Distance Ed or own curriculum?

[Smitten]

Anyone doing Disance Education for their child?

Which is better, to do your own curriculum, or just follow the govt school Distance Education.

If you do the Distance education, who does the testing? Does that mean that all of the work is being done at the same time as at normal school ie tests etc. Do you send all the work in to someone like a teacher or just test them yourself?

So would it mean that you could still only go on holidays during the alloted govt school holidays?

Or do you just do the came curriculum as schools, but just at your childs own pace.

Bit confused at the moment at there is so much information out there.:confused:

Thanks

[Ffrenchknickers]

Hiya,

Well,we dont do Distance Ed nor do we do our own curriculum....we use other curriculums that have been recommended to us through Groves. We send all our work into our allocated teacher once a term who then sorts out all the rest for us...this is wonderful! They take care of all the legal stuff for us. We have the same school holidays as the schools (we normally folllow the private schools lol beacuse they have longer holidays;))

I dont know alot about BSDE but join this group and ask the same questions and they will surely help you....

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SouthEastQLDHomeschoolers/

xx

[Ffrenchknickers]

I was just looking at the BSDE website and they have heaps of information on there:thumbsup: Everything is on there from how it works, to course outlines, to fees and charges and home based teachers roles etc.

[belladon27]

I studies through BSDE in grade 8. 1wk of school work in the school system is worth 1 day in the distance ed classes. You will still have to pay for regular supervised access to a high school science room at $1000/yr or fail the course as they expect you to have a full lab! This causes more kaos to the child than needed. If you have a child thats struggling they WILL fail...They made me repeat. Dist Ed in QLD works on the basis that your child is gifted. In english if they dont have an IQ of 127 or more forget it they will struggle to do the work. ITs no good for a visual learner or a child struggling to read. Dept of Home ED (google it) in brisbane can give you the info you need to make your own program. QSA are a good source too. Dept ED can send you a per year level to make it easier. Initial outlay is a little expensive but with a good printer, some maths and IE7, along with the library you will keep cost down. You can use a tutor for back up for areas you are struggling with and shrink wrapped text books are great- Check out the news agents or fishpond.com.au there are good remedial free sites on the net with games and the school zone deluxe have cds books and games that are great.
Some parents use the teacher resource centre for the IEPs. HPE-same as when you went to school, sports clubs, social clubs it all counts as part of the coriculum (so does chores-lifeskills).
The legal stuff?? There is a link on the dept of Home ED site to the QLD ED laws these are very useful and I love them.
Look up KLAs you will need them and do a little bit of research into the new basics trial. you can use the year level out come to mark of all the skills they have learned. Keep samples of work for each of these areas and make copies. these need to be sent in with your registration renewals at the end of the year.
By law a parent is allowed to teach their child so don't worry about peoples coments. If you live in a city ou will grow accustom to how little people really know about schooling styles (It took me 2 yrs to grasp it).

With your own curriculum you can also adjust the study load so a child falling behind or unable to handle change can still study at their own pace just cut the amount down. You can take holidays to places while everyone else wishes.
It also alows a gifted child to advance into higher grades as long as they are not falling behind in other areas, so unlike dist ed they wont get bored.
I have found you can combine and modify to the childs level with out the restrictions and lack of flexibility that home ed has.

Hope this helped...

[Allison70]

Dist Ed in QLD works on the basis that your child is gifted. In english if they dont have an IQ of 127 or more forget it they will struggle to do the work.

Sorry, just had to post in disagreement with this even though it's an old topic. It might hold true for secondary, but absolutely not for primary.

I'm on Distance Ed in Qld (CSDE) with 2 boys in grades 4 and 6. They are bright kids but not gifted. They are walking all over this school work and finish in half the allotted time. I have many relatives on distance ed and not all of them are bright. They cope just fine too. I would say that Qld distance ed is probably better for average students than it is for bright ones.