Onwards and Upwards! · Tuesday December 30, 2008 by Christine
Well after almost a term of full time education we reached the Christmas holidays intact!
Having deregistered Christopher from school we eventually received a phone call from the Education authority telling us what we ‘must’ do. This was followed up by an information pack.
Fortunately having been an active member of the HE Special forum for 1 1/2 years I have to say that most of the information given on the phone was inacurate and misleading and if you knew what you were looking for ,in the information pack it was clear that, in fact ,most of the information I was led to believe was compulsary was in fact just recommended.
I completed and sent off my educational philosophy and now await a meeting (subject to my agreement) with the Home education officer sometime in the New year!
Full time home education has been so much more relaxing than flexi schooling although ,having had the benefit of time to see the effects , and to experiment with different ideas and forms of teaching I already knew Christopher’s strengths and weaknesses,knew he was a visual learner and had the advantage of knowing how successful one to one learning actually is .
The icing on the cake was a comment made to me by a parent who had previously made it clear that there was no excuse for my son’s ‘bad behaviour’ at school – a criticism often levelled at parents of autistic children.
She pointed out that Christopher had been so much calmer and seemed happier over the last couple of months- exactly the same length of time he hadn’t been attending school!( She wasn’t aware we had deregistered him!) What more proof do I need that I’m doing the right thing for my son!
Moving into Full time Home Education-Wish us Luck! Learning all the Time
we had the same experience with our LA. A long list of expectations including stating that we should be ‘studying’ for a minimum of 3 hours a day. All nonsense. Luckily the official who came visiting was very happy and only wanted to see us again in a year.
— Lark Jun 11, 08:48 pm #