Home Schooling - are you for or against?

growstuff - indeed so; there is no limit to my talents!

But seriously, the problem with these sorts of rules about what children should learn is that those children for whom learning is more challenging will be totally turned off learning at all - will feel it is not for them, when they need some learning and they need to have their specific talents recognised. Children for whom academic work comes easily will simply sail through all this stuff, even though it is not needed. It is the impact on the majority that worries me.

Children should be taught those things that will actually have some use for them; those things that help to boost their self-esteem; those things that will help them to be useful citizens; those things that will help them to live with kindness; those things that will open up opportunities for them to pursue careers that will be satisfying.

They do not need their appetite for learning to be quashed - especially those whose intellectual abilities are average or below - we must do what means they will not throw the baby out with the bathwater and lose out on education at all, as they might see it as irrelevant. And it is those children who are socially disadvantaged in some way (and for whom the Pupil Premium was designed) who will miss out most. Their premium is spent on fronted adverbials and the like, when it would be better spent exploring the things that interest them and might help them to see the relevance of school.

That is one of the advantages of good home education: the child's desire to explore and learn is honoured and pursued rather than crushed.

I got 5/5 for identifying an expanded noun phrase.

There wasn't a quiz for the fronted adverbial.

I think much depends on individual circumstances and the personality types.

I would have struggled to home educate my children at senior school age although I might have just about managed with primary school work.

Someone I know home educated her two children and one went to Cambridge and the other to Oxford. The children mixed well with other children. However, I have known other home educated children where things haven't gone so well.

My children enjoyed school so it was never anything that I considered.

Careful with your stereotyping of pupil premium pupils Luckygirl. My son's school received PP for him because he had been in receipt of free school meals - not that they spent any of it him on him; it went to the SN department.

I have a theory the powers that be insist on all this useless stuff, so they don't have time for useful skills like decent comprehension (eg knowing the difference between facts and opinions, being able to summarise, reading more than headlines), which are more important than ever in this internet age. Critical thinking and an ability to debate and make balanced decisions would be useful too.

Luckygirl It's not just that it's useless to the less able; it's useless to just about everybody. I had a career firstly as a wannabe journalist then as a languages teacher and I didn't have a clue what a fronted adverbial was until Gove introduced it into the national curriculum. I have more than a passing interest in language and I honestly have never needed to know such daft terminology.

Thats not my experience of how pupil premium is spent but perhaps I have been lucky. I have seen it used to subsidise residential, music lessons etc. I think pupil premium was one of the most inspired ideas of any government, and I am no great fan of the lib dems, I dont think the execution has been faultless but as an idea it was a good one.

Galaxy My son's school received pupil premium for him, but he wasn't struggling academically, so nothing was ever spent on him, even though I could never afford to send him on school trips or pay for music lessons, which he had to give up when I lost my job. I'm afraid I've heard of other cases such as his. I agree it was an inspired idea, but unfortunately too many teachers correlate poverty with poor attainment.

I have thought quite a lot about pupil premium and I wonder if the issue was partly there wasnt a clear vision of how it should be used, so it was left up to individual schools and ....

I think it's because teachers themselves don't understand what its purpose is.

I think it's a good thing that schools were left to use it as they saw fit, although they're supposed to justify how their spending narrows the achievement gap. The Sutton Trust has done a lot of work on researching what kind of spending has the maximum effect, but my experience is that many teachers - and, more worryingly some headteachers and school governors - haven't heard of it.

I think it should have been used over the last year to buy laptops for pupils learning at home and I don't know why it wasn't.

You should be able to read what schools use their pupil premium (PP) for if they have a website.
It’s allocated on the number of children on Free School Meals (FSM), looked after children or previously looked after children. There’s also an allowance for children registered as a service children.
The website is first place OFSTED look when planning a visit.
At one school where I’m currently governor PP covers 5 uses and includes among other things, pastoral support, support at lunch and break times, support in the classroom and subsidising school trips for children on FSM.
Governors are responsible for overseeing the spending of the funding and monitoring the impact on pupil premium children to ensure financial circumstances are not a barrier to pupil engagement and progress in school.
One problem many schools have is that, FS and KS1 children are automatically entitled to free lunches, so parents don’t apply for FSM until the child reaches Y3.
So for example, school misses out on about £8000pa if 6 KS1 children whose parents could apply, don’t.

I think it's more that some of the recommendations arent what some would like to hear, and I think you need a clear political vision behind it, and that's certainly not going to happen now.

Use of funding will always disappoint or frustrate somebody either because it doesn’t do what they want or because they feel they should get it.

I know all that Mollygo. My son's school received PP for him for three years before he was 16. I challenged the school about how the money was spent and, let's face it, it's a reasonable amount of money. The trouble was that he was/is an academically able child who eventually achieved 12 A/A*s (all in academic subjects) at GCSE and didn't fit their stereotype of a PP child. His mother (me) didn't fit the stereotype of what the parent of a PP child is like either! Eventually, I asked to see the school's accounts. Nearly £300,000 had been syphoned off for the special needs department and those pupils without special needs were receiving nothing. Admittedly, they did up their game after that and, at least, published a policy. There was no support for school trips. While money didn't stop my son from achieving academically at GCSE, what people didn't understand is how not being able to afford what nearly every other child could (school trips, music lessons, IT gadgets, the evenings out often arranged by the form tutors, new/unrepaired uniform, revision books, etc) in addition to not having networking contacts for work experience and being bullied for not socialising outside school, affected him emotionally and eventually led to a breakdown before A levels. The school didn't even tell me he was truanting because he was still achieving in line with what they thought a PP pupil should.

Mollygo

Use of funding will always disappoint or frustrate somebody either because it doesn’t do what they want or because they feel they should get it.

Mollygo My son's school did receive money for him and it didn't spend it on supporting his emotional needs. He should have received it and didn't. The school wasn't using it for its original purpose and it came across a parent who wasn't going to be fobbed off by anodyne excuses such as "some people will always be disappointed and frustrated".

Galaxy

I think it's more that some of the recommendations arent what some would like to hear, and I think you need a clear political vision behind it, and that's certainly not going to happen now.

No Galaxy I was very happy to hear the recommendations. The school wasn't using the money properly. It was diverting it to special needs.

I didnt mean you growstuff I think some governors, schools etc find the recommendations especially those which stray from the 'extra staff' type of scenario difficult.

Schools are obliged to account for how PP is spent and to publicise this on their websites.

I agree that many pupils for whom the school receives PP do not struggle with academic learning.

I’m sorry you needed to do it, but good that you challenged the school Growstuff. The governoring body should have been aware what the money was spent on. I’m sorry that your son didn’t benefit.
I only serve within some primary schools and they, as I said make provision for needs outwith SEN.
My only experience beyond KS2 is with my GS, who receives FSM.
He, like your son has no problems academically, but like your son, lacks the funding for what his peers see as normal, and also has issues because of ASD.
His needs are so far being met by the school in all areas mentioned on the requirements including subsidised school trips, but not techno gadgets.

In my albeit limited experience, PP children appear in many different guises; academic, mental health, home difficulties or financial problems, the most usual basis, but not the only one, being FSM.
What is the stereotype of a parent of a PP child though?

I was homeschooled and I don`t see any problem with it (neither do people that know me). I`m more well-rounded than my peers and don`t see any problems with communication and so on. It all depends on how you were homeschooled (my mom was really strict) (some insightful comparison - ivypanda.com/essays/home-schooling-and-public-schooling-comparison/).

My niece teaches science to groups of home schooled children. She and they have won awards.

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