Leaving School for Home Education

[Piglette]

We are completely underwhelmed by the lack of expectation in my son's secondary school. He is a bright boy who is underperforming due to being stuck in middle sets with no challenge. The school aren't interested and now refuse to move him into higher sets inspite of agreeing initially. We are considering taking him out of school and educationg him ourselves (at least until we can bring him up to standard to get him into a grammar/independant school). Does anyone have any similar experience or tips to offer? I'm desparate is I can see my son's education sliding away, he's 13.

Have you tried asking over in Home ed ? I would ask around locally for advice on tutoring. Some home ed families are willing to share to cut down the cost.

We have home educated full time for 6.5 years (DS2 and DD have never been to school). For academic rigour, you could try using Galore Park textbooks - they are not as cheap as workbooks available in WHS but work to a much higher standard! GP's target market is selective prep schools and they are geared towards Common Entrance but they go well into the GCSE syllabus in some subjects. DS1 is now 13 and uses them for Maths, English, Science, Geography, French, Spanish and Latin! Their history book looks good but we use an American resource called History Odyssey, which I prefer. Feel free to message me if you want to know more!

Galore Park site

History Odyssey link

Thanks so much for those links - very helpful. Are your kids happy about being home schooled? I fear it may be more difficult when he is used to the social life of school. At the moment he is very unhappy at the prospect and worried about missing his friends but maybe that's just insecure 13 year old boys!

DS1 went through a bit of a wobble and thought about going to secondary but by the time he didn't get a place at the school we were happy with, we had met up with some lovely families who have boys his age and he was happy. HEing also gives us the opportunity to do lots of extra-curricular. Between the 3 of them they have activities every night, quite often 2! He does HE French/Spanish group Monday afternoon (+ book club once a month); ballet on Wednesday; church activity for teens on Thursday; church music group and Scouts on Friday; more dancing on Saturday and church group on Sunday.

The other 2 do the same number of activities at the moment. They all get on really well with each other and are very supportive (DD made DS1 a card because he was in hospital yesterday) and get on fine with other people, adults and children/teenagers, as well.

Regarding your DS, if they are really his friends, they will stay in touch and he can meet up with them after school/weekends. You will probably find other home educators near you as well.

piglette having read your other thread I?m assuming you?re in the Tring area. Could you try and get him into Chesham Grammar? They take quite a few children from outside Bucks and all our friends who have DCs there speak very highly of it.