Finances and home ed

[designergirl]

Hi. I'm on mat leave a the mo with baby no 3. I have a 5 yr old who's just started primary school and a 2 yr old. Usually I am a 2ndary school teacher of languages, which I do 2 and a half days a week.
I have always considered home ed but due to needing my salary we decided to send our dd1 to school and see how she settled in first. She is going to a faith school and we are hapy to know that she will be taking part in a Nativity. We are Christians also.

But I have always thought if dd1 or any of my other dds had trouble at school or I encountered sth I did not like I wld def home ed.Trouble is, the curriculum I've looked at seems quite expensive, and if I gave up work we wld def struggle. How do you manage financially?

[onwardandoutward]

we don't use a curriculum!

we live on one salary - no mortgage, no car.

Lots of charity shop shopping rather than new stuff.

season tickets for favourite local haunts.

[julienoshoes]

I agree with onward, we don't use a curriculum either! We followed the children's interests and facilitated their learning in whatever direction they wanted. This took teens up to the standard to get good A levels/start OU course aged 15.
TBH the vast majority of home educators I know (and I know a hell of a lot) don't use curriculums either, but the are ways around it even if you do want a more structured home ed.

AS onward says, you can buy resources at charity shops, on ebay, at car boots etc.
There are loads of resources free on the web.

Education Otherwise has a deal so you can get a subscription for Learn Premium at a bargain price, THENUK is looking to do the same thing.

There is also a book written by a home educator called 'One to One: A Practical Guide to Home Education aged 0-11' by Gareth Lewis, that would be worth a look at as a basis of a programme about home education.

If you ever do decide to go down this path, I'd suggest reading some of the books on the 'Books about home education' thread and some of the links on the 'Websites about home ed thread' to find good resources.

We drive a very old car, go to home ed camps and gatherings for holidays-and make the most of Sun newspaper holidays deals, 'Travelodge' sales (we have just booked a family room for three nights in Devon for £9 a night), use Megabus to travel down to London to got to all the museums etc

We go to workshops and meetings with the local home ed group-and get things at an educational rate/group discount in term time.I can never believe the cost of taking a family bowling/iceskating in school holidays! We do those sorts of things at a MUCH cheaper price.

We don't have the expense of school uniforms/shoes or the worry of buying expensice brand goods either-that pressure disappeared completely when our children left school.

TBH home ed can be as cheap or as expensive as you choose.
I know of home ed families where mom continues to work and the children are cared for by grandparents/childminders/au pairs during that time. Remember home ed doesn't have to take place during term time, between 9-3
hth

[onwardandoutward]

Oh - I should add - I think both parents working part time can also be a good solution, and one or both working flexi-time or predictable shifts or weekends or... even if there's no support network for childcare around, it still might well be possible to have one-and-a-bit incomes with the parents working at different times from each other.

So as a language teacher, you might find you could do evening or weekend classes rather than school teaching, or offer private tuition in your home or in the evenings at the pupil's homes. That sort of thing. Or you could shift over to being an A level or GCSE examiner (I think the A level examining pays much better, not that I examine any of the school-level exams myself) - for the first year or two you'd just be a basic marker and not earn that much, but you can work your way up to having greater responsibility and more role in the creative process of setting the exams and inventing the mark schemes which have more money.

[mumtoo3]

my dh works full time and is working 7 days a week till christmas i run my own business and that fits in at evenings and weekends. we set a budget of £50 a month for supplies etc we do a bit of wtm and go with the flow!. our children are dd1 5.5, ds 2.8 and dd2 13 months.

hth x