I've been thinking more about this. I think if I am honest, what I would have liked for DS in an ideal world, would have been for school to be a great experience for him. Everything would have been so much easier! It was so NOT a great experience for him, that I decided to take him out. As Jamie said, I was very hesitant and worried about it at the time. Things were so wrong at school though and DS was so unsettled, that in the end I asked myself the question 'If he never learns another thing from now on, do I still believe he is better off out of school?' The answer was yes. I still feel that way, though of course he is learning all the time and I needn't have worried! If I could go back now I would remove him from school a few years before I did.

The exam question is the worrying one for me now. The traditional route to university is 10-12 GCSEs taken at age 16 and then staying on at school, or going to college to do A levels. DS won't be able to do that. It is very difficult here to find a college that will take an under-16. In fact the only one I know of would put him in a class with children who have been expelled from school. No thanks! GCSEs can be taken by correspondence course, at around £250 per subject. It will not be feasible to do 10 - 12, but we may go down that route for Maths, English and IT.

I don't know if DS will go to University, but if he wants to he only has to wait until he is 19, at which time he will be classed as a mature student, and will be able to do a one year Access to university course and go straight in to university with no GCSEs or A levels.

So, there are various avenues to go down, and nothing is insurmountable, but homeschooling isn't as common here as in the States, so there isn't any help or support from authority. Neither are there guidelines, or much monitoring in the way that you have it over there, so I'm grateful for that!