While some of the teachers are old in age, others are old in attitude.
We've thought long and hard about home educating - in fact, we already do a lot of it anyway. However, F enjoys the social aspect of school as he wouldn't otherwise have as much interaction with other children of his age.
There are a number of local groups and activities he could do, but they either cost more money than we could afford, are run by the local snobs, or are more religious than we're comfortable with.
He knows he has our support in saying "no" to certain things at school, and then when the teacher starts telling him off to say "call my parents". It drives them batty! F also knows that aside from these particular areas, he has to try to be good, try to do as he's told, and do his best to learn new things.
One example is that the school likes to send him home with homework in the form of photocopied sheets, which are then marked out of six or 10. Now, if he was older and had a project to do with research he could do at home, fair enough. Same with studying for exams. But we feel that he spends enough time at school doing this sort of thing and he should be doing other things when he's at home (whether playing, do his chores, or just hanging out).
So, we tell him that no, he doesn't have to do the homework. We then get summoned to the school but what they aren't ready for is:
1. Homework has been extensively researched and while most of the research is inconclusive, it has generally not been found to be appropriate for younger children and particularly when in the form the school uses. So, we quote research papers to the teachers.
2. Aberdeenshire Council wants schools to move from largely "summative assessment" to largely "formative assessment". A good and short explanation, from a US source, is
here. So, we quote council policy to the teachers and ask why the school has a policy of constant summative assessment, particularly for younger children?
End result - very agitated teachers who keep sending homework home but to no effect.
Similar with his report - it says things like "he can count to 10". Upon being questioned, the teachers say this is what is expected of the class and once a child can count to 10 they move on to something else. So, the report is not a reflection of F's skills and abilities, but a checkbox for noting that a particular child has jumped through the right hoop at the right time.
The teachers were unaware that he can count to 100, do addition and subtraction of numbers up to 20, and has a good grasp (in a small child's terms) of things like budgeting (he gets food off the shelves while I keep a running tally of the cost in my head), geometry (we make things together), measuring area (from fencing the fields) and so on.
(As an aside, one of the consequences of explaining chicken breeding is that he has a good knowledge of genetics - which I didn't realise until he started relating what he knew to a TV documentary about human genetics!)
But, back to the report, we found the counting to 10 scenario repeated all through the report - the teacher was simply checking boxes and not describing the actual child.
Anyway I must be off to make dinner, but if F decides at some point that he wants to be taught at home then the option is there.
Stonehead
But I would feel better by doing it!)
). Teachers should be aware that the children they look after are diverse, even if they all live in the same rural community... They don't all want to be Church of Scotland, and not everybody with an Irish name is Irish (and not everybody wishes to buy all their veg at T***o's, even if they sell those nice fance child-size healthy snacks!). From what you said I think that most of the teachers must be quite old - nothing against older teachers, but I think a mix of ages is better.
, can work around the not as much money issue 
and your DD would like to give it a go, why not try it? 
