[katlc]

Hi Everyone,

I'm curious to know if anyone home schools part time and uses a local state primary school for the other days.

I would like to explore the possiblility of sending DS to his current primary school (he'll be in grade 1 in 2013) for 3 days per week and then home schooling for the other 2 days. DS has no medical or learning issues and loves school so this decision isn't due to any of these things.

Before DS started school I thought about home schooling. DH wasn't supportive and I have 3 others at home (4 yr old and 2yr old twins) so I dropped the subject. However, all year the thoughts have lingered and after a year at school and hearing about what does and doesn't happen DH is more supportive of the idea so I'm looking into options.

We just got DS's report card and while he's marks were at the standard, he's reading and numbers grade fell one level. By this I mean he was assessed as being above the standard and now is back to the standard level. Also after helping out at school I see how much time is wasted. He brought his workbooks home yesterday and I see things that should have been corrected and aren't. When a word is wrong each week why was it not put on his spelling list? When he forgets his spelling list why can he still not be tested from the teachers copy? These are a few examples and they seem like minor things but I just have this feeling that he could learn so much more at home in those 2 days. It's a gut feeling that won't go away.

Home schooling full time isn't appealing as DS is very social and enjoys the environment of shcool. Plus, I would like him to have access to art, sport, music etc classes which I would not be able to fully offer like an established school can. I also feel that he can learn valuable skills within the formal school setting so I want to include it in the kids education.

We can't afford a private school so that's not at all an option.

So if anyone has experience with part time home schooling in Victoria, I would love to hear about it.

Many thanks
Kate

[Julie3Girls]

I don't know a lot about home schooling, but I would imagine doing part-time school could actually be very disruptive. I'm not even sure if the school system would allow you to enrol a child part-time.
Just from what I've seen with how my girls classes work - work is spread out over the week. for example - they use the accelerated literacy program. Studying a particular book for a term, with work on it that builds on itself. If you were missing 2 out of the 5 days, every single week, I think it would cause considerable problems. Art work might be started one day, and continued the following day. The child would be missing out on things, and needing to catch up. Which in turns takes up more of the teacher's time to try and catch them up on what they had missed the day before.

Also, if you wanted all the activities, it would be hard to pick days - eg my DD3 in kinder this year had Library on Monday, music/dancing was usually on Wednesday, sport was on Thursday. School assemblies were Friday. Art/craft was during the week on different days. Then in term 3 they had sports in school on Tuesday, which shuffled some other things, library moved to Friday. Special events are on different days, things will get shuffled during the week if other things are happening in the school - a lot of completely unseen to the parents because it doesn't have an impact - the kids are all at school 5 days a week, so changing things around 1 week isn't going miss anything.

[leisamd]

Hi Kate,

As far as I know whether you can part-time school or not really depends on the school. I have heard that private schools can be better at negotiating this than state, but it really depends on the school/principal.

You may be interested in asking at this aussie forum - http://www.rockpoolhomeschool.com/

I do have experience with full-time homeschooling in Victoria, and it's a wonderful experience. Homeschooling is really growing in Victoria, we have sports groups, art classes, excursion groups, social groups etc. If the idea of homeschooling is one you like then you may be surprised.

[JKTMum]

I'd say it would be very disruptive for the child, socially as well as academically. I've known of a couple of people who tried two educational settings, spending a few days per week at mainstream and a few in a specialist school (their children had additional needs) and even that didnt work after a few months, one went back to fulltime mainstream and the other went fulltime special school. Both were for the reasons stated above, it actually made things much more difficult for the child, they were constantly missing out of things in one setting or the other, which made them more stressed and further behind with their work. Their friends branched out to other friendships as they knew they were not going to be there on some days every week, then there was a bit of a powerplay on the days they were at the school (ie, you cant play with the other person today, I'm here).

I'd say if you are passionate about homeschooling then bite the bullet and homeschool fulltime. There are plenty of homeschool support groups where your child can get the social interaction from other kids from organised group activities on some days and you can focus on his study on others. The other alternative is to continue sending him to school and factor in extra "homework" for him to cover those areas where you think he is lacking.

With the levels changing, that has nothing to do with him going backwards or slipping. Grades are worked out by a series of progress points of what they need to acheive for each of the required levels. These progress points increase in number and complexity as they go through school, so even in Prep there will be more progress points required for the end of Prep than there will half way through Prep when he got his previous report. He might have had enough progess points at the end of Semester one to receive the "Above Standard" grade, but eventhough he is hitting even more progress points by the end of Second semester it might not be quite enough to get the "Above Standard" grade again. I asked the same question for my DD2 who was always getting "Well above standards" in reading (she started Prep reading at level 5), then one semester at the end of grade 2 got "Above standard". The thing was she was still achieving very highly, but was just not meeting quite enough of the progress points to assess her for the higher grade. She was very close and had made excellent progress, but the school couldnt categorically say she was still more than 12 months ahead based on the progress points they had to assess her against. There were a number of new progress points introduced that semester that she had not been assessed against earlier in her schooling.

[leisamd]

Just wanted to add that I do think part time would be a fine option, if you can get a school to work with you. It's something we might look into at highschool age.

The Village school in Vic is only a few days a week, looks fabulous albeit expensive!

[jks91]

My youngest sister was withdrawn from her public primary school in Year 2 or 3 for medical reasons. She did her homeschooling through Schools of Isolated and Distance Education (SIDE) in WA, and they arranged for her to continue Art and Music through the primary school she was previously attending and to then stay for recess/lunch if that was straight after the class. Worked out as around 5 hours a week of attendance at her previous school. This was only because she had a medical condition that prevented her from attending full time school though.

From what the OP is describing I'm not sure that it would fall under the same category unfortunately and would be very difficult to organise.


Edited to add - this all finished up within the school year though, as there was new class groups and new teachers she no longer wanted to participate. She was happy enough with the activities that were organised through her SIDE coursework.

This post has been edited by jks91: 17/12/2012, 08:12 PM