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...

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.

My thoughts entirely.
I just couldn't bear it as a teacher because I don't like to be constrained and have the entire class constrained in a rigid framework so that one DC and their parents can have their ideal! It isn't fair.
Even things that are timetabled are subject to change. For example I can see a parent wanting their DC to have PE with climbing bars etc and so if, as often happens, another teacher says 'Oh-do you think we could swap hall times this week I need to .........' instead of being helpful I have to say 'sorry Josh is coming for that one and your hall time isn't his 'day'.

If parents do want flexi schooling I think that they just have to phone up and find out what we are doing. They would have to be entirely responsible for their DCs educational programme and not expect the teacher to keep tabs on what they are missing, what needs to catch up etc . A parent's evening for general chat would be helpful, but I wouldn't want to write a report.

I think that it would help if parents saw schools and the class as the whole picture and not just in terms of their child.

It actually , like anything in education, boils down to money. Heads are not being difficult but they get so much money per child and I have no idea what happens with a part time one but I would be very surprised if they got the full amount. I don't know- but it is quite possible that they lose all of it.

If parents want to do it I would suggest they HE and hire a hall so many times a week, and a teacher, for something they do want to do. I bet there are lots of teachers, who don't want to work full time, who would be accommodating and be happy to be paid by the hour. If they don't want to hire a teacher they could use the expertise within the group.

my children didnt go into school 'expecting' to do anything! they just did what the rest of the class were doing that day and got on with it! if that meant joining in the middle of something then they did and got on fine. the teachers were full of praise for how well adjusted my boys were and there immense general knowledge, they were academically ahead of their peers generally, tho ds2 was slightly behind for a bit with reading but caught up and then whizzed ahead.

we never did half days, on the days they attended they would do full days, generally at hte start of each term i woudl speak to the teacher and find out what days they woudl like the boys to attend, but we were flexible, if the school had something happening they thought the boys would like i sent them in for an extra day, but equally if the opportunity for us to do something out of school came up i would speak to the teacher and they would miss another day, or swap days etc, that seemed to work well, but again is VERY dependent on the individual school and teachers :)

i wasnt sending my children to school to learn any particular subject or for a particularly academic reason, we ahd opted to home ed at primary school age as they were summer born and too young for formal school, we had already thought that we would send them to school at high school age and the opportunity came up to flexi school (i found of someone else doing it at this school) and spoke to the HT who was hugely enthusiastic about it, as were the teachers.

many home ed groups do already hire halls, specific teachers by the hour to teach small groups where parents have clubbed together, i did this for french lessons :)

I would imagine they already do hire halls-it makes sense to me.

As a teacher I wouldn't mind them coming in to take 'pot luck' and just join in as long as I wasn't responsible-with parents asking me earnest questions about how they were doing in maths etc- because I could only say 'I don't really know, they missed the introduction and they missed the assessment and they were not there when I went over common mistakes' or 'I saw them 3 days later and they had completely forgotten what they had done!'

I suspect that it would only work for the under 7yr olds 4madboys and after that they wouldn't find it very nice. e.g. as a class we are doing percentages and they missed the first day-I wouldn't be willing to do private tuition every week to catch up what was missed. It would also be a bit sad for them if they are year 4 and everyone is in a group designing torches and they don't have a group and they missed the work on circuits.

All very well if the parent is in charge-sends them in and understand that they may have difficulties. I wouldn't do it to my child, however bright. I would do one or the other after the age of 6yrs.

The other thing to remember is that schools are not just about the academic side.
When you are just looking at your DC rather than the class you miss the fact that each class has a different dynamic and that changes according to the children there.
It is a bit like a family, you get used to everyone's strengths and weaknesses and little foibles. There are 'in' jokes that everyone understands because they know where they come from. If a DC it is strange without them but if they are constantly missing you get used to them not being there. Like the family, you do something without a member and it feels odd and the one missing realises they missed out because although you tell them about it, it isn't the same as actually being there.
This becomes more important as they get older. Some parents think that a 5 yr old can just slot in with other 5 yr olds, but they are just as discerning as anyone else -some they like and some they don't. They work at friendships and it helps if they are there. Imagine if you have a group of friends and you think you are really close, but whereas the rest see each other 5 days a week you are not there every time. They are perfectly friendly but it is far more a surface thing-the rest have far more time to bond, they have done things and had conversations and experiences that you have missed and you feel a bit of an outsider-unless you are so charismatic and popular that you immediately become the centre of the group. The majority of adults and children can't do that.
I am a bit of a control freak, I was even as a child, and I couldn't bear to miss anything by being ill-I didn't feel 'in control' when I got back.

It depends a lot on your child-I think that it causes unnecessary difficulties for them, especially after 7yrs. Much better to HE full time and throw yourself into groups IMO.
If you only want to do it part time, you really need to work out whether what suits you suits your DC. I think that it works better if you are doing it because it suits your DC.

Sorry-should have read if a DC is missing it is strange without them.

exoticfruits - I love the way you've explained that about how it would affect a child socially, esp the bit about a class being like a family. Totally agree.

I personally would love to HE, but my health means that my kids need to have at least "one foot in" somewhere where we could increase hours if I had a relapse (I also like a break!) This worked brilliantly when they were part time at a really friendly nursery, and my lovely inlaws could help out as well, but doesn't work for school.

I actually looked into setting up a flexi free school in Newcastle, but, again, I had a relapse. I would be overjoyed to help someone else out with setting one up, but I couldn't lead the effort.

I honestly, honestly think that a lot of the problems with HE/flexischool are to do with the small amount of people doing it. If we had it more integrated into society most of the issues would evaporate.

SofE,

I don't think there are any particular issues with HE, except where it is used as a 'cover' for children to be removed from school and NOT educated - we have a specific cultural group where I teach who withdraw their children, particularly girls, to 'home educate' at 13. They are in fact not educated at all but act as childcare for younger siblings until they have children of their own at c. 16. I don't see any issues with genuine HE where a genuine education suitable to a child's interests and aptitudes, preparing them for the world they will enter as an adult, is provided.

I think that a 'parallel' but separate flexi-school as you describe - as a formalised extension of what larger HE groups already do - is also perfectly workable educationally.

Where I think the problem lies is in combining flexi-schooling with 'conventional' primary / junior schools (and in the early years of secondary before subject 'blocking') UNLESS it is on the basis that parents retain full educational responsibility for their children. This would be on the understanding that teachers would teach the children to the best of their ability while the child was present, but expect the parents to fill in all gaps which arose during the time their child was absent (so if, for example, a child in my class missed a Wednesday and the step in Maths that comes on that day, the onus would be on the parent rather than the teacher to either prepare the child for the Thursday lesson or acknowledge that the child would not benefit fully from what is taught on the Thursday and Friday). I cannot see any other way in which it would work - and having more children who flexi-schooled, to different patterns, in the same 'conventional' school would exacerbate rather than solve the problem, as A might miss Mondays, Y Tuesdays, Z Wednesday afternoons...

It would only work in that way teacherwith2kids. It would be the opposite of what happens at the moment.
I see education as a partnership and the parent sends the child to school and it is the teacher's job to provide the education, make sure that it is appropriate and that they are making progress. The parent might leave it entirely to the the school, or as is more usual, they support the school by hearing reading etc and the do a lot at home that complements it.
If people want to flexi school they would have to accept that they are providing the education and they are responsible for progression and they just send into school for the bits that they want and get the school to support them e.g. they want group work for science projects or they want a unit on percentages or they want a creative writing workshop or they want to be taught French twice a week etc. They deliver the DC and the teacher does as asked and the parent is the one who monitors it and may say 'I would like some more basic maths work' or they have mastered the work on percentages can you present them in a problem solving way etc.
What you can't do is pop in and out and expect the teacher to monitor it all and do catch up etc.

The other way, that could work quite well because I know a school that do it (although all the children are there full time) is that everyone is in school on a Monday when there are presentation lessons for all subjects. Each child then gets an individual planner with 3 sections, work that must be done, work that it is hoped would be done and work that could be done. They then do it in whatever order they like. They can do it all at school or they can do a lot at home, coming into school for groupwork-e.g. science experiments. Parents could substitute other things, as long as they covered the 'must do' section.

Basically flexi school would be fine, if it is a new concept of education. I don't like it with the present set up, because it gives the flexi child more freedom at the expense of those left in school (and the teacher).

They work in that way with planners, but they are in school all the time-there are no flexi pupils. If they haven't finished the 'must do' on Friday they take it home to finish, but that is very rare.

I flexi school because of special needs as do most other flexi schoolers I know and a surprising amount of full time HE's. If SEN were better met in schools and schools were more inclusive I bet it would eliminate a lot of us pesky people

It all comes down to money raspberryroop-SN get on brilliantly-if there is funding for fulltime TA support.

Money and expertise - my oldest 13 had a full time SEN teacher with him as (1-2-1) support in primary and did reasonably well - In high school he had full time TA support and is now HE with some specialist tutoring from the LEA - we are hoping to get him through his gcse's a year early and then back into a sixth form as the groups are so much smaller and ''better behaved'' .

Defiantly mostly money with my two younger ones as some early reading support and some SALT and social therapy that I pay for privately would mean I don't have to flexi school. However the TA and new teacher in the year 1/2 class have little to no clue about asd although they are both lovely people. And lot of simple and inexpensive things I and other SEN parents have suggested ie a friendship bench have been poo pooed as a bit 'exotic' and unescssary. Shame then that my youngest crys herself to sleep as she ''has no friends and no one wants to play with her'

Sorry very unclear post my oldest did well in primary with lots of funding but also expert support. In high school the TA's were a bit 'random' and some excellent others not so - he ended up having a meltdown as the TA was clueless and hurt another child - he is now HE mostly as I could not allow that to happen again.

My 2 younger children could have lots of their needs met in school with more funding but some of their needs could be met with a little more understanding and some inovative thinking

It is still money-the support needs to be trained. I hate to say it, but as a teacher I have never had any training for ASD, I just picked things up as I went along. It should be essential for all teachers, as in service training. I dare say that as a supply teacher I fell through the net a bit.
I wonder how much support and training TAs get? I think they probably get thrown in at the deep-end and get it as they go along.

The flexi schooling comes down to money, I was trying to Google the funding, without success.A full time place seems to vary a great deal according to LEA so I feel that probably different LEAs have different funding for part time.I can't see the school getting full funding for a child who isn't full time.

I have stopped teaching but I know there is far less supply work around. Schools have cut back on courses and they get away with cover supervisors or TAs if they can-it is far cheaper than paying someone like me. They will employ more NQTs-it keeps the costs down.

Get to the bottom of any decision and it is money.

I agree a lot of its funding and some of its training, some of it is a also attitude from Heads, teachers and TA's AND pupils parents which no amount of training will change.

exoticfrut, CFBT education trust Hollisclough primary school, dated 2011.
how one school made flexi-schooling work, part time attendants get full funding.
The law does state that children should be educated in accordance with the parents wishes.

I know the area well bebanjo and it is very isolated.
I looked up the Ofsted as it seemed very enterprising and at the last inspection(2010) there were 9 pupils!!!
I expect that flexi schooling was to stop them closing down as it now attracts HEers from a wide area and one family travel 60miles -one way!

I don't think it is typical-they are desperate to attract pupils and have found a niche.

The law does state that children should be educated in accordance with the parents wishes.

I think this is within reason-some parent's wishes would be impossible in a class of 30 DCs!

I would quite like to flexischool as DD is finding school exhausting and technically as she is not 5 until June she doesn't have to be there at all!

It just isn't workable though. She is also getting 2 teachers after half term so that would complicate things further perhaps.

I love the idea of the flexischool, but for the OP doing it individually I think it would create more problems. If her child is already ahead and then she has home ed too, she may find she is even more bored the rest of the week and less able to fit in with the rest of the class. Either go the whole way and home ed, or let her enjoy playing in reception while the others catch up.

Hollisclough school is interesting. I looked at the history and they were down to 5 pupils, I would think that they were in danger of closing so flexi schooling was a great idea. Apparently numbers went up to 33 within 18months (39 if pre school is taken into account)

You are not going to get this is mainstream education-many schools are over subscribed. (Hollisclough is a faith school which might put some off).

Perhaps the way to go with flexi schooling is to find a small school with declining numbers and put Hollisclough to them as a vision. Apparently about half are full time and half flexi. If numbers were really small, like that, I would be willing to do all the record keeping, but not for one child in a class of 30-it would be an unfair increase in workload and the parent would need to be the main educator.,

They do get full funding though.