Exams

There is more than one route after 16 for home educated teenagers

What can home educated teenagers do after 16? UK guide

College, apprenticeships, qualifications and other routes. A practical guide to post-16 options for home educated teenagers in England, including college, A levels, vocational courses, apprenticeships, Functional Skills, work and continuing home education.

One of the worries that creeps in as home educated children become teenagers is what happens at 16.

When they are eight or nine, it is...

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Home education and GCSEs: preparing for exams without losing the plot

A practical guide to GCSE preparation for home-educated young people

GCSEs have a peculiar effect on otherwise sensible parents. One minute learning is centred around the young person and their interests. Then suddenly, somebody has bought forty highlighters, opened a spreadsheet and announced that Tuesday at 10.15 am is now “simultaneous equations”. I have taught maths for over 15 years, so...

Moving from interest-led learning to GCSE preparation without losing what works

How home-educated teens can move from interest-led learning to IGCSEs or GCSEs

For years, learning may have felt quite natural.

Your child became fascinated by a subject and followed it as far as they wanted. A question about volcanoes turned into Geography, Science and documentary watching. An interest in Greek myths led to reading, writing and History. Maths appeared in baking,...

Are exams harming teenagers? Naomi Fisher questions the system

Exams are very strange by Naomi Fisher Do we really want our teenagers to spend their adolescence on a conveyor belt of high stakes exams?

What a strange thing we do to our young people in this culture and time.

We make them spend several years learning things that they often have no interest in, that they have not chosen and that they will in many cases never use again. We tell them...

GCSEs and IGCSEs for home educated students: UK Guide

How to choose qualifications, find an exam centre, book as a private candidate and avoid some of the common GCSE mistakes home educating families make.

Thinking about GCSEs when you home educate can feel bewildering at first. There is no school handing you a list of subjects, choosing the exam board, making the entries and telling you where to turn up. Instead you encounter specifications,...