11 Plus Exams Forum

My spouse and I are thinking of homeschooling our DD for the third/final term of Y6 (next Apr-Jul) in order to spend quality time with her before she starts secondary school (we expect her to be much busier from Y7 onwards) and because she has in some ways outgrown her small primary school.

Regarding compensating for the social interactions that she will lose if we homeschool her, our DD belongs to a music group that meets for an afternoon once a week (she has several good friends there from different schools). In addition, we plan to organise play dates for her with her school friends so that they can maintain their friendships. Lastly, the home school programme we are devising would have her undertake exploratory activities outside the house, thereby enabling her to meet different people.

Has anyone done this and what was your experience? Any advice/views would be greatly appreciated.

We considered this at exactly the same time as you. I wonder if there is something in that. My twins now go to different secondary schools but at the time werea t same primary. I actually contacted and cleared it with both their next schools (neither was interested in sats results).
In the end though, the last term of year 6 was perhaps the nicest, lots of fun, as chook play they didn't want to miss out on, lots of 'lasts' and a super leaving assembly,a nd in retrospect I'm glad I kept them in.
Socially, don't worry about it, sure you'd be fine, academically too, also fine, it just comes down to if you think your child Might actually enjoy being one of the senior leaving class for that last fun term, or if unhappy, then go for it. Totally and utterly doable. I was actually quite sorry when we decided against it!

Yamin151 wrote:In the end though, the last term of year 6 was perhaps the nicest, lots of fun, as chook play they didn't want to miss out on, lots of 'lasts' and a super leaving assembly,a nd in retrospect I'm glad I kept them in.

Ditto here. That last term is a huge right passage at our school - activities take place that they have seen previous year 6s do and they eagerly await their turn. DS would never have forgiven me for taking him out - he learned nothing new academically but the experiences will always be remembered

JD

Many thanks for your responses, Yamin151 and JamesDean. Our DD is also looking forward to end of Y6 festivities and we were thinking of asking the school whether she could return for the final two weeks. But I also take on board your broader point about the last term being fun and memorable as a whole.

Fortunately, we have a few weeks before we need to decide.

I think both my dc would have missed out on quite a lot of things that prepared them for the move to senior school. Their school did a lot of things which I think eased the transition and they had their residential and end of term assembly and a lovely leavers evening where they all dressed up.It was a bit like a mini oscars award ceremony -everybody got some sort of award then they had a disco - it was a lot of fun.

There will be an induction day for the new school which I would not want a child to miss as they meet their new form and tutor.

The school will take her off roll and may not re-admit her .. you could just skip KS2 test week.

The induction day is still offered, both my boys schools would have had them just as if they'd been in school still, but yes, sure they would not readmit her once she was off the books. You have to 'declare' to the educ authority that you are doing it so its all official. Of course, any casual arrangement you made would be up to you, but probably unlikely.

By all means skip KS2 test week, though in the end ours weren't bothered by it.

I wish we had homeschooled this term. It's a complete dead duck of a year so far both academically, socially and really no feeling that this is year 6 and you have some responsibility either.

I hope it's going to improve and that the final term will be as others describe - a memorable experience in a positive way.

Do you have to decide in a couple of weeks? Can you see how it goes?

By the way, decide whenever you like! We didn't give it a thought until the Spring term and our decision was 2 weeks before Easter! And we didn't tell school our thoughts, we would have gone in and politely explained what we were doing, thanked them hugely etc etc, but didn't feel it was necessary to make them party to our thoughts.

We home schooled both DDs for the final term of primary school - no problems at all beginning secondary school afterwards and we had a really nice time with them.