Angelwings

Hi, Thank you everybody who offered their support about this, I really do appreciate your thoughts and comments. Livelife and Mihaela- I think your thoughts about following the rules (that don't always seem to benefit the child,) safety and quality of education with regards to this situation are all excellent points. Mihaela- your links were fantastic and I spent a good few hours browsing them today and will continue to do so, thank you! dgeorga, thank you for getting back- I really understand what you mean about the practicalities, such as how many hours he may need to spend outside of usual lessons etc. And I absolutely support your very astute reflections regarding 'inclusion units' being, for all intense purposes, 'exclusion units.' Our son doesn't cope very well with unstructured time or self guided study and therefore, we feel that, even if he were allowed to sit in the library (which we currently understand is not even an option school are prepared to offer!) that he will not cope with unregulated time in school. In light of this, I would equally be happy if he were to just study a few main G.C.S.Es in school and I could home-school him the rest of the time. However, school do seem to be dictating to us that either our son cannot drop some G.C.S.Es at all, in which case we strongly believe he will likely not cope and certainly not be able to give his best over his next few G.C.S.E years, OR, if he is allowed by school to only drop one or two at the very most, we are being told that he must go sit in the inclusion unit during these times We feel that, through their unwillingness to be flexible, school have therefore put us in an impossible situation. When school then stated that their reason for not being willing to even negotiate or consider flexible schooling at all was due to it being 'illegal,' in all cases except illness, I thought I would reach out and see what other peoples experiences of flexi schooling were and what their thoughts were about our situation- so thank you all for your replies.

Hi dgeorgea and Mihaela, Thank you for your replies . dgeorgea, the school is an Academy- I think you are right and that maybe I should contact the LEA and ask them about it too, thank you!. Mihaela, the link was really great, thank you! And I agree, I thought it sounded questionable too when school said it was illegal!

Hi Everybody Do any of you out there have any knowledge, experience or advice you could please offer me about flexi-schooling? We have just hit an uncomfortable brick wall with high school - basically, we asked school if our son could drop a G.C.S.E subject or two as we feel that doing the full amount is too many for him to cope with and we felt we would rather he done well in fewer subjects than not so well in too many. We really feel that doing all the G.C.S.Es will be too overwhelming for him. School said dropping a subject like this might be a possibility they may consider BUT if he does drop a subject, when he is not in classes he must go sit in the inclusion unit and...they cannot guarantee there will be any staff in there or that he would be supervised in there during these times. We don't like the thought of him sitting in an unsupervised classroom for some of his regular school week. So, we asked if school would consider flexi-schooling him instead. School responded immediately with a very final sounding 'NO' and said their reason for refusing this request is because 'flexi-schooling is illegal for all cases except if a child is temporarily ill and expected to return to school full time at some point in the future.' Does anyone know if what school is telling us is right? Or do you have any experience of your children or yourselves accessing flexi-schooling that you could share with me? Thanks for your help and support everyone