It's taken me a while to get around to writing this, but I thought I'd best share in case anyone else is going through it too.
I recently approached a school to talk about flexi-learning. For those who don't know what this is, it's kind of like part-time school. My motives for this are a) keep other people off my back - if the school can see he is doing well I won't get loads of hassle about home schooling and b) I think it would be nice for him to spend some time experiencing 'school' without it being so many hours that he become peer dependant or starts to have his character formed more by their culture than our own.
You'd think this was a great option for the school, as they receive full time funding from the government for having him there, yet only require half the resources.
They were, however, incredibly negative towards the idea. I thought they might be keen if they met Cosmo and saw that he was fairly advanced for his age. They were indeed very impressed, and made it clear that they would like to have him at their school (despite us 'technically' being out of catchment) but that he would have to go to school full time. When I brought up the fact that he would be too far ahead of his peers and become bored in class (possibly making him quite disruptive. We all know what bored little boys are like!) they agreed. The solution?
Move him up two years so that he is studying with intellectual peers rather than his own age group.
I'm not being funny, but this is basically the exact
opposite of what I want from school! Part of wanting to homeschool is about protecting him from todays culture, not exposing him to everything two years early!! Can you imagine a 9 year old moving up to secondary school??
I told the headmaster I thought it was a horrendous idea and he told me that homeschooling was a horrendous idea.
I'm now more determined than ever!
