GCSE's for home-school children

[JDiana]

Good morning.
I am the mother of my 15 year old daughter who has been home schooled since 2015 and will be sitting her GCSE examinations as an external candidate this summer. I have started a government petition to ask parliament to consider the introduction of funding to help families who home-school their children pay for their GCSE examinations. Note that these would be free of charge if your child attends a school! The decision to home-school is not taken lightly by any family and is made for many different reasons and circumstances; ultimately to ensure the happiness/wellbeing of their child. I have already paid for my daughters GCSE fee's but feel very passionately about this and would love to help future home-schooling families. If you would like to sign my petition please read below:
I’ve made a petition – will you sign it?
Click this link to sign the petition:
petition.parliament.uk/petitions/244092/sponsors/new?token=1Dzg66XgzDoIm6fqiNts
My petition:
Introduce funding to help families of home-schooled children pay for GCSE exams
The decision to homeschool is not taken lightly and is made for many reasons; ultimately to ensure the happiness/wellbeing of a child. The cost of teaching at home is accepted and managed, however many families find it difficult to pay the high fees for GCSE’s that are free in our state schools.

Sorry, as a former home edder I won't sign this. Any funding comes with strings attached, which most home edding parents want to avoid.

Dems the breaks, when you home ed the costs are yours. 🤷

But paying £180 per subject when the exam cost less than £40 is not a good use of public money. It’s not the student who benefits but the private companies offering the service.

OP, I admire your argument, and will have a good look at the petition before deciding on whether to sign or not.
In principle I support home education, but I have seen some disasterous outcomes in practice. In an ideal world, all state education should be able to be adapted to meet the needs of all students.

As an aside, OP, make sure if you're teaching your child Grammar and Punctuation, you don't use apostrophes in plurals!

Invigilation for GCSE exams would cost approx £25 for one invigilator per subject taking into account the going rate for invigilators.
One invigilator can cover up to 30 candidates, but there needs to be at least 2 members of staff in the room to cover emergencies.
There isn't that much admin to be honest, just ticking off that candidates are present, checking ID for external candidates and a small amount for postage back to the exam board.
I would say the additional costs should be comparable to the exam fees themselves in the range £40-£60. The problem is that many schools don't accept private candidates and so home-edders end up using independent schools which have their own fee structure.