Home schooling

[Samantha_]

Good, bad, indifferent?

Just wondered what your thoughts were?

I'm not sure what I think

How would you know what to teach them to make sure they wouldnt fall behind?

 

[tina3747]

I could never do it I haven't the patience!! Also I'd end up doing fun stuff instead of proper work ha!!
I imagine you'd have to work from a curriculum the government sets, fair play to anyone that sucessfully manages it!
I'm sure summer rain home schools, and another lady ,freckle on ear ( might be wrong on that one!)

 

[Samantha_]

I could never do it I haven't the patience!! Also I'd end up doing fun stuff instead of proper work ha!!
I imagine you'd have to work from a curriculum the government sets, fair play to anyone that sucessfully manages it!
I'm sure summer rain home schools, and another lady ,freckle on ear ( might be wrong on that one!)

This would happen 2 me 2
I was wondering about the curriculum bit...im quite interested..

 

[smelly07]

i dont know much about it but i'm sure there are things you need to do and follow.............personally i wouldnt want to be responsible for educating my child i would never forgive myself if they got F's in all their subjects plus i dont have the patience or the brain for it my concentration is 0 i also like the social aspect of school.
but good on anyone that does if thats what they want to do! xxx

 

[marley2580]

There's actually a difference between home schooling and home education. Home schooling is when you follow a curriculum and have 'school' at home, home education is more child led and centres around enabling children to learn and discover for themselves. There's actually quite a few home educators on BnB. We even have a group in the groups page.

 

[tina_h75]

I really couldn't do it, I don't have the patience or enthusiasm and to be honest, I am actually looking forward to getting some housework/sleep/rest or even just a coffee with a friend when they are at school. I love the kids more then anything but its good to have a break !

 

[indy and lara]

I am a teacher so pretty biased towards school based learning. However, I have to say that DH and I were talking about this only this week. We both agree that should some of the suggested changes in education which have been discussed this week become law we would immediately remove Em and home school. I do not believe that school hours should be extended at all.

 

[tina3747]

I am a teacher so pretty biased towards school based learning. However, I have to say that DH and I were talking about this only this week. We both agree that should some of the suggested changes in education which have been discussed this week become law we would immediately remove Em and home school. I do not believe that school hours should be extended at all.

Extended??? Wtf!

I'm already opposed to the extended 18 yr age to leave but extra hours?!

How do you feel about homework? Been having this debate with a friend and she goes into school to badger teachers for extra homework. I'm the opposite, I feel home should be just that and not time to do school work that can be done in school hours.

I imagine a lot ( and I know of many!) that do the kids work themselves, I often see posts on Facebook saying friends agave been up all hours making things! What's the point!! Although I think gaining info for topics done within school hours is a good idea?!

 

[indy and lara]

I am yet to be convinced of the benefit of a lot of homework. Reading I fully support but aimless tasks? Nope. Homework should be a chance to share with parents what the child has been learning. A good opportunity to show off a wee bit. It should not cause fights/ disharmony/ untold stress for the parents or child. Too often parents have come to school on the verge of tears because their child will not do their homework and they have spent the previous night fighting. I always tell people in these situatiosn to decide how long they think is appropriate and hand in what is done in that time period.

When I go back to work we will have a new homework system. There is a grid of tasks sent home every 3 weeks and the children choose 4 to do. Will be interested to see how that one works out.

 

[freckleonear]

I home educate my children, and I was also home educated for the last four years of secondary school. In the UK you do not have to follow the National Curriculum, you just have to provide your child with a suitable education and obviously there are many different ways of doing that.

 

[~RedLily~]

I couldn't do it, mainly because I haven't got enough self discipline so would just end up slacking . I also feel that school is important to socialise and being in a sort of work environment.
That's not to say I am against home schooling or educating as I'm sure it has it's own benefits.

 

[summer rain]

I home-educate my boys too though they ended up calling it 'school at home' themselves, you don't need to follow the national curriculum (or any curriculum at all) or even teach in English; and you can choose to have the local authority come and inspect what you're doing but it isn't an obligation. We didn't choose to have the local authority come but a HV 'reported' us for home-educating anyway or rather she basically said the kids are at home doing nothing despite me telling her we are home educating. It took a long time to clear our name and prove that the kids are doing really well at home and doing tons of work and learning. The lady who comes around in our area is a former headteacher herself. We roughly follow the national curriculum and use national curriculum textbooks/workbooks in some subjects; but in others we do something completely different. For example in Maths we follow a Hungarian maths curriculum as Hungary is pretty much the most advanced country in mathematics in the world-some of the topics covered in my son's year 3 workbooks I did not learn about until GCSE level. The only thing I wish we did more of was more structured science experiments and work and more messy art and design-but because my youngest is about the art and design tends to mainly be limited to work not involving glue or paints and the science we can do is also limited-though we do a lot of cooking and baking and plan to go on science-based field trips with other homeschooling families in the summer. The majority of kids in my family, OHs family and friends' kids are in mainstream schools and consequently we know where children should be up to in any given subject, though I have to say my boys are ahead in most things. They are very sociable too and are a lot more confident in many ways than other kids we know; they are able to relate to people of all ages and not just their age group, and my eldest even makes suggestions in the supermarket to the staff on how they can improve the store. Not seen many other 7 year olds doing that xx

 

[dizz]

I'm a teacher and I'm increasingly disenchanted with lots of what's going on within schools these days - particularly behaviour. If I got to the situation (fairly likely to happen with how catchments are around here) where my child ended up in a class with kids with behaviour issues causing bother - I'd pull them out in a heartbeat and home-educate them... but I'm fairly confident in my ability to do that and maintain them on the same level as they'd be getting within school - and then get them back into the state sector for secondary. But we're in the situation where our local large primary (we've got a decent infant and nursery school I'm going to push for for the early years anyway) school is "meh" (that's not the official Ofsted rating but I think it should be) and our local secondary is pretty decent.

It's not SATs results or anything that would make me swing to decide to do it - I've got the skills to make up lost ground at home anyway - it's behaviour, pure and simple - not prepared to have a child of mine in a class where the bulk of teacher focus is on managing one or two children and kids are scared of kids kicking off and lashing out... seen it in far too many schools.

 

[vaniilla]

I think it's a great thing that can do so much for children and their learning. Home schooling is something we're considering, if we decide to not go for private school then we'll go for home schooling because I don't like the behavior problems, the awful manners, the bad language etc that you get with school. The massive classroom sizes are a big factor too, I want lo to get lots of 1 on 1 attention and I don't like the fact that children are spoon-fed all of their subjects through school and don't have input on their learning.

 

[Samantha_]

silly question maybe but where do you get a copy of the national curriculum? or how do you know whats on it?

 

[vaniilla]

silly question maybe but where do you get a copy of the national curriculum? or how do you know whats on it?

I think its quite complicated because you have to know where to look,

this is a guide for teachers
https://www.education.gov.uk/publications/standard/publicationDetail/Page1/QCA/99/457

and this is a link explaining various parts of it

https://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum

 

[summer rain]

^WSS, also most workbooks available now by major publishers are designed broadly in line with the national curriculum; some of the ones designed for teachers have explanatory notes explaining how using these materials meets the criteria of the national curriculum as well xx

 

[jenny82]

I home-educate my boys too though they ended up calling it 'school at home' themselves, you don't need to follow the national curriculum (or any curriculum at all) or even teach in English; and you can choose to have the local authority come and inspect what you're doing but it isn't an obligation. We didn't choose to have the local authority come but a HV 'reported' us for home-educating anyway or rather she basically said the kids are at home doing nothing despite me telling her we are home educating. It took a long time to clear our name and prove that the kids are doing really well at home and doing tons of work and learning. The lady who comes around in our area is a former headteacher herself. We roughly follow the national curriculum and use national curriculum textbooks/workbooks in some subjects; but in others we do something completely different. For example in Maths we follow a Hungarian maths curriculum as Hungary is pretty much the most advanced country in mathematics in the world-some of the topics covered in my son's year 3 workbooks I did not learn about until GCSE level. The only thing I wish we did more of was more structured science experiments and work and more messy art and design-but because my youngest is about the art and design tends to mainly be limited to work not involving glue or paints and the science we can do is also limited-though we do a lot of cooking and baking and plan to go on science-based field trips with other homeschooling families in the summer. The majority of kids in my family, OHs family and friends' kids are in mainstream schools and consequently we know where children should be up to in any given subject, though I have to say my boys are ahead in most things. They are very sociable too and are a lot more confident in many ways than other kids we know; they are able to relate to people of all ages and not just their age group, and my eldest even makes suggestions in the supermarket to the staff on how they can improve the store. Not seen many other 7 year olds doing that xx

Wow. I am so impressed by you! Home-schooling sounds so good but I really don't think I'd have the patience for it. I remember trying to tutor my siblings and there were a lot of arguments

The hungarian maths thing sounds really intriguing. I am going to look it up. I am very good at maths and would love my son to be amazing at it as its such an important skill to learn.

 

[Maman]

i just struggle with the social aspects of it all. i think school is about children learning to interact outside of the family environment

 

[sophxx]

^^.m but surely they can interact with kids at other things swimming lesson gymnastics music lessons cubs ect? Also here we have tge forest school where they build debs learn maths with sticks ect that lots of honeschoolers go to there's lots going on for honeschoolers in our area.

Were thinking very hard about homeschooling lo or at least him attending a Steiner school a few mornings and tge rest at home. X