Why Home Educate?
Can I home educate my child?
In the UK the rules for home education, or homeschooling, are very flexible. Your child must simply receive a 'full-time' education suitable for their age ability and aptitude, and any special educational needs they may have. You can start at any time and do not need to be trained as a teacher, nor teach them according to the National Curriculum, nor indeed buy a planned programme of study.
But why home schooling (or home education, or home teaching)?
Home education may be one of the most rewarding things you can do for your child. School does not suit every child, and there are many good reasons to teach at home: problems with the school such as disruptive classes, bullying, and your child's particular needs not being adequately met. You may be going abroad for a year or two, or you may be thinking of taking your children on the adventure of a lifetime around the world.
You can read testimonies from our customers who have chosen home education for a variety of reasons.
How does SHL help home educators?
Although home education is flexible and rewarding, it is not always easy. It is possible embrace the open nature of home education and still provide children with a useful platform for further education and employment. There are many resources available to support this style of home education.
However, many families desire a little more structure for a variety of reasons:
SHL packs cover the National Curriculum
Our Curriculum Packs give a comprehensive and balanced syllabus which closely follows the National Curriculum for England, and all our packs have been updated for the new academic year.
Although home educators in the UK are not required to follow the National Curriculum, many families choose to do so anyway in case their child needs to re-enter mainstream education at some point in the future. We don't view the National Curriculum as a straight-jacket, but rather as a basic foundation from which to build a fun and engaging syllabus.
Steady, tailored progression
The scale and scope of education can be daunting for home educators. There is as much a danger of setting your child too much work as too little.
We offer comprehensive, fully timetabled plans personalised to your child's specific needs and abilities PLUS all the educational materials for each year from birth through Foundation Stage, primary, and secondary all the way to GCSE.
Each Curriculum Pack contains all the resources and planning for a full year's work, and our new Pre-school pack covers the first four years of life. We have a range of Curriculum Packs for Foundation Stage and every Year group in Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2 and Key Stage 3, with particular help for gifted children. And when your child is ready to choose GCSE subjects, our IGCSE® Study Packs can be studied over two years, or over 18 months or even in one year.
Best quality resources for home educators
Educational publishing is a constantly changing landscape; new editions come out, and good schemes go out of print. Many home educators struggle to find materials that are appropriate for a home education setting, and mistakes can be expensive, time-consuming and frustrating for the learning process.
Using our considerable teaching experience, we choose the most suitable and up-to-date materials from the best educational publishers, from which to build a balanced curriculum for your child, saving you the time researching resources and all the worry of planning.
We also offer a wide range of other educational resources and study guides to enhance your child's learning.
The planning is done for you
You won't have to spend another minute looking for learning materials on the internet or in the shops. Many home educators will tell you of the evenings spent researching the next project and planning the next day's activities.
Using our packs you will find home education is so time-efficient. For example, you'll be able to complete the scheduled work in the mornings, leaving the rest of the day for developing other interests, going on trips, or socialising with other home-educating families. Our planning is a guide you can rely on to cover the year's work, and yet it is flexible enough for you to make it fit the requirements of your family life.
What if my child has Special Needs?
The term Special Educational Needs (SEN) encompasses Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD), developmental delay, dyslexia (difficulty with reading and writing), dyspraxia (difficulty with coordination), dyscalculia (difficulty with maths), and a range of communication and language difficulties.
If your child does not have any difficulty in understanding new concepts but may have a problem with organising ideas and writing them down, then choose our standard primary or secondary Curriculum Packs and simply record the answers in a more suitable way.
Your child may be working at lower than his/her chronological age. In this case, you can customise one of our primary or secondary Curriculum Packs by selecting the level of English, Maths and Science appropriate to your child’s understanding. All the textbooks in our packs are written to suit the reading age of that Year group.
If your child has difficulty filtering information and needs simple, clear easy-to- read worksheets, then you should choose one of our SEN Curriculum Packs. The SEN packs minimise written answers and reduce the learning objectives to manageable tasks. You child will feel a sense of achievement in completing each piece of work.
Just click on the links above to learn more, or contact us to talk about your children's needs.