Just wondering at what age do you say you Home school, not sure (as live outside uk)but is the age of compulsery school 6 yrs and before that you can keep them at home no problem.Or is there some rule whereby they have to go earlier. I do some “schoolwork”, baking, crafting etc etc with mine everyday but she is only two and a half does that count as home schooling . Just wanted to know what people mean when they have little ones and say they HE, is it you will continue till they are out of primary and how long can you home school for, will the kids ever do any exams, what about high school, college, uni.
I have no fixed ideas either way just looking for info.
thanks

DS3 is 5 in June so according to Englands educational policies he “should” have officially started school along with his peer group last September. DS3 is 4 in August so “should” have taken up his nursery place as per government recommendations last September. So I say that we are actively HE’ing both boys as if we had followed the traditional and expected educational path both boys would be in some type of formal educational setting right now. In fact our DGD is 4 in July, one month before DS4, and she started nursery at the local school last September, along with a private nursery in the same building too.
Of course we all informally HE our children much earlier than this, from birth in fact, but it’s only when children get to the ages mentioned that their education is seen as needing input from professionals
We haven’t set any timescale on how long we will HE. Legally (for the time being anyway) we can HE our children to the end of their formal schooling journey, which is the age of 16.However we will constantly monitor and review their needs. We HE’d with our oldest DD from the age of 15 to 16.5 years, and with DD3 from the age of 13 to 16.

Becks

Hi   My daughter is still not yet four…the age of compulsory education in the UK is five, the term after the fifth birthday.  However in reality nowadays most people in the UK send their children to preschool or nursery from the age of three at least part time, and also many children begin full time school at age four, in a good few cases at just turned four! LEA’s offer school places in the academic year that the child turns five, so if a child is summer born, right up to the end of August, they could begin full time formal school in the September.  So, we tend to try and get to HE groups now and say we HE even though she is still not of compulsory education age. Everyone we meet seems obsessed with asking us is she at nursery school yet!  As for exams, our son was HE from 13 and he went to sixth form college at 16/17 and is now at university.  There are correspondence GCSE and other courses, and youngsters can go to colleges.

gosh that is early i didn’t realise, thought it was six. so does that mean when my DD’s 5th birthday is end of september 2012 she has to be in school by the following jan (2013)?

She doesn’t *have* to be, as school itself is not compulsory, but I think they “should”* start at the beginning of the year in which they are five, which in the case of a september birthday would be that September.

*according to the powers that be

Angie

As I have no intention of sending Rye to school I have said I HE since he was about 1.  The learning experience happens all the time, he is receiving an education even now; lol just by rolling the treeblock basket across the floor - what’s he’s learning I’m not entirely sure - but he does   And when he does turn 5 I won’t suddenly start “lessons” or “schoolwork” with him.  For me, Home education is about learning from life, from experience and certainly during the early years I have the leisure to let him just be.  As for the future, I have no idea; it may well be that Rye decides he would like to go to School, or he may discover a passion for something and concentrate on that.  Time will tell.
Joxy.

As Joxy said, I’ve always said I HE my children because I never had any intention of sending them to school - and as Becky said, we all HE our children up to the point at which they start school or nursery, if they’re going to go down that route - but I think it is slightly different if you know you’ll be continuing to HE as you cultivate different peer relationships for the children, go to different kinds of groups, and often have a different mind-set as there’s no looming ‘deadline’ coming up.

I don’t really think of aything that we do as ‘schoolwork’ as school just has no relevance for us. We dollow a mainly autonomous style - that is child-led - so the kids do a lot playing - they are very imaginative and play lots of very intricately plotted games, they also play lego and trains a lot, we go t a weekly HE group, we see friends, grandparents, go to our allotment, do the shopping, go to the library, swimming, museums and outings, DD also does a lot of reading, and DS is starting to read, DS is very interested in numbers and does lots of adding, DD is interested in telling the time, the easier times tables, and shapes. We’re also very interested in environmental issues as a family, history, and whatever else comes up just by living.

TBH, I’m not thinking yet of exams, colleges, university - my eldest is just 7 and who knows what she’ll want to do by then, or what will be avialble by then? For HE, you take every day as it comes, every week as it comes and then every year as it comes. When she starts expressing an interest in qualifications and/or a specific career path, then we’ll look into how she’ll achieve that. I think 10, 11, 12 is plenty early enough to think of that. HE isn’t like school where you learn x, because you need to learn y, then do an exam on z in order to qualify you to go onto to yet another level of exams. In HE you learn what you want to, out of interest, and then when you find you need a particular exam to do something that interests you, you find out a way of getting it or bypassing it, in order to do the thing that interests you. IT’s a completely different mind-set to school.

I think everyone has already made good points on this, especially those with experience of HE. I didn’t send my daughter to pre-school at the age that the government recommended they start (is it 2yrs 9 months??) as I think we did lots of learning just living life. However I never really described myself as home educating, I just didn’t follow what the govt guidelines were as they are not compulsory and didn’t fit with our enjoyment of life at 3 years old, and maybe because we hadn’t decided as a family which education route we would go down at that point.
As others have said school is not compulsory either, but if they are going to go they start in the term they are going to be 5 - some will start earlier, in the Sept (or Jan in some areas) of the school year they will be 5 but they can be down as “not compulsory school age”. Compulsory is such a misleading word I think in this - compulsory age if they are registered to go to school rather than school is compulsory.

Also with our dd, as she is a September born child it would have meant 2 years in pre-school which I thought would just be too long doing the same things and she’d get bored. She did start pre-school at just before 4 as she wants to go to school, which she’ll be almost 5 when she starts.

angelbaby - 11 March 2010 07:48 AM

gosh that is early i didn’t realise, thought it was six. so does that mean when my DD’s 5th birthday is end of september 2012 she has to be in school by the following jan (2013)?

Yes, if you do choose to register her for school.

angelbaby - 10 March 2010 10:44 PM

Just wondering at what age do you say you Home school

I don’t! We home educate (and that term’s not perfect either)  Started from the point when people start asking when do they start school/no school today?/etc.

Nelly x

Thanks everyone, it really is difficult to decide, personally i’d like my kids at home till 6/7 yrs or maybe go to some groups or have mornings in some kind of “class” but that is impossible where i’m living now,can’t see me HEing fulltime, would like a group of famillies who take it in turn or maybe as the lazy parent suggests a group of families hiring a tutor and setting the goals or program, think i’ll need to get back to work at some point and i do have this dream (and i’m a firm believer in positive thoughts) that we will find the perfect small school, which respects our views as parents and also that of our children. would like something steiner-ish or a small village school with very few kids all in a cycling or walking distance from our house. Our house would have loads of land, chickens, an old donkey, cow, goat etc with a little stream at the bottom of the garden and the sea 10 minutes down the road, the woods 10 mins in the other direction and a buisness myself and DH can do together from home….and in a warm climate. Not sure how we are going to achieve all that as we are about to blow half our life savings on an 18mth trip,we have nothing of material value and will basically come back with only the clothes on our backs and memories (gulp) we have no idea where we will come back to UK, Belgium (DH) spain (living now) or somewhere new, i’m prepared to live anywhere really for the right school. I think it’s suddenly all getting scary because the decisions about education are huge and will have an impact on our children for the rest of their lives.
Phew

oh wow! 18 month trip sounds great - and you will get so much more out of that than the equivilent time spent in work or whatever! Where abouts are you going on your trip?

As for homedding I tell people we are now as with my family they need time to process something before it happens and by that point they have stopped complaining lol. Charlie is 3 now and not in any type of nursery/preschool so in my mind we have def started the journey already, though we arent doing anything any different to how I was before, some days we do something which a school would call educational and some days we slob about in our pjs doing nothing in particular and she seems to be thriving on it so far. We are open to the idea of her going to school in the future but 3 or even 5 just feels way too early for me!