Canopus

I have yet to find anyone my age apart from the people who attended my school who never took an English exam. My English GCSE was all coursework. I have a sneaky suspicion that it was a non standard GCSE only taken by a miniscule number of people and not used for mainstream schools.

There are endless arguments whether kids get too much or not enough homework. Far fewer people seem to raise the question whether their kids are actually learning anything from the homework or whether it really is just work for the sake of it. When I was in KS3, about 45% of all the homework I got were pointless exercises and the other 45% I learnt virtually nothing from because the work was too trivial. I often didn't bother doing my homework and it upset my parents when they read school reports but nobody ever identified why I didn't do my homework. I all boiled down to laziness and lack of responsibility. I have always held a suspicion that schools are designed to make kids do gruelling pointless tasks more than teach them enjoyable and useful things.

Many special schools of the 1980s and 90s for kids with EBD were totally unsuitable places for kids with AS and probably worse than most mainstream schools which catered badly for kids with AS anyway.

Is anyone doing Systems and Control Technology?

Well I had. I was expelled from a secondary school in 1989. I was statemented for SEN but not diagnosed with AS or any other disability.

It also depends on whether the kids were diagnosed at the time of the exclusion. I reckon that thousands of kids with undiagnosed disabilities have been expelled from schools.

It wouldn't surprise me if Charles Kennedy has his own private whisky distillery somewhere in his constituency that includes Ben Nevis. I wonder if Kennedy's liver has rotted beyond repair? Larry Hagman as in JR Ewing needed a liver transplant after a drink problem. Next in line for trouble is Nick Griffin. He has his trial later this month and could end up in prison for 7 years. Whatever the outcome of the trial, I think it is win both ways for the British National Party.

I always thought that with a few possible exceptions such as North Korea, China, and Afghanistan, England is the most authoritarian rule-bound nation on planet earth. Anyone who challenges the majority consensus in England is seen as possessed by the devil ! I am convinced that England is the ONLY country on earth that prohibits its citizens from displaying its national flag.

It certainly tilts the playing field of life the opposite way by identifying NT people as the ones with a problem brain. Whoever has produced this website has courage and it would probably get them into serious trouble in certain countries. I suppose the conflict between AS and NT people all boils down to numbers now.

Employers can check whether you are telling the truth about previous employment even down to the exact title used. They will come down like a ton of bricks on job applicants who say they worked as a garage mechanic 20 years ago when in fact they were an exhaust fitter. Employers can also demand proof of self employment from decades ago such as statements of accounts, advertisements, or customer testimonials. Does anybody keep the paperwork relating to the lawn mowing service they ran for 6 months of 1975?

This is probably the result of releasing built up pressure from a stressful day at school. It is actually quite common for kids who are really quiet at school to completely blow their top at home at evenings and weekends. They tend to revert to their "normal selves" during school holidays.

Why actually does he hate school? Is it the work, or the system, or the bullying? Word processors have inbuilt spelling checkers. I think some software is available to help with spelling and grammar. Check out places like PC world or educational suppliers. I recommend taking advantage of strong subjects. Buy him some textbooks and software suitable for his ability. I wouldn't worry too much about this one at the moment. He can do written work and draw pictures on a computer. If he wants to improve fine motor skills and writing then he can practice at his own pace over a period of time.

Old fashioned fluorescents flicker at 100Hz and some people notice it. Most modern fluorescents drive their tubes at a high frequency so don't flicker. There were lots of pre 1980s fluorescents including those with big fat tubes at my special needs school. One of the kids found the flickering objectionable and it affected his reading. The head couldn't understand what all the fuss was about and called in an electrician. The electrician checked the lights and found there was nothing wrong with them. The same kid was also affected by flicker from video games. He blamed it on the TV because he wasn't affected by his TV at home with the same game console and same games.

For some reason most employers are reluctant to even interview job applicants who have been out of work for over 6 months because of personal matters such as problems with their family or home educating their children. It is inappropriate to put such things down on a CV, but some employers come up with all sorts of ridiculous and baseless explanations for "blank" periods including being incarcerated in Nicaragua for human trafficking !

And employers badly discriminate against job applicants who have been out of work for long periods of time. A long period of time is often defined by most employers as 6 months.

How do you want to see it implemented in practice because there are a zillion ways to implement home education? A friend of mine is compiling a selection of reading materials for patriotic home education. He has been home educating for over 5 years and did so because he opposes multiculturalism and political correctness peddled by schools either as part of the National Curriculum or dished out by teachers with a socially liberal stance. The reading materials selected include British history, geography, cultures, and classical literature. Most of it is aimed at the KS2 and KS3 age group and is intended for a purely "educational" purpose rather than material for GCSE exams. I am working on something at the opposite end of the scale. I am trying to track down all institutions that take private candidates for GCSEs and A Levels because it would be very useful to have a complete list of every exam centre with the subjects that are available and the exam boards used.

Is any information published about how schools deal with AS in other countries? I am particularly interested in Europe but information from any country will be useful. I am tempted to say that AS is best understood in Germany and Austria and probably unknown in most of eastern Europe but I could be wrong. Over the past few years I have encountered a few parents who moved to another EU country because of problems with schools in Britain although none of the kids has AS. A few months ago someone on this forum was considering moving to Montenegro.

The cost of Christmas!

Mixed year group teaching is supposed to be commonplace at primary schools and even takes place in some secondary schools as well. However, the kids are still in an official year group and could end up doing 2 years with the same teacher. Sometimes a kid at primary school gets moved into a class with kids that are either above or below their year group but they are not officially moved a year group. I don't think it is possible to repeat a year unless approval is given by the LEA and the parents also agree.

It intrigues me how something like this happens? To the best of my knowledge, it is impossible to enter Y1 unless you are 5 years old before 1st of September that Y1 starts. I know somebody who wanted to enrol their kid in Y1 when they were only 4 years old because they thought they were too advanced for reception class but they couldn't because it isn't legal. Nursery and reception education are not required by law and the enrollment policy for nursery and reception education classes varies from LEA to LEA. I had a full year of nursery and a full year of reception with a summer birthday. My brother has a summer term birthday and only got 2 terms of reception. My sister has an autumn birthday and got 3 terms of reception.

Are the Scottish and the Chinese the only people who make a big celebration of the coming of a new year? Happy 2006 to everyone!

I think there was significant variability in primary education back in the pre National Curriculum era with some schools - and possibly LEAs - teaching to a higher academic level than others. However, there wasn't much "intelligence gathering" done by the state in the pre National Curriculum era so it is almost impossible to make any accurate comparisons between different schools and LEAs. It wouldn't surprise me if deliberate "dumbing down" was more commonplace in the Labour run metropolitan LEAs in the north of England than in the LEAs for the suburbs and shires. This should be taken as a specific instance rather than a generalisation. I did my KS1 in a primary school in Rochdale LEA that forced me to write ball and stick and even had videos with an animated pencil. I moved to a Primary school in Hampshire for KS2 that taught cursive writing from the outset and didn't use any videos. This is very strange. How on earth could a school put you into the wrong academic year in the first place? I think there was a time when those with August birthdays were at risk of being in a different academic year depending on the LEA but it doesn't explain this one.

What I want to know is, if deliberately deferring education until nursery or school was commonplace, was it just a cultural thing or was it recommended practice? When I was about 1 year old my GP issued my parents with a hard hitting statement not to teach me anything before I started nursery school. The reason was that it would be a disadvantage to be academically advanced as the state school system offered no facilities and no resources for clever kids and they would be become bored and frustrated with the system. My parents ignored the warning and were surprised that a GP could even come out with statements like this. The teachers at nursery never informed my parents about deferring education or that they shouldn't have taught me to such a high level for my age. Neither did the nursery teachers advise my parents whether it was necessary or even appropriate that I should attend nursery at all. I found infant school to be a total waste of time. I learnt virtually nothing and the work was both tedious and trivial as well as lacking variety. I would probably have enjoyed today's curriculum better because it covers stuff like science, technology, computers, and history that were never taught at my infant school. All I ever did was reading, writing, arithmetic, and a few art lessons now and then. The quality of teaching was abysmal with the teachers preferring to just act as class supervisors rather than actually teach the kids. I became bored and frustrated and often got up to mischief yet the stupid teachers couldn't work out why. I might be biased in my views, but I feel it is the moral duty for parents to educate their children from the minute they are born. I might have been clever for a 3 year old but I certainly don't consider myself a little Einstein. My parents only went to secondary modern schools and left with a few CSEs. They didn't teach me anything particularly technical or out of the ordinary. Just everyday basic skills. I am thoroughly against the idea of deferring or even retarding a kid's education until they start school or nursery on the grounds that they won't fit in with the system although other parents may disagree with me.

My parents taught me things at home from the minute I was born. They didn't push me or use any particular curriculum or teaching resources, but let me take my course. Teaching was done at times when I was interested rather than long formal sessions. By the age of 3 I could read complete sentences, write semi cursively with a pen, do sums including multiplication and division, count coins, and use maps. When I started nursery I was found to be far more advanced than the other kids. Some of them could hardly talk and none of them could read anything other than simple words on flashcards. Other kids were learning to count up to 10 when I was talking about square roots and number sequences. My parents found out that the majority of other kid's parents had deliberately deferred reading, writing, and maths until their kid started nursery and informed it was a common practice back in the 1970s.

What I mean by deferring education is deliberately not teaching things like reading, writing, maths, and general knowledge at home until your kid starts at school or nursery.