urgent answers please

[pinkkoala]

we are currently home schooling our dd 5yrs old.

we have been offered a place at the school where we had her name on the waiting list, i need to let them know by 4pm today my answer.

i have asked them if we could do flexi schooling, part time at school and part time at home, i think i must be talking a foreign language.

i can't get to speak to the head teacher until we accept the place then we see her and have a chat.

but we enjoy the flexibilty of home schooling but also like the thought of her having some structure.

why is everybody anti this, and how can i convince the head that this is what i want to try, if we decline the place it could be months before another one comes up.

help.

I think you should accept the place and discuss what you would like to do as I imagine it is easier to then decline the place afterwards rather than decline it now and then take up a place.

I think that very few schools will let people do flexi-schooling and you really can't force their hand.

I also really think that flexi-schooling is probably the worst of both worlds.

I think you need to ask yourself what you think she'll get out of school, particularly part time school and is it really worth the battle. Can't you provide structure at home (not my cup of tea, but lots of HEors do 'school at home')? Or send her to some out of school clubs?

I think the teachers are anti flexi-schooling because, unless they've made a conscious decision to welcome it, it's probalby very stressful and adds a lot to their workload, trying to manage one child out of the class only being there sometimes and working out when to teach what so they don't miss out etc. not to mention the impact on her and her class-mates of the 'bittiness' of just being there some days and not others.

I agree with Noah - take the palce now, you can always decline it later if it doesn't work out.

The antipathy to flexi-schooling may have sdomething to do with how it affects the schools's performance re attendance targets (i.e will look like truanting). It may also be difficualt for the teacher to integrate your dd's learning with the rest of the class (unless she is learning the same topics etc as the rest of the class are doing when she is at home).

But talk to the head once you have accepted the place.

Like the others I would say if you think you might want the place, then grab it with both hands and discuss the detail later - I assume this is a school that (before you started to consider HE) you were happy with?

If you can't sort out the detail, you can turn it down again.

Flexi-school is in a lot of ways the worst of both worlds - you are tied to a daily/weekly/termly/yearly timetable, so lose all the flexibility to do things "just because it seems like a nice idea today". It is also probably difficult socially - children play together in groups, and their games carry on from one breaktime to another - if your DD is not there some days, she may find that the games have moved on without her and she never feels that she fits in. It is tricky for the teacher to arrange the timetable - they might be doing something before lunch and the teacher thinks it would be a good idea to carry on after lunch for another half hour just to finish it up before moving on to the planned lessons - if your DD misses that session, then she misses out on what they were covering.

So, it's tricky for everyone!

I think to decide if you want to pursue it you need to think about what it is you want your DD to get out of the school part - is it certain subjects, or the social side, or what?

Having said all that, my DS has done flexi-school this year, but that is in the equivalent of Year 11 so there is a rigid timetable and he can miss one timetable column for HE without any issues.

i think what we would like to gain from flexi schooling is the social side of things and the chance to move up the year groups with all her friends, but from the home ed side we were hoping a place wouldn't be available til sept 2010/jan 2011 as we had planned a home ed year and to be very flexible, she loves being outside and at 5yrs i feel she wouldn't like to be kept in a classroom for most of the day, i do try and do some structured lessons outside in the garden and she does lots of other things in the garden, like painting, chalking, planting seeds, looking at creepy crawlies etc.

I don't know how the day/week is arranged for her age group, or how much it varies between schools. But I know when my DS was that age (a while back, and in Scotland...) they did some literacy and some numeracy every day - if it's still the same, then I think the school would want her to be in for those at least, which would probably mean every morning (if they can pin it down that well), which would make your time less flexible. I don't want to put you off asking, but I haven't heard of many schools being keen on the idea - they generally take the view that they do things their way and the children should all be fully part of that, rather than encouraging flexibility.

Personally, I'd be tempted to look into something like Brownies, or some other activity group, where she'd have a group of friends, and progress in the activity over time - I'd guess you like the idea of her moving up from being a newbie, to seeing how much she's progressed when others start, to having a bit more responibility as she gets older, that sort of thing?

If you were hoping there wouldn't be a place until September or January, then I would, honestly, just say that. "We really like your school, but Dd isn't quite ready to be in full time schooling yet, so please could you put us back to the bottom of the waiting list and we'll almost certainly be ready to say "yes please" by the time we get to the top of the list again".

and then there WILL be a place, of course there will, sometime in the next year.

I think schools may be more inclined to consider flexi-schooling as a response to an existing problem or difficulty while the child is already at the school, rather than before they've even started, iyswim...

and I don't think you can count on a place becoming available soonish. In my experience of school waiting lists, demand actually seems to go up as dcs increase in age- I can only guess this happens as people find they're not happy with the school their dcs are in and look for a transfer!

"The antipathy to flexi-schooling may have sdomething to do with how it affects the schools's performance re attendance targets (i.e will look like truanting)."

That is not the case. Time at home when flexi-schooling is recorded as "Educated off-site" and is counted as attendance. However, some schools get it wrong and don't record it correctly!

DS1 went to school on a flexi-schooling arrangement, which worked OK in reception but didn't work at all in year 1 because the new Head and the class teacher were not supportive. So we took him out at the end of the year and DS2 never started (he was in nursery at the time). We've been home edding ever since. We have structured mornings and are a bit more relaxed in the afternoons. We also meet up with others for French/Spanish every week and go to a Book Club once a month.