For home schooled children who have studied for a public exam like GCSEs or A levels either independently, through a private tutor, or via a correspondence course, it is usually the pupil’s own responsibility to find an exam centre, register for the exam, find a qualified person to assess coursework, and enter examinations.

Exam boards such as OCR and Edexcel provide ‘guides for private candidates’ that can provide extra information on this topic – this is available by calling the exam board directly or can be downloaded from the exam board’s website. Inside these booklets you will also usually find the required exam and/or coursework entry forms that you may need.

Home Schooled Candidates’ Advice on Examination Officers

Examination Officers do not have to accept private candidates to their exam centre so it is important to know about the systems in place before contacting the officer, that way you will seem organised and he or she will feel more relaxed about accepting your application. Note down your exam board number, syllabus number and unit code numbers before contacting the examining officer, and make sure the information is correct!

Find out closing dates for entering an exam, and speak to an examining centre well in advance of those dates. Find a centre by contacting the exam board for a list of local centres – this information will usually also be available online. Centres will have to be registered by the exam board, and may include schools, colleges, private tuition colleges, sixth form centres, or other adult education centres. Note that not every centre will offer every exam, so you should be prepared to make lots of phone calls to lots of different centres.

Different Types of Exams

Exams which do not have a coursework or oral component will usually be the easiest to arrange, requiring only an exam entry form to be submitted, before then assuring the exam centre of your identity and provide contact details. Applicants for qualifications which involve coursework have to find a way of having the coursework examined. This might be an exam board moderator but will usually not be anyone at the exam centre and this should be made clear to the exam officer.

Exam Entry Paperwork

Students will be provided with paperwork to fill in by their examination centre and should do so before the deadline set by each centre – this might include a visit to the centre for them to check the candidate’s identity. There will also be exam entry fees to be paid, which usually cost around £25 – paid to the examining board – for most GCSEs, and £12 for each single A level module or unit (remember, A levels consist of six units). Others cost more – English GCSE, for example, will usually be charged at between £40 – £50. Many exam centres will also ask for an additional administration fee which will need to be paid to them directly.

They may be particularly useful for teaching home schooled children who have not previously attended school, since they are less likely to faced other exams, such as SATs, which are taken in school and thus might provide especially useful opportunity to get used to the ways that questions are asked and responses should be phrased in exams.

Going Through a Practice Paper with Your Home Schooled Child

It’s a good idea to go through a practice paper together with your child during their home education to look at the format of questions and discuss the possible ways to answer questions. Ask your child what he or she thinks the question is actually asking about, and the length and detail of response required.

Talk through issues such as mark schemes, and how the number of marks that is ascribed to each question – usually printed on the side of the exam paper, adjacent to the question – should determine length and detail of answer. For instance, one mark answers usually only require a response of one word or a number, but a fifteen mark question might demand something more akin to an essay, with suitable time set aside for planning. Teaching these issue will differ according to the type of exam that your child is sitting.

Encourage your child to understand questions with different kinds of answer options. Some children sitting exams at eleven, for example, may not be used to multiple-choice responses, so talk through the options, e.g. that even if a child guesses an answer that can be worth a point so it’s worth a try! Other tips to talk through while going through the practice paper is that children who find themselves stuck on a question should move on rather than waste time on it, perhaps circling it so that they remember to return to it while checking through responses.

Practice spending a few minutes checking the responses a child has put for a paper to ensure all the questions are answered as fully as they need to be.

More Tips for Discussion While Going Through a Practice Paper with Your Child

Talk about ‘key words’ that require certain kinds of responses. For example, ‘analyse’ will usually require factual responses to be backed up by reasoning, while ‘Write down’ might require a shorter answer devoid of extra explanation.

Encourage your child to write in neat handwriting since messy writing is harder to read and thus to mark. Look also at your child’s spelling, punctuation and grammar while answering a practice paper since extra marks are often provided for these aspects of an examined answer, and these are important issues for learning about exam techniques.

The Importance of Preparation for Exams

Preparing for exams is the most important part, since a prepared student will feel more relaxed and confident in the exam setting. Start preparing as early as possible, and be sure your child knows exactly what to study, i.e. the possible subjects that might come up on the exam paper. Check the syllabus, look over all subjects studied, make a list of topics, and highlight the ones that your child feels less confident about. Include in the list books to read, facts to learn, essay topics to focus on – even though it might look big, that will make crossing items off the list all the more satisfying!

Practical Preparation for Exams

When studying for exams, provide your home schooled child with a well lit, quiet, cool room and ensure he or she knows you are around if necessary, but do not nag or pressurise. Encourage your child to learn a little, regularly, rather than ‘cramming’ – that is, trying to learn everything at the last minute. Encourage active revision, which might include reading aloud, doing past exam papers, writing practice answers to predicted questions, fill in the blank exercises, pop quizzes, using flashcards, brief review sheet that you can paste in a place like the bathroom and read while brushing teeth, etc.

Emotional Preparation for Exams

Since your child may not have studied in a large scale classroom situation, a public exam setting in a college or school might seem scary. Help your child to think about the situation in advance, so he or she does not ‘freeze’ on the day, and ask the exam centre if you can pay a visit so your child knows what to expect. If other home schooling children are taking exams, it can be a good idea to register at the same exam centre to lessen the ‘fear factor’ of the exam location.

Have a few ‘dry runs’ where a child has the correct amount of time to complete a past paper, perhaps the previous year’s, in a silent room with no distractions and, if possible, an invigilator.

Ensure your child arrives at the exam feeling prepared for the day, by giving him or her a healthy breakfast, arriving early so there is no stressful rushing on the journey, having had a good night’s sleep the previous evening, and being well prepared in terms of materials required for the exam. This might include pens, pencils, reading or distance glasses, a calculator, exam card or registration number and photo ID, if required, a see-through bag to put it all in, and a small clock if desired and allowed.

Home Schooled Students and Study Skills

It’s a good idea to always foster the study skills below, but they are especially important just before an exam, so a home schooled child can revise in peace and quiet. Create the right conditions that are conducive to studying, that might be a library if the home has become associated with non-study tasks, or a quiet room at home with a good desk and supportive chair. Turn off all distractions (like television and music), and have everything that your child might need to revise nearby, e.g. rough paper, pens, calculator, to avoid the distraction of getting up to track down a resource.

Revision Methods for Home Schooled Students

There are a myriad of ways and methods to revise, so it’s best to start using several different types throughout your child’s education to find the best and most effective way to revise for your child to consolidate his or her knowledge. While some students find success passively reading through notes and books, most find active methods of revision more successful. These might include repeatedly simplifying the information into shorter and shorter notes, until there is a line per fact/piece of information, which can be used as a review and memory jogger.

Another way is to actively adapt all notes so that prose becomes diagrams, and vice versa, facts are broken down into mnemonics, etc. Many students like to use flash cards as memory aids. Past papers can be a useful way for home schooled children to get used to answering questions in a ’standard’ way, and can be marked by a parent or tutor. There is further information on this method elsewhere on this site. When helping your child to work through a past examination paper, help him or her to make the most of the experience by timing the exam to the exact time available in the real exam.

Avoiding Exam Nerves clarinex

Help your child be aware that nervousness before an exam is normal, but excess stress should be avoided if possible. Plan in advance for the exam, so you know where and when it will take place and are not late. Ensure your child knows home much time is allowed in the exam, and the number of questions that have to be answered.

Exam Tips

First step is to look through the paper and write down top questions (if you have a choice) or things that seem important. Look at the marks available and answer questions accordingly, writing more for questions of higher value. Show all working out where possible. Make a plan for essay questions. Allow time at the end to read through answers and correct mistakes. After the exam, don’t bother comparing answers with other students – it will only add to stress!

‘GCSE’ stands for General Certificate of Secondary Education, the exams that within mainstream schools in the UK most students take at the end of year 11, usually when aged 16, although GCSEs can be taken at any age and home schoolers especially often take these exams before they are 16. GCSEs normally involve a two-year course of study, and on the National Qualifications Framework, GCSE grades C to G are level one, while students marked at grades A* to C have level two qualifications.

GCSEs are the main entry requirements for continuing study at A Level in many schools and other educational establishments, and may also be the listed as the minimum educational requirement for some jobs. There are a wide variety of GCSE subjects, including short courses, which are equivalent to half a GCSE, and double awards, which are offered in some subjects, including science, and are equivalent to two GCSE qualifications. GCSEs tend to be assessed through both coursework and exams.

A Levels are higher level qualifications than GCSEs. They are divided into two ’sets’ of qualifications, AS (Advanced Subsidiary) and A (Advanced) qualifications. Most students in mainstream schools take A Levels over a two-year course, but students are able to study a subject to AS Level alone and still receive a full AS qualification. A Level subjects include academic and vocational options, and both AS and A levels represent level three on the National Qualifications Framework.

Studying for A Levels and GCSEs Within Home Schooling

The way that a student studies for formal qualifications within a home school environment will often be dictated by their level of comfort and attainment in exams. Students who thrive by learning and studying for exams will usually be happy to study for formal qualifications via long distance, or correspondence, courses. These courses may be expensive, but will usually be cheaper than hiring a home tutor for a child to work with on an individual basis face to face.

A distance learning tutor will usually be a subject expert who will be able to give parents and children advice on the exam process. Students who sign up for a distance learning course for a GCSE and/or A Level will usually be given a course pack, which will have a lot of detail on the exam board’s syllabus. Other inclusions might be features such as textbooks, revision guides, online forum or worksheet access, and proactive support from a personal tutor. The level of inclusions in a correspondence course will differ according to factors such as price. Parents will still have to organise their child’s exam centre, and there will usually be extra fees involved in a child taking exams at an exam centre (which may be a local school or adult learning college).

Another option is to hire a personal tutor. Some parents and children appreciate the one-to-one, personalised attention that a home tutor can provide, and he or she can be selected based on factors such as previous exam success, lendable resources, etc. The cost, however, will tend to be higher than a correspondence course.

A further option involves terminating – or at least pausing – home schooling and enrolling a child in courses in GCSEs, A Levels or alternative qualifications at a local college. This will tend to be free if the child is of the ‘normal’ age to take the exams, but younger children will generally have to pay extra. Some other parents decide to continue ‘pure’ home schooling even while studying for formal qualifications, opting to buy textbooks, exam board curricula, past papers, revision guides, examiners’ reports and other resources. Note that this option may incur extra – unforeseen – stress, such as the organisation and payment of exam registration fees and exam centre fees, the marking of any coursework, and other costs.

Many universities, however, have policies about responding to individual applications on their own merits. This means that a lack of standard qualifications by a home schooled student might be overlooked if he or she showed ability and/or potential, but any university candidate would normally have to provide evidence of that ability of potential, such as work that showed personal attainment. That might be in the subject applied for, or might be more generally in subjects including maths and English.

Note when considering applying for university that some courses have their admission criteria defined by a professional body, whose requirements may include qualifications such as GCSEs, and in this case the university will probably be bound strictly by these criteria. It is best, therefore, to begin researching course and study options as soon as a home schooled child shows interest in continuing a certain subject (or beginning a new subject) to a higher level, since then their education and proof of ability can be developed in that direction, well in advance of the time to apply to university.

More Detail on University Admissions Criteria

While it is important to recognise that individual institutions and courses will require different qualifications, educational evidence, etc., here is a brief look at some of the admissions criteria that institutions may require from home schooled students.

Some might insist upon evidence of exam results, in which case formal qualifications would have to be integrated into the home schooling. Academic reference(s) and interviews may also be a part of the admissions procedure: at the colleges that make up Oxford and Cambridge, for example, all students are usually interviewed at the college before being offered a place, with interview topics often taken from the A level syllabus, but for students who did not study A levels, university admissions officers might instead (or also) focus on subject issues that are part of current affairs. Students might also be asked to send in essays to show their written ability and/or academic interests.

All, home schooled and mainstream-educated students, will be asked to fill in a UCAS (University and College Admissions Service) form, which includes details such as a personal statement and predicted and final A level results. The next part of this article will look at factors on the UCAS form that might especially apply to students who are involved in home schooling.

Home Schooling And The UCAS Form For University Admission

Students making applications for full-time undergraduate study at universities in the UK apply through UCAS, and a majority now apply using their online service, apply. Applying online or via a paper application, the UCAS form contains several key pieces of information. This includes a page of personal details, a page of additional information requests, a page about a student’s institution and course choices (most students are allowed to apply to a choice of six institutions), a page about the student’s education, qualifications and examination results, a page about an applicant’s previous employment history, a page for a student’s personal statement, which describes why he or she wishes to study a particular course and information about his or her background and interests, and a page for student references.

Home schooled applicants might feel confused about what to put under the ’school/college’ question on their UCAS form, which crops up when adding a qualification. There is no single answer to this issue, but some students choose to enter the school(s) where he or she sat the exams and then select ‘part time’ as the mode of study – what is most important, however, is that in the personal statement part of the UCAS form the student fully elaborates his or her home schooling, for example whether qualifications were obtained independently or through a college or private tutor, for example, and the method that he or she studied.

Another difficulty may be found in the ‘reference’ section, since some universities may not accept a reference provided by a child’s parent. The reference usually demands information about a candidate’s character, ambitions, motivation, and commitment, as well as details about the candidate’s extra-curricular interests and hobbies. In the absence of the option of an academic teacher or tutor, some parents ask teachers like music or art teachers, youth leaders, religious leaders or similar figures who know a candidate well and can also comment on his or her academic ability and potential.

At 16 some home schooled students may alternatively decide to enrol at a college – either part time or full time – to take GCSEs, that is, to end their fully home schooled education. The latter option is most often selected when home schooled students require a particular qualification for a certain career or university course.

GCSE Examination Boards are not all the Same

Parents of home schooled children who are looking at taking GCSEs should be aware that not every examination board will cover the same subject, or have the same requirements. With literature subjects, for example, boards will set different texts in their syllabi, while some boards will include coursework as part of their examination requirements but others may not.

These issues should all be researched before embarking on a GCSE course. This information can be found in most GCSE text books, but some are board-specific so be careful about buying these (and in fact many libraries stock a large variety). Another good place to look is revision guides, which tend to provide information on the which boards ask for coursework, exams, oral examinations, etc. Past papers, available in high street book shops as well as online and from the examination boards direct, are another way to gauge which board’s GCSEs you wish your child to take. There is usually a fee for these, however, so you may want to look at some online or wait until after a course decision has been made before purchasing them.

GCSE Coursework and Home Schooling

For many students coursework is a popular option as it lessens the importance of single examinations and can lead to reduced levels of stress (some marks are already ‘in the bag’ so pupils may worry less about making a mistake in an exam.) Coursework may include things like art or design and technology projects, essays, question responses or similar written work; it is carried out during the year in which GCSEs are studied and the marks from the coursework go towards a student’s final grade.

Coursework can be difficult to arrange for a home educating teacher, however, as it must be marked by a neutral person and some boards have rules about who that person can be, his or her qualifications, etc. It is best to look into this before embarking on a GCSE course which includes coursework; another option is to take International GCSEs, IGCSEs, which do not have coursework components. mentat

A Levels are higher level qualifications for students in England, Northern Ireland and Wales – in Scotland, the equivalent qualification is the Scottish Higher. A Levels are now split into two qualifications, AS (Advanced Subsidiary) and A (Advanced) level qualifications, which normally take one year each to complete full-time, although it is also possible to study A Levels part-time. It is possible to continue a subject only to AS Level and still obtain this qualification, so AS levels can be either a free standing qualification in its own right, or be put towards the first half of a full A Level qualification.

A Levels are available in a diverse range of academic subjects, as well as some vocational subjects. The qualifications are useful both for students wanting to go on to higher education and for those wishing to straight into the workplace, since they are recognised around the world – AS and A levels are at level 3 on the National Qualifications Framework.

A Levels and Entry Requirements

Within mainstream schools, students will normally be expected to have at least five GCSEs at pass levels between the grades A* to C in order to take A Levels, but parents and/or students should check with individual exam boards about this, as it can differ from various courses – some subjects or institutions may require a grade B or above at GCSE in the particular subject that is developed at AS or A level.

A Levels and How Many to Take

There are about 80 A Levels and AS courses in the UK. There are also vocational A levels, now known as ‘GCEs in applied subjects’, in areas such as business or tourism. Most students studying three, four or five AS levels in their first year, before taking three or four of those on for further study as a full A Level in the second year. This, however, is only a norm figure and some students will opt to take fewer or more courses.

A Levels and Assessment

AS and A Levels are each made up of three units, which are normally examined by a mixture of 70 per cent written exams and 30 per cent coursework, with practical skills assessed in some subjects like science or art, but these figures will vary. AS and A levels are graded A-E, the AS is scored out of 300 UMS marks, and the A Level out of 600 marks. Examinations are normally in June, although you may be able to arrange to sit some parts of the A Level or AS exams in January.

A Levels and Home Education

There are several ways for home educated students to take A Levels. One option is enrolling on a correspondence courses where a tutor will mark work and advise the student. Another is to hire a personal tutor. Another is to enrol, either full time or part time at a local college or adult education classes – that is, putting home education on hold – or by buying past papers, revision guides, syllabi and textbooks at home and working through the exam preparation independently.

Correspondence courses or home tutoring will usually be the most expensive option, but the tutor will usually be a subject expert and give good advice on the exam process. Most colleges will offer free or cheaper courses, but if students are under 16 these may not be an option. Further advantages of these two options is that the tutor or college will organise the exam entrance, marking coursework, sitting the exam, registration, etc. which you may have to organise as a family with a correspondence course, and certainly would have to if teaching or learning A Levels independently.

In Order To Home School My Child, Do I Have To Have A Teaching Qualification?

Many new home teachers are surprised to find that the answer to this question is no, in order to provide a child’s education at home, parents (or any other home educator figures) are not required to have a teaching qualification, or in fact any subject or other qualification. Many home teaching parents are very surprised to discover the relative lack of rules or regulation monitoring the home educator.

While Home Schooling my Child, do I Have to Follow Particular Teaching Practices?

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Again, new home educating parents may be surprised to find that they are not required to follow any curricula, including the National Curriculum, with their home school child, the teaching timetable (or indeed, a decision to learn without any kind of timetable or teaching structure) is open to the home schooling family to determine. Nor do home schooling families have to learn for or participate in national tests like Key Stage tests or Standard Assessment Tests – these are all non-compulsory.

The rules governing home schooling – which comes under the phrase ‘education otherwise’ in the Education Act legislation – focuses instead on the child’s ultimate education. Parents who are home schooling their child have to ensure that the child receives an education suitable to their age, ability and aptitude, but the method or means in which that education is obtained can be determined by family, parents or child.

As such, there are no rules on parents who are home schooling following a particular timetable like that within the school day in mainstream schools, nor do home schooling students have to learn for a certain number of hours, days or terms. More information on determining your own structure or teaching style can be found elsewhere on this site. Some Local Educational Authorities (LEAs) may offer help, support or guidance to parents starting as home teachers, while some parents ask their child’s former school (if applicable) for help borrowing resources such as National Curriculum materials, but the school or LEA are not under any obligation to provide this help.

Likewise, no funding is available to home schooling parents (usually) – and if a parent is giving up their own career to teach a child at home, this needs to be considered. Central government does not provide funds for parents who make the decision to home school their child. celexa

Home educators are not subject to any kind of formal assessment that might occur in schools, such as inspection or testing of pupils to check the education is being aptly provided. The law determines that while parents have to provide their children with what is termed a ’suitable’ education, but intricacies of such a term are unspecified and the nature and testing of that education is not defined. Some LEAs might check up on home schooled children to check that they are receiving a ’suitable’ education, but this might occur in a variety of ways, including a letter to parents or request for evidence of work, or may, in some areas, not occur at all – it depends on individual authorities, and will not involve a formal inspection.