7. Factor in the 2020 scenario 2020 has been a nightmare year for home educating families whose children were due to sit exams. The reality was that for large numbers of students who were studying independently (i.e. not with a teacher or a reputable online or distance learning provider) their Read more…
4. Don’t do too many subjects You may be tempted to mimic the approach of most schools when it comes to GCSEs and do as many as you possibly can. Can I discourage you from heading down that road – even if your child is really bright! One of the Read more…
1. Make the big decisions first Don’t get caught up in discussions about subjects and exam boards before you consider as a family what you want to do about exams. You don’t have to do IGCSEs at all. Some families opt to walk a different path – either doing alternative Read more…
It’s summer, which for many home educators means just one thing – what are we going to do education-wise in September? And specifically for families with children approaching the exam years, what are we going to do about GCSE/IGCSEs. If you have older children and you have been down this Read more…
This is the first full week of exams at our NSWLearning exam centre and it started me thinking about our relationship with exams as home educators. As somebody who did his teacher training in the 1970s, I am old enough to remember the great counter-cultural educational movements of the 1970s Read more…
We were recently asked why we sometimes use old out of print textbooks for some of our courses. It was a simple question, genuinely asked and it prompted me to mull things over and make some notes to explain out thinking better. Those notes morphed into an email and now Read more…
Let’s be honest, nobody likes the big head at the party, blowing his own trumpet, continually turning every conversation round so that it is an opportunity to talk about what he has done. However, there are times, like job interviews for example, where blowing your own trumpet has some merit. Read more…
A few years back, I had a conversation with a mum whilst her son was sitting an exam here at the NSWLearning exam centre. We got into discussion about success and failure, in particular what we as parents measure as success in our home education adventure. As we chatted, I Read more…
Home education is an incredible adventure! It provides us, as parents, with a remarkable opportunity to enjoy our children’s company and grow wise as we all learn together. Like all genuine adventures, however, there are times when pressure builds and the whole thing feels like a lot less fun that Read more…
In a recent blog, we explored the incredible flexibility that home education allows families. In the context of IGCSEs, this flexibility allows us as parents to spread exams out so that our children can sit a range of subjects in different exam sessions. This is a great idea and one Read more…