Home schooling also known as elective home education, is when a parent chooses to provide an education for their child at home. This would be instead of sending them to a full-time school and they would aim to cover core subjects such as English and Maths, along with other options.
Homeschooling is something parents choose to do all over the world. It is not just restricted to the UK.
Within England and Wales, the curriculum is made up of five stages completed within primary or secondary schools:
Although Reception class is not compulsory in schools, it may be helpful for learners to gain an understanding of the fundamentals in order that they are not disadvantaged when starting their Key Stage 1 programme.
When children begin reception class, play is a large part of your child’s learning and development. There will be three important areas which are:
Communication and Language
In reception, communication and language is vital for children to make sense of the world. Some children may not have met the same milestones as others with regards to their communication and early intervention is key. Others who have a vocabulary of approximately 10,000 words will continue to develop their skills through communication.
Physical Development
Physical development involves gross motor skills which can help a child develop a healthy body and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor skills improves hand-eye co-ordination which can help literacy. In reception, play for fine motor skills will involve puzzles, pegging washing on a line or exploring wet and dry sand. For gross motor skills, children will develop upper arm strength, mobility, control and balance through activities such as lifting heavy and awkward objects or using climbing equipment.
Personal and Social Development
Children will also learn how to manage emotions, develop a positive sense of self and make good friendships.
Play will be carefully planned throughout the day to encourage the child with their learning. Some examples are as follows:
Your child will also be introduced to phonics and maths. Phonics allows your child to build a word from sounds. With maths, your child will be introduced to numbers and counting.
Learning during KS1 will still be through play but children may also need to sit at a table for a bit longer than what they were use to in reception.
Phonics for each child will be individually assessed in year 1 to check if your child is able to decode words. Your child will be asked to read 40 words – 20 are real, 20 are known as ‘alien words’ (made up words). Reading alien words will check a child’s decoding skills and knowledge of graphemes in a fair way – it mirrors what the children have to do when they read a word that they have not read before.
At the end of year 2 (KS1), your child will take SATs in reading, SPaG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar), and maths.
Phonics will still remain a large part of KS1. During year 1, children will learn words, spelling rules and how to sound words out with reading and writing. They will even touch on sentences which use exciting language and learn how to improve their handwriting.
In year 2, children should be more able to read without sounding out individual letters and there will be more emphasis on handwriting. They will also begin to learn basic grammar such as nouns, adjectives, verbs, tenses and basic punctuation
Maths takes a step up in year 1 (KS1) as children will be using numbers over 20. They will also be covering adding, subtracting, number bonds, counting forwards, counting backwards, doubling and halving.
For year 2, maths progresses to 2, 5 and 10 times tables, adding and subtracting two-digit and one-digit numbers, basic fractions and shapes
KS1 also introduces other subjects such as Science, History, Geography, Dancing, PE and/or Art.
During Key Stage 2, there will be less focus on phonics and children will begin to develop their knowledge in History, Geography, Science and other subject areas.
For English, children will also focus on reading, writing and spelling rules such as:
In maths, your child will focus on:
Towards the end of KS2, your child will sit SATs in May. The results will determine whether or not your child has met the ‘expected’ level in English and Maths.
During the last year of Key Stage 2, most schools will be preparing your child to move onto secondary school.
Key stage 3 is the first three years of secondary school. Compulsory national curriculum subjects are:
During Key Stage 4, learners work towards GCSEs.
There are many reasons why parents choose to educate their child at home. Here are some examples:
All parents have a right to educate their child from home if they wish to do so and the government is currently looking to toughen up on home education plans, to ensure they are working, as they should; especially as it is estimated that there are just under 60,000 home-educated children across 152 local authorities in England. To date, we are no further forward in this respect and the planned compulsory register of home-schooled children is yet to be agreed; awaiting the results of the Department for Education’s consultation process which closed on 24th June 2019.
Although not everyone welcomes this register, former Education Secretary Damian Hinds pointed out that the government had a duty to make sure children were safe and receiving a good education.
If your child is currently in a school environment and you wish to educate them from home, you should firstly ensure that you notify the school and advise them of your intentions. The school cannot refuse your wishes, providing you intend to take them out of school completely.
If for any reason, your child attends school because of a school attendance order, you will not be able to just simply educate them from home and you will have to gain permission from your local council beforehand.
If you wish to educate your child from home, you must ensure they receive full-time education from the age of 5. You do not have to follow the national curriculum but it is wise to ensure that they have grasped the basics of Maths and English, preferably completing at least Functional Skills Level 2. It may be that parents are able to oversee all teaching themselves but if this is proving difficult, consideration may be given to using outside sources such as private tutors, small teaching groups or online classes. There are many online resources that can also help, such as BBC Bitesize, which was formed in 1988 and is used by 40% of primary school students and 80% of secondary school students, to top-up their studies.
There are no grants or funding to help teach your child at home, in fact the Department for Education makes it clear that if you decide to teach your child at home, you will have to take on all financial responsibility related to their education.
However, your local authority will be able to offer you guidance in areas such as arranging examinations as a private candidate and details of any support groups in your area. To find out more about home education in your country, please click here.
The rules for home schooling appear to be pretty clear but it would seem, the main priority is to consider the welfare of each individual child and ensure that whatever form of education is chosen for them, meets their mental and physical needs.
