Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments Senior.high school senior homeschooling in UK

is there anybody in the UK who is or has homeschooled a senior/high school son?

I would be interested to have their thoughts and a feed in to any resources they found particularly useful and any experiences they had (good or bad)

I haven't, although since it's conceivable I might in future I'm interested. In case you haven't already found it, this
http://home-ed.info/local_groups.html
seems like a pretty useful directory of UK groups etc.

I remember you were concerned about your son getting into your preferred senior school - I hope this isn't a sign that he didn't.

Colin'sMum

Nah! just that when I raised a bullying incident all sorts of spurious behaviour problems were raised.So we went ballistic. Never been told before the meeting - to protect our little darling apparently. We referred to his last teacher report of 22 April saying no problems - but the problem was with other teachers apparently (didn't know he had any other teachers - but there you go thay always pull something out the bag). We asked for a specific incident, and was told October LAST YEAR!
Don't recognise he's gifted in any way - doesn't show up in maths & english or science, yet he is leaps and bounds ahead on the more esoteric/theoretical stuff that isn't handled at Junior School. (When he talked about Kepler's discovery of elliptical orbits teacher was rather proud that he himself didn't know anything about kepler - belittles my boy's knowledge, and beggars belief. I would have though the best response would be "oh really, would you like to tell the class so we can all learn something")

It is a private school as he was underachieving in state (problems you can read about elsewhere if you can be bothered) and I am making �loads of sacrifices to put him through.

Just that for half the cost I could have him home tutored for specialist stuff and get him out and about doing the stuff he's really interested in - art/science/travel.Would work if I could find a local group

Gah, that's not helpful of them, is it?
I was reading back in your past posts - sounds as though this is an ongoing frustration, that you see giftedness in your son that teachers aren't seeing. Does it actually matter in practical terms though? I mean, usually the reason why people need their children labelled as gifted is that the usual school work is not sufficiently challenging for them, but (from what I've read of your writing anyway) it sounds as though that's not an issue for your son right now. [ETA I mean does it matter whether the school thinks he's gifted - obviously a teacher being proud of not knowing something matters, and anyone not knowing about Kepler is shocking enough in itself!]

Did you ever get to the bottom of what the EP meant by his being sixth form level in "raw intelligence"? I would guess it was something to do with how he interacted with the tester, since it doesn't seem to be reflected in the scores, but it's a bit mystifying.
Good luck with finding something that works!

You're right - the label doesn't matter except for the provision/s they make/will make. I already think he's bored.

I was explaining to them about how he can link 2 quite complex stories by the example of him discussing with me the treatment of illgitimates in Nicholas Nickleby and the bastard son of Gloucester in King Lear. Not relating the tales you understand, but comparing the different scenarios.(didn't even know the Lear story till he came along - do now tho', got to try and keep on top of things). No point giving him Janet & John and expect him to get enthusiastic and engaged!

they have also managed to get him to stop answering questions in class (to give the other kids a chance).I suggested to Sir that he lets Cian answer at the end - and do you think that has happened? Nope - he doesn't put his hand up any more


re the WISC : the VCI puts him in the top 98th percentile - gifted Im assured. Disparity with working memory tho'. i think Dottie advised me that I would have difficulty finding a school for him. An EP said he would struggle until he got to High School as they didn't cater for his profile.

But if it carries on then I have to think of alternatives.