A few people on here seem to know a lot about home education. It's something I am pretty seriously considering, though no decisions made yet, and we have another couple of years before school looms. We are a bit worried about the costs, particularly reading books as young children fly through short books really fast and things like ORT books are £2.99 per book. OUr library doesn't carry these types of books as children "get them at school anyway". I know you can get a lot of free online resources, and as an ex-teacher I have a lot of my own copymaster resources too, but you always need top-up text books and stuff if you are taking a school-type approach. I don't want to be stuck to the school methods otherwise there is not a lot of point doing home ed. I can't afford to pay to join Education Otherwise just to ask questions on their website, so would really like to know if there are other free discussion forums specifically geared to home ed, or other non-mainstream educations like Steiner and Montessouri.

I have also started wondering since it's OK to take your child out of school full time, how come it's not allowed (or should it be?) to send your child to school some days and take them out when you want to? If she is on a school roll at all then days she doesn't go would automatically be recorded as truancy days, but what if I want her to go to school for most of the curriculum but not all of it? If I've paid for a school place via taxes and I am entitled to home educate if I want to then why should enrolling in a school dictate that I should use ONLY school?

I'm not after any moral or otherwise opinions on the merits of home education, I can make those decisions myself, what I need is information on costs, materials, how to get hold of things that normally only come in school packs, legal registration, etc.

I home educate my son but for completely different reasons - he has severe autism and we don't feel that our local authority can effectively and consistently meet his needs. We did try school but it just didn't work for us. My understanding is that in choosing to home educate, you are effectively 'opting out' of the system and accepting full responsibility for educating your child, including meeting any special educational needs. This is the reason why it has to be 'all or nothing'.

Your local authority should have an officer for elective home education, who you should be able to meet and have an informal discussion with. The officer should also be able to put you in touch with other families - I think you will be very surprised at how many families do this, particularly those of us who have children with special needs.

As far as cost goes, this is one of those things which can be very difficult to estimate. We had funding for our son when he was small but he is nine now and we receive no funding whatsoever. That said, I make an awful lot of materials myself and you do learn to be really imaginative - that's all part of the freedom of it! In our case, we found the National Curriculum really restrictive - so much of it is completely irrelevant for us and so many things which are vital for us are not covered!

My son needs constant one to one attention, which is a huge challenge but I have always enlisted the help of university students and there have been times when I could not have managed without them - even if only for a breather here and there to catch up with housework or prepare materials! If this would help you, it is definitely worth looking to your local university - most students would jump at the opportunity to gain practical experience in this way and it is really good to work with children at home, something which most teachers will never get the opportunity to do!

If you already have teaching experience yourself, you are already at a distinct advantage over me - I have very much had to learn on my feet and it has been a very steep learning curve at times but other than a year spent in school, I have been doing this for six years now and have no regrets whatsoever.

Best of luck with whatever you decide and you are more than welcome to PM me if you want to.

I know what you mean about the curriculum not covering stuff that's important. I've had kids in the mainstream schools who needed more time to learn to walk, talk and communicate with signs rather than being thrown into RE lessons.

I happen to believe every child has special needs. Of course some children's disabilities take them futher from the mainstream than others, but the idea that some children are different from the norm-referenced main implies that there is a single child who is a normal reference point. in large groups of children one can establish a mean, median and modal performance in maths, English, etc. but you aren't likely to find that the same child is at the centre of each average! So we come up with the concept of a child who is "good at" maths and "bad at" writing, when all it means is their maths is currently more advanced than their writing. The child then turns off from writing because the work gets more and more challenging in spite of their level of progress.

I can't fathom why it is convention to take all exams at a given date. I should have taken French and music GCSE at 13, maths at 16 and English at 17, i.e. when I was at that stage! I wasted 2 years of French lessons sitting about waiting for my class to catch up to GCSE lesson and sat an English exam with no idea what I was doing because of our age-referenced culture.

I also find it brain-aching to divide the whole of life into bits and grade them, and then having divided stuff up we then conglomorate it back together again! We arbitrarily decide that spelling, handwriting, reading, comprehension and creative writing are all "English" and having done a big profile that a child is strong in spelling and weaker in writing we are forced to give them an overall mark for "English", even though we just recorded that they have an unbalanced profile!

Have you ever been on any free discussion forums about home ed? I had never thought about enlisting the help of students, but it's another area of the law I am unclear about. If a group of parents gets together for a certain piece of home ed, to allow group work, to draw on each others' strengths, etc. then that's a tricky legal area. We are each entitled to provide an education for our own children, but if one appears to purport to provide education for another person's child doesn't one then have to be a teacher? Technically I could have a group of kids round here and teach them all the violin, but am I allowed to teach them all French? Provided one acts as a "tutor" not a teacher I don't see why not, as after-school tutoring is allowed, but it's a very grey area.

I don't think I can help with your original questions but can perhaps tell you a little of what I have seen here.
What you say about grouping children together is also a problem in France. I think the authorities simply want to make things difficult for you.

As far as part time at home and part time in school is concerned I would be a bit wary. Irregular attendance can give extra work and extra problems to class teachers and if it became a regualr practice with home educating families, could lead to a lot of problems. In any case children who attend school irregularly are often not liked by the other children and (unfortunately and unprofessionally), sometimes not liked by the teachers concerned. I would go for full time home education rather than a mix.

I think you are absolutely right in what you say about taking exams when one is ready and I think the Graded music exams type of system would have a lot to offer to general education. I'd have had my Grade 8 in English and French in no time at all and would probably still be at the Prep Test stage for maths!

One of my piano pupils has just started home education instead of going to secondary school. She is the youngest of a family of six and the others have been through both state and private systems but the parents felt neither would suit this little girl. The only real problem they seem to have is sticking to their goals in each subject. They will get inspected later in the year and will have to show evidence of what ground they have covered.

Anyway, best of luck and I am sure you will find ways to finance the materials - second hand books, and exhanges between families, and the net for example.

Hi - I considered home educating my son but in the end went the private school route. However, I did find this website useful -and I'm pretty sure it has a yahoo user group you can join for free with loads of advice and ideasl:
http://www.muddlepuddle.co.uk/index.htm

This website has lists of free resources: http://ahed.pbworks.com/Free-or-Cheap-Ideas
My son learnt to read using loads of picture books rather than a reading scheme. It seemed to take a while to get going in the first place compared to children on a scheme, but by the age of 7 he had overtaken most other children and now at 11 has an absolute love to reading, reading a huge range of books. You can use books from the library to save buying (and storing) loads.

There are also various schemes of work you can buy, but if we had home educated we would have done our own thing - there is no need to follow the National Curriculum, although if you think you may want to put your child into school at some point it may be worth keeping a bit of an eye on the maths and english, although I wouldn't worry so much about the other subjects myself.

I'm taking my year 5 son out of school at Christmas. Dove has given me some excellent advice and may comment on your thread I should think. If your child hasn't yet started school you don't need to do anything. You jusat don't enroll them. Your local authority can phone to ask what you're doing but you don't have to tell them and they have no right to inspect you, though you may want to enlist their help. My authority seem very helpful and open to home education and are making efforts to provide things like exam venues for home educated children.

We've made the decision because our son is bored at school and fed up with the constant interruption of SEN children which means a lot of time is wasted. There is almost no music at his school and all the things he likes doing (music, dancing, cubs, etc) are after school when he's tired. I wish I had taught his elder brothers at home at a similar age, when they asked me to (so they could actually learn something they didn't already know, they said!).

I've been surprised at the positive reactions I've had from people. Only one has expressed any doubts at all as to the wisdom of the decision. Most, including several primary school teachers, have been very encouraging. Primary education nowadys, especially later on, can be very SATs driven, dull, formulaic and quite often just plain wrong.

You don't need to spend a lot of money. I already but lots of things at charity shops and gets loads of stuff from freecycle. The main money worry for us will be that I won't be earning but I'm hoping still to work a little. You don't need special books to learn to read from and if you feel you do then I'm sure you can make your own.

I have heard of people sending their children to school part-time but I think it's been because the child had special needs. It wouldn't be practical normally as schools don't always do the same thing at the same time every day.

Good luck. Can you find a home education group on your area? Education Otherwise has some links (you don't need to be a member).

And you can't run a 'school' without being registered, I'm afraid. A friend asked if I would teach her son as well (she can't afford not to work) but that would be a minefield of regulation which, as a childminder, I don't need any more of!

Thanks. I have actually found a site with some information about Flexischooling, which is part time school attendance. Just to clarify that although it's a long way in the future I meant this more for secondary school. At secondary stage kids don't tend to move in bulk classes anyway, and it would be on a subject by subject opt-in or opt-out rather than going on a Monday but not a Wednesday. Yes, that would be a real headache for teachers! The reason being that it's a serious headache getting any coursework moderated without a school for backing. If your child picks maths GCSE that's easy, but if she chooses art then it's a whole different ball game, although there is an IGCSE examined art option available. Since kids are already in a "kids who do art" group for GCSE art rather than a class group I don't think it would be as confusing as it sounds. It's a perfectly legal option, however is offered at the head's discretion. Probably more likely to work with a fee-paying school, then! BTW, I am in Scotland, although I keep mentioning GCSE, it's just easier to access those as a private candidate than S-grades.

I've checked out a load of books from the libaray to see where to go next. Coming from a classroom background I couldn't see how you could offer home ed without a plethora of equipment and text books, but it now occurs that if we feel we have to give children special books for them to learn reading it's a very narrow way of going about it. Felt like putting a bag over my head to purchase a pack of "flashcards" this weekend, though. My daughter loves her letters and I am sure people thought they were looking at a pushy mum who would have daughter hounded to learn them. She just likes to pick out her friends' "names" (initial letters) and boy does she know lots of them, I am stunned. To test her in the normal way she'd know one letter (s goes ssssss) but she'll pick you out "Katie's letter" no bother at all.

This also seems to be as clear as mud legally! You cannot, on the face of it, educate someone else's child full time, though there would seem no legal reason why not, as home education is legally covered by 2 words of the relevant education act "or otherwise". Once having selected the "otherwise than school" option then all things which apply to schools (teacher registration, national testing, etc.) cease to apply as you are not a school and you do not pretend to be a school. Where it gets more murky is in this middle ground. If you weren't allowed to teach a child anything at all without being a teacher then all sorts would be illegal - sunday school, Islamic school, much of a young person's post-16 education, Hebrew school, etc. These things are perfectly legal if they are in addition to school. They don't become less so if the child doesn't go to school.

If we assume for one moment that a parent makes a major departure from the usual curriculum and reckons her son needs nothing more in life than to be able to play the piano. She cannot herself play the piano, so she finds him a piano teacher. It's not illegal for any of us to teach him the piano, is it? In fact, it's not illegal to teach someone piano even if you can't play it! But if this piano lesson then forms the total of the child's education does the piano teacher become a "school"? Since much of law is sorted out by test cases of things that they didn't think of when they wrote the appropriate law and as far as I can establish there has been no such test case, this probably stands in neither camp, neither quite legal nor something that isn't.

So far the only pieces of legislation I have found that would actually stop you running your own 'school' would be if you called it a school (in that sense the title "Hebrew school" is also illegal, but they let that away because it's known convention), or if an individual local authority found that the education received didn't meet the specific needs of a named child attending, but at that point all they can do is place a school attendance order on that one child. If you call yourselves the Leith and District Home Education Support Group then so far I haven't found anything stopping you from teaching each others' kids. I think they just depend on the idea that it's unlikely any parent would choose to send a child to an unregistered educator and that most people who want to home school do it because they want to be with their children. I'll let you know if I find any more, though. It's been an interesting journey so far!

The teaching of child that is not yours isnt that complicated. I taught two home schooled siblings aged 14 and 16 English for an hour and a half a week. My husband taught them sciences 3 hours a week. They came to our house for private tuition. We are of course both CRB. Their parents had home schooled them but recognised that they needed tuition at a level they themselves could not provide. Further the intention was for the eldest to attend a 6th form college.

From what we have been told it would appear you just have to differentiate firmly between the time you are parenting and the time you are teaching. Equally you have to be quite organised.

The Local Education Authority is familiar with home school children and can be useful in pointing you in the direction of other parents who are home schooling and other supportive organisations and useful tools.

Off-topic, I know - but I am quite sure that had I had children, I would have home-educated them...

How I laughed at my last school when a child was working towards a Level C test because she "had to get" this before the articificial barrier that is transfer to secondary education. She kept failing the test on things the teachers all knew she was able to do, but she had trouble with test technique. The Scottish rules allow you to keep returning the test to the child so long as you don't help them, you just say that one is not right can you try again. When the child finally reached the threshold by one mark the co-ordinator breathed a sigh of relief and said excellent, now she can go onto Level D work. I thought, this child doesn't know anything she didn't know 5 minutes ago, but now she's "ready" for Level D. And did she know a great deal different if she had 19 marks or 20? The mind boggles.

Hi!

I teach a number of children from home-educating families, and I never cease to be amazed at how vast the network is. I think the only issue with the 'school' idea comes down to the legalities of childcare, which really is a mine field - ie. I think an hour/half hour lesson with a 'tutor' is regarded in one sense, but to have children for a greater portion of the day would surely involve registering with OFSTED in some form?

I frequently lead music workshops for home-educated children, where a number of families come together, with children of different ages, to work together. I also teach many of these children on an individual basis, but tend to do this in their homes, and thier parents are frequently present - this is a major part of the philosophy of the families that I work with at present.

I will also say that I work with wonderfully well-adjusted, well socialised children, who have a real desire to learn and make fantastic progress in a number of different areas which would be considered 'mainstream'. I don't home educate my children, because, certainly at the moment, school is very definitely the right place for them, but I am convinced it can work and be very successful.

Recently, my husband, who is on the admissions panel for a very prestigious (not music) course, had a UCAS application from a student who had been home-schooled through to A level and had then achieved the very high grades required for entrance to the course, and were able to cite the independence of learning gained through being home educated in thier personal statement.