home education in scotland

[mummypontipine]

seriously considering home ed for dc age 4 late dec birthday has delayed speech sees a speech therapist weekly. applied for defered entry to p1 but looks likely to be deferred

i will not send him to p1 when i know it will affect him long term and i am now really considering the HE route as i have lost faith in my councils ability to consider my dc as an individual . it feels like all their interested in is how much it will cost in the short term

if i were to go down the home ed route how easy is it are there any groups organisations where i can get support ,advice etc
what are the pitfalls. dc has older siblings so have gone through the school system previously and i know i could teach him the curriculum correctly.i would also ensure dc attended social groups and mixed with other children and adults etc

The organisation you really need to look at is Schoolhouse - they are the experts on HE in Scotland, and can help you out with advice etc. Education Otherwise also has contacts in Scotland, though they are a UK wide organisation so don't have as much specific information on the law etc.

I HE'd my DS for a couple of years, but not till much older so I can't point you in the direction of groups etc. But do put a thread on the HE section asking for local contacts, I'm sure there'll be others about.

BTW you don't have to send him to school (or start HE either come to that!) until the autumn after his 5th birthday. The option for deferring is always yours as the parent, he could start P1 at 5 and 8 months if you choose. The only thing that the council can decide to be awkward about is choosing not to fund a nursery place for that year, they can't refuse you permission to defer.

A child in my dd class was deferred from a December birthday - he did get council funding and continued at nursery and entered P1 at 5 years and 8 months. My DH's collegues son on the other hand was refused deferred funding from the council(also Dec bday. They decided though to still keep him at nursery and he went to a private nursery for a year then went into P1 this year.