Flexischooling - is it something you would consider?

[Elsy]

I am considering approaching my daughter's headteacher about taking her out of school one day a week to home educate, but am a bit worried they will not be at all happy about it. My daughter has only just started Reception this year and I don't want to get a reputation as a troublemaker!

Any positive/negative experiences of flexischooling would be welcome...

Interested. I'd like to flexi school but I know my DD's future primary is not open to it - they are hostile to it even at nursery level

I'd love to but can imagine how school would react!

Unfortunately it is a lottery as to how the school will react! Schools have to let you Deregister completely, but flexi is at the head's discretion.

Having said that if the child is a summer born they do not have to be in school at all yet - it is the term after their fifth birthday, so my DD (July) doesn't actually have to be there until year 1. Again though it is a lottery as to how the schools deal with this. My DD's school encourages all pupils to be FT from October half term.

One of my friends kept her August born boy on half days for the whole of reception, against the schools wishes, but she knew her rights and knew what was best for her son.

I would love to,but there is no way my dd's headteacher would agree,he would take it as a personal insult that someone would'nt want their child to be in his fantastic school full time

The hesitations I would have about flexi-schooling are:

1. It may be harder to form good friendships, particularly with girls eg. girls play a game together in playground on the day your child is not there, they continue the following day when your child is there but she doesn't know what is happening or how to play it etc. Sounds minor but could become a playground problem.
2. and more importantly... if a child misses a day of school, they may find it harder to get stuck in the next day.... I mean in terms of the curriculum. eg. Teacher reads a book to the children one day and the children start activities based around it. Then following day they continue with this but your child has no clue what is going on because she missed the previous lesson. Obviously this happens with illness etc but the head teacher has no choice there...

We have august born children who were just not ready for full time school. The school refused to let them go part time so we 'home educated' for 2 terms until the summer term - well that was the plan but we loved it so much we just carried on...

I thought that teachers plan their lessons to incorporate the whole curriculum, would you be able effectively synchronise with that? Ie not duplicate or miss things. Why not do your "lessons" on a Saturday?

BTW you should post this on the Home Ed board - it can be a bit quiet on there but lots of lovely experienced people to advise. :)

I really wish we could do HE or flexi but circumstances have not been kind to us lately.

I think schools used to receive full funding even if a child was registered as flexi-schooled. But now a flexi-schooled child only receives funding for a part time place. If a school is cash strapped that might be a disincentive.

It's likely to be tricky, both in terms of her missing work that the class are doing, and missing out on friendships etc in the playground. What exactly are you aiming to achieve in "home educating" on one weekday? Are there not less disruptive ways of doing that?

That's all really helpful, thanks. Lots of food for thought.

I don't think missing out on the curriculum would be much of a problem in Key Stage 1 (and part of the reason I want to do it is because DD is well ahead of most of the class, so isn't progressing much with what they're learning at present). However, I agree with the friendship group stuff - that's something that does worry me. I'd hoped that one day wouldn't make too much difference, but you never know.

I can't do the one-on-one stuff at weekends as I have a younger child, but she's at nursery in the week.

Thanks for the advice about the Home Ed board - didn't realise there was one. I'll go and take a look!

We flexi schooled DS temporarily, while they hired a new TA

He just went to school till lunchtime, and then come home for the afternoon.

Not sure about reception, but in the rest of primary they normally teach literacy and maths in the morning, and everything else in the afternoon, so it is less disruptive to take kids out for the afternoon, then it would be to take them out one day a week.

I would love to do this so much. Apparently there isn't even one flexi schooled child in the whole of sunderland, though. Atm, DD is just pottering along, but I see pitfalls ahead with regards to her personality/skillset and the idea of being in a school environment all week. But, we'll see. Things change.

My eldest son is an August born baby and for his reception/foundation class I would only send him into school 4 days per week. The school knew this from the onset and was happy to accomodate.

I wouldn't do it because it makes it very difficult on the friendship front-the rest are all getting on without her, and she may well get upset about what she misses. As she is very young I might, but not after reception.
Much better to do one or the other and commit to it. I think it would be preferable to keep her at home until next September.

i did it for a while, it is totally up to each school and HT to decide, we had a very supportive HT at one primary school who awas great, as were the two teachers who taught my sons, it worked fine until we got a new HT who was totally against it, she was just awful tbh and we withdrew our children from the school and found a new school which they attend full time, purely becasue they were 9yrs old and 6yrs old and ready for full time school and i had mh issues (pno) after the birth of my 4th child so coping with a toddler, new baby and pnp and flexi schooling just wasnt going to be possible anymore.

it worked really wel whilst we had a supportive ht! and if i needed to i would do it again, we did kind of with ds3 who went part time for most of reception and then for some of yr one as he was poorly (had kawasaki disease)

I do it with my 9yer old DS so he can access some specialist therapy and breaks the week up for him as he hates school. School are good about it and I am always aware if they have something to finish etc and change days. I want to have an afternoon a week with my dd7 to boost her reading and the head is considering it - most of the structured activity is in the mornings so an afternoon causes least disruption.

It is amazing how many parents want this option, i would suggest you all wright to your MP's, see if you can take it out of the heads hands so to speak. Maybe with nagging it could become the norm?

I doubt it. It seems vastly unfair to me that people want the flexibility and it hasn't crossed their mind that it puts the school in a straight jacket to do it!

The school would have to stick to a timetable and not many primary schools want a rigid one. As a teacher I would hate it. What happens if the child is at home on Tuesday and is coming in on Wednesday expecting Maths, but on Tuesday afternoon the children were all really stuck into an exciting project and you want to continue first thing on Wednesday morning while they are bubbling with enthusiasm? Do you say 'sorry children, James is coming for maths and we must do it now', or do you say 'Sorry James, I promised the children that they could carry on from yesterday'. I would want to do the second and that means either putting James with a group to join in-having missed all the previous work and they might resent an extra, or finding him something to do while they continue. Maybe he goes at lunchtime and you want to do the missing maths straight after lunch.
If you take up bebanjo's suggestion it is a logistical nightmare or juggling lessons between who is there and who isn't and when!

Schools want to be flexible too and they need the children to be physically there! I can see it is the poor teacher that gets run ragged keeping track of who was there, or more importantly who wasn't and needs updating.

I think that it is fairly easy to do in reception but not after that. You also pity the poor child, they will get left out in the playground if they are not a 'proper' part-out of sight, out of mind.The only type to cope in the friendship stakes are the super confident, very popular, natural leader children.

Exotic, I agree.

I plan maths, for example, by the week. We have a 'target' of something we all want to be able to do by the end of the week, and every lesson gives us a new skill (or rehearses an old one) which builds towards that target.

A child who routinely misses e.g. a Wednesday would miss one step - and I am sure that a flexi-schooling parent would then want their child to 'make up' that step so he / she reached the target along with the rest of the class...so i'd have to plan in TA time or my time to do that extra teaching of wednesday's lesson to a single child. Or they miss Friday, and never achieve the target. Or they miss an afternoon in which we had another quick practise of a tricky bit from the morning's maths ... or indeed had the whole Maths lesson as maybe we had done a whole morning of drama-followed-by-writing or a lengthy hands-on Science practical (I only have a TA for 2 hours each morning, so for complex Science practicals with my 50% SEN class I do sometimes use the morning slots just to have another pair of hands.

Same for Literacy ... child misses the input for a new piece of writing, or the writing itself after creating a plan etc.

As an ex-HEing parent, as well as a teacher, I would say that either 'full on' alternative works, and flexi-schooling over a short timescale or on entering school may be necessary to ease transition. But the halfway house of flexi-schooling is potentially the worst of both worlds and would give the full satisfaction of neither.

I think part time schools should exist. So your child could go, say, Monday Tuesday Wednesday, or Thursday Friday Saturday. Two classes could then use the same classroom.

Or how about having my dream educational situation. A learning centre, with a library and resources for casual use, and regular classes. So, key stage one (or year one, or even level one) maths is on a Tuesday and Wednesday morning. If you want to be part of that class you register at the beginning of the year or term, then you come every Tuesday and Wednesday morning. You might be in level one maths, but then come for the level 3 science on a Wednesday afternoon. Then there could be special events - eg Thursday could be the "specials" day, when there is a timetable of different things that happen - there might be a show, or a huge craft project, and again, you put your name down at the beginning of term.

In the learning centre, there would be the option to book your child in for supervision with a vague age group, in a similar way to a private nursery. So you might need your child looking after from 3-5pm, and they could go there for more than looking after - there would be qualified people who could help them with any projects or direct play etc. Maybe a teacher overseeing, with TAs and even some of the teenagers helping out, but on a very casual way - there would be no lesson plans, so it would be more like a homework club, where the children could either follow a passion or work through their homework from either their parents or the classes.

You would be able to book one on one time with a teacher, TA, specialist or, again, an older child who had volunteered, for special help or advice on specific things, or just a bit of a chat around a subject.

There could be more obscure classes too - on a Monday from 3-5 it might be Latin, or The History of Football, or whatever had enough interest. The centre could be used for adult classes in the evenings, a mixture of OU type stuff, basic skills and hobby type things.

Sigh. It sounds complex, but with even just as many children as in one mid size primary school and a small high school, it would work. Not as a solution to everything, but one in each town or so.

I think it would make learning back into a whole life thing, rather than the chore than lots of people seem to think it is.

Some of the big HE groups are organised a bit like this, though not as well resourced. We didn't really get involved as an HEing family, as DS couldn't handle the lack of structure, though we did go on some good trips (HEing families getting together to book a guided 'school trip' to a place of interest).

That, sense of entitlement, is my dream.

My friend and I have been discussing setting one up. Though I figure by the time we started, my two would no longer be young enough to attend.

Mind you, the free schools seem to get set up in no time at all.

SenseOfEntitlement - I can certainly see it working better for a whole school to work on a "flexi" basis, rather than for a single child to be flexi-schooled within a class where everyone else is working on a different basis, or even where half the class is there fulltime and half coming and going to their own schedules, simply because the logistics for the school must be a nightmare.

I think when parents hope to get the school to allow flexi-schooling they need to think through their arguments quite carefully -

How will it affect this child?
How will it affect the class, and the teacher?
How will it affect the school in general?
What exactly are they trying to achieve by flexi-schooling, how do they think that's going to work, is this the best way to achieve it?

DS was HE for a couple of years at secondary, and we negotiated some flexi-schooling the first year he went back. But that was easier to arrange - he was out of school for one "column" of his year-group's timetable, which was blocks on two afternoons, so there were no problems with logistics. He was working towards something specific (music grades), and there was parental supervision at home. So the school didn't have to worry about how many other people would ask for the same, and how tricky it would get if lots wanted to do it, as they could apply the same criteria.

SoE that's my dream too. It'd be amazing :)

Shame we are in opposite ends of the country eh?