens who have lots of friends. Go for it! Just get along to lots of meetings and arrange to meet up with other teens.

DH and I have been discussing HE (our two are very young) and TBH if I could only choose to HE for either primary or secondary, I would actually choose secondary!

This is because two of the main reasons for us wanting to HE are the modern obsession with teaching-to-the-exams and the abundance of peer pressure...

One worry about our decision is, what if DCs don't want to be HEd? But if your DS wants to do it, give it a go

I am Me14

thank you

Do you mean that you are in Maidstone, liahgen? If so, you'll find that there is a lot going on in Kent and Sussex.

The EO page for Kent is at www.education-otherwise.org/Groups/kent.htm and for Sussex it's at www.education-otherwise.org/Groups/sussex.htm.

yes I am,

thank you very much

Sorry for the delay and thanks for your advice - I suppose I musn't prejudge and will tell DS to give secondary a fair chance before making any decision but I feel more confident now that I could take that step if neccessary.

I've been HE'ing grandson since he was 5. He will be 11 in June and eligible for secondary school in September. I don't want him to go to secondary school and neither does he.
I haven't found any problems with HE in primary, only initially with reading, but that has now taken off in a positive way in the last few months.
I'd like some advice in how to approach secondary school in terms of content.
Is it much more HE'ing a child in secondary than in Primary?

It depends on how you approach it, Marjorie. We've been autonomous throughout so it didn't change at 11. At rising 14, DD started an OU Level 1 course and DS started on science courses at 13, so we've had those running along for the last four years. And, BTW, that still counts as autonomous because the DC wanted to do them.

I know you include some structure, so it depends what you and DGS want to do as he reaches 16 and adulthood. Some people start to take GCSEs early, from around 13, often starting with non-essay subjects (maths and science) and taking two per year. KS3 repeats a lot of KS2 and is repeated a lot at GCSE. There is a lot of GCSE material around (e.g. WHSmith) and the Yahoo! group [email protected] is a great source of inspiration and information.

Personally, I started from what the DC were interested in and then what they needed to get where they wanted to be. So, DD started with German because she had done an exchange and wanted to gain demonstrable academic credit for it. She then did a L2 English course because she was intending to complete a languages degree. She changed her mind and decided to pursue law, so looked to see what universities require. Oxford insist on GCSE Maths or equivalent, so she did a L1 maths course to be able to satisfy that requirement. She's now doing an arts foundation course, for interest, and has today received a conditional offer from a uni for law.

Sorry, that should have said HE-Exams-GCSE-A AS [email protected] without the spaces!

So, is it quite feasible for a DC to do GCSEs early then? And A levels?

I'd certainly want to consider that for my DCs, it seems silly to still leave them all for one summer! It'd be good to do them early if they were ready. But I don't want to put pressure on them either.

SDeuchars - congrats to your DD, that's so exciting!

Thanks, MMM.

Yes, lots of EHEers do GCSEs early. See the Home Education Exams website - it hasn't been updated for a while, but it gives some idea of what people are doing.

liaghen66 - also try the yahoo group - kentandlondonhomeeducation, or some such title. There seem to be lots of trips and meet-ups.

Hi Marjorie, good to see you on here! And MadMathsMummy, hoping I can answer you too.

My DD2 is virtually the same age as your grandson, Marjorie - she'll be 11 in August so just clips into being secondary next year. We did look at schools briefly in case she wanted to go but decided against it - she's happy as she is and she is so little and emotionally young for her age that we all felt she would be ridiculously out of place in a secondary (I have pics on my profile, you'll see what I mean - neither DD2 nor DD1 age 14 are particularly grown up or streetwise).

Anyhow, because she's still very much a little girl in her outlook, we will just continue as we have been. She's been studying whatever has interested her, like rainforests or weather or animals, or lego or meccano or dancing, and I don't see why I have to stop that just because by a quirk of her birthdate, she will fall into the secondary category rather than the primary.

However, she's good at maths and science and we are already on secondary work for that as it was a natural progression, so we are really just going with the flow and tackling things as they come along, at a time and level that is right for her. I don't really see anything changing in September.

My elder daughter I took out of school at 12, and because I was in a panic about her not falling behind, we followed the Key stage 3 curriculum which is very accessible on the DFES website. I can link if anyone wants. However, after a year we ditched it as being a bit of a waste of her time and I won't bother with it for DD2. What I will do with DD2 is go straight on to GCSEs once she is ready and wants to. It's perfectly possible to take some early. DD1 is doing 3 this summer at only 14. The advantage of that is that she will never have the awful pressure of 10 GCSEs at a time that schooled kids have. We're planning on 2 - 3 a year for Year 9, 10 and 11, which will give her quite enough exams to do whatever else she wants to do with very little stress.

Far from putting pressure on her by taking some early, it's taken pressure off. We've worked only on the GCSE subjects and nothing else, so it's been fairly quick and painless to cover it and she's had loads of free time to do whatever else she wants to do. Because she's only 14, there's none of this "If I fail my whole life is ruined" feeling that children in Y11 at school have. If she fails, we'll try again in November and it won't matter at all.

Hope some of this is a help to you both!

Hi, posy, nice to hear from you again!
I think grandson is a bit like your little girl - very young in his ways and some of his learning.
The feeder secondary for where we live is a no-go area and I don't think grandson would be able to cope there.
As he's a 'looked after' child, he would have the right to go to a secondary of my choice and if they had a place, they would have to accept him. But, hey, why fix it, if it's not broke?
We've gone sort of 'semi-structure' with maths and literacy on a daily basis and the rest of the day it's stuff he's interested in.
I'll have a look at the DFES site, but ideally, I'd like to focus on GCSE Maths.
Loves his Lego, K'nex and, of course, his DS.
Thanks for the advice -great as usual.

thanks musicposy - really helpful post, and very reassuring!

I had a French tutor for a bit who recommended I take GCSE early (maybe yr8 or 9) but as it didn't fit in with the whole grammar school thing, I didn't - a shame really.

I'd like DCs to do whichever subjects they want although definitely the core subjects. Expensive though, I've heard! Will have a look at OU courses too - I'm doing an OU degree so it's familiar!

When your DD has done all the GCSEs she wants, are you going to start A levels even if she's younger than yr12?

I don't think we will start A levels, though never say never! DD1 is quite keen to go to college at 16 and do a performing arts course as she is very into dance, so I think it will be just GCSEs. As for DD2, who knows; it's a long way off yet.

We haven't found it too expensive. DD1 is doing Maths GCSE with AQA this year, which was about £60 all told. We studied from the CGP maths GCSE workbook (we're doing foundation only this year) and have had the exam fee plus a £30 admin fee for the centre. We are also doing Cambridge IGCSE Biology and Geography and these have been cheaper, just over £30 each because the school are willing to take us for free as part of their charitable benefit. We haven't bothered with tutors, just worked it out ourselves as we've gone along. We downloaded lots of past papers from freeexampapers.com, which gave us lots of free resources which really helped.

DD1 is planning to do higher maths next year and I will start foundation maths GCSE very slowly with DD2. We've found doing the foundation paper very useful in its own right, even though DD1 will eventually do higher, because it has meant that she knows all the basics really well. Key stage 3 maths and foundation GCSE are actually very similar so you could easily go onto GCSE after primary school work is finished.

English and other essay-based subjects we will leave until Year 11. I've heard that it's a good idea to do those last as children develop a maturity of thought as they grow up that enables them to do much better at 16 than they would at 14. My reasoning is that their English is improving all the time just by being in the world, so I may as well not rush it.

ah thanks musicposy - I'm afraid you've reminded me of something else I was wondering about.

with the essays, do you (or anyone else reading this obviously) worry about 'marking' essays? I say this as a friend who didn't go to school for years - not properly HE, it's complicated - really struggles with writing anything more than a sentence. It's caused major problems with coursework at college and UCAS statement. He said himself, he missed out on the 'teacher' feedback, starting with a paragraph in yr7 moving onto essays etc.

I'm not at all worried about my own essay-writing skills that I could pass on to DCs, but unlike maths/science subjects, exam answers are largely subjective - so I won't know if DCs are doing ok, IYKWIM? My idea of a good essay may not be the same as an exam marker's...

Any thoughts?

The current thinking in many secondary schools is to use PEE for essays!! Point, Example, Explanation for each paragraph. Stick an introduction on the front and a conclusion on the end, and I'm guessing you can't go that far wrong. (I teach languages, so am not really 'au fait' with the essay writing subjects!)

The other thing to do is to have a look at exam specifications and mark schemes on the exam board websites and see what they say. You can download them (and past papers) for free.

DS1 is 12 and year 7 and we use Galore Park books for some subjects. I'm hoping he'll do GCSE French + one other at the end of year 9, then do 3 in year 10 and 3 in year 11 but we'll see how it goes.

So when would you start working towards GCSEs?

Grandson is 11 in June so when would he sit any GCSE's or the equivalent?