After an unhappy year at school and with both my boys begging not to go in - I wont go into details because it's extremely complicated and I don't want to bore you - we started to look at home-schooling options. It appeared to be scary at first and a huge undertaking. To make things worse, the boys started to worry about losing their friends.
That's when we came across the perfect solution.
Flexi schooling: an arrangement between the parent and school where children are registered at the school in the usual way, but attend school part time. For the rest of the time, the child is home educated.
We contacted the local council education office to see if this was available to us. To our surprise, they were extremely supportive and helpful. After talking on the phone and filling in a form, we were given the go ahead to start home schooling one afternoon a week from January 2020,
The whole process took around two months. It helped a lot that we had discussed and agreed our plan with the school prior to the forms being filled in (we had a meeting with the head teacher to make her aware of our plan to flexi school).
Another tip: applying for one afternoon a week makes it easier in the future if you want to increase your flexi schooling hours. You can also do fewer hours, or none at all, if your circumstances change - meaning you don't lose your school place because your child still attends. This seemed a lot less scary than going with full-time home schooling.
You will have a visit once a year to see what you have been learning, but we're not worried about this as I document everything and we have work books to show them.
Flexi-schooling has worked out really well for us. We have completed our first nine weeks now, and the difference in my boys is huge! They are happier to go into school, their confidence is returning, and as long as they can meet the requirements of the curriculum for their year groups, they are free to lead the way on what we learn.
During the first week Jasper wanted to explore Algebra and Griffin wanted to look into fractions - something that was previously unavailable to them at school. We have also baked cakes and pancakes, learning about weights and measurements and started an online programming course (which has been a huge hit). Jasper has also started a maths channel on YouTube to teach others.
All you need is drive and a passion to learn. My boys have that by the bucket load - something I'm extremely grateful for.
The best part for me is seeing those happy little minds engaged again, and letting them control their own education. Please feel free to come see what we get up to on our Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/groups/578522886065026/606701629913818/?comment_id=606755659908415¬if_id=1583923809734213¬if_t=group
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