Debra

Hi, We saw the property we wanted to buy in June and since the exchange rates were good, decided to convert the money we had to buy it into Euros then.  We arranged this with a money broker, thinking we'd just open a HSBC euro account to put the money into (I know, silly us).  First shock was that this would take a week at our local branch (minimum) and also that they charged to run the account, receive money and pay out.  I then tried Barclays (the only other bank in our village) who also took at least a week to open a UK based Euro account, but more likely 10 days, also had similar yearly charges but who took 2% of each transaction, in or out.  Obviously this is prohibitive when you're talking enough money to buy your house with.  So, UK Euro account: totally inappropriate. The lady in Barclays told me to ask the lady in the local chemist, since she had a French property and had already done all this.  This lady directed me to Britline, which she had and said could be opened quickly online (money already on the way so we needed it quickly) and it was easy to do because it could all be done in English.  I looked into this, to find that although you could apply online there was a lot of paperwork back and forth which had to be done via the post and that it would take 15-20 days to open an account.  There were also a lot of bank charges to be paid, inlcuding a regular amount to operate the account.  The time constraint meant we couldn't consider this anyway. Next we phoned Credit Agricole in London and asked them how we could open a French Euro account quickly.  Go to France!  Can be done quickly - in an hour.  The guy told us what to take with us and gave us the number of the manager of the Calais branch (cheapest ferry at the time) and so, after only just coming back (kicking ourselves for not making the time to open an account while we were there viewing properties), we drove down to do Dover to Calais to make our appointment with the Calais Lafayette branch of CA.  Between our pidgin French and the manager's pidgin English, we opened an account within an hour as promised.  We were told there would be no charges to pay in or withdraw, a €33 charge for a credit card (which we decided to get after having had problems getting petrol late at night with our 'invalide' credit cards at the auto fill stations), unless we paid in foreign currency. We made two transfers to the account within 10 days and were charged €9 for the larger amount and €9.18 for the smaller amount (no rhyme or reason to this, we thought!) but after an email to the manager reminding him he had told us there would be no charges, we got these charges refunded. The only negative we've had is that they won't post the card (and maybe cheque book, as though promised thru the post it hasn't arrived yet) like they do from UK banks.  This means we'll have to make sure we go via or nearby Calais to collect them next time we come over.  He recommended we change branches once we have completed on our house purchase, but we figure if we use the card to pay for things the cash withdrawal limit between branches won't really affect us so if we aren't likely to receive the same level of service from the local branch we'll just stay with this one (which he said was ok with him if it was ok with us). Debra

[quote]Hi Sorry Debra, my mistake Year 3. I would be concerned if my boys had used calculators at that age. As far as I can gather there is great importance put on 'Mental Maths' as my Year 4, this is pr...[/quote] I'm glad it worked out for yours but mine just seemed confused and turned off maths altogether.  They just kept slipping further behind.  As I was having problems with the reading issue and difficulties with trying to teach the two with problems to read at home when the school kept on pushing them to sight read, the best bet seemed to be to remove them until I had at least got them over their difficulties.  Now we're looking at moving to France, I'm trying to find out what the schooling is like there.  Our aim is to get them over the difficulties they had here - and hope they don't come across any further difficulties when they move to France and probably attend school there.   

[quote]Hi Really surprised to hear of a 3 year old using a calculator, this is something that would not be touched on at our local primary schools. Asking my 13 year old at secondary school how often is us...[/quote] Hi Gail, My daughter isn't 3, but Year 3 primary - she is 8 years old.  My 7 and 5 year old aren't using calculators yet.  Your son's school doesn't sound like our local schools so perhaps if we don't move to France soon a change of area in the UK is called for!  Your post gives me more confidence about the secondary schooling in the UK (which I never intended avoiding anyway).  If there are any problems, hopefully they will be ironed out before my kids get there (assuming we're still here). Debra

Feeling ever so slightly attacked, I just went back and read this thread to see why I joined in this discussion.  It was because I was amused at the opinions expressed about the type of people who home educate (so I tried to give a sense of who I am and my reasons, ie possibly not middle class carob eating whatever) and also that I identified with the comment about birthdays having an effect on education - having children born March 10th, October 2nd and August 27th and noticing the differences on how they fit into their various classes.  I really didn't mean to get into a debate about whether one should home educate or not or whether the UK education system is currently acceptable, but I guess some people feel so strongly about it that its inevitable.  What I'm really interested in here is poeple's opinions on the education system in France and whether home educating is a viable option for English kids moving to France during their primary years. BigJimBishop seems to feel it is - so now I'm off to search his posts on the subject and get some insight (hearsay being my best source of info at the moment!) Debra

If I might say so there is a good deal of hearsay and secondhand information in your posts. I'd be very worried if people took this as advice er - its me thats asking for advice........(about education in France.  The decision to avoid primary school in the UK for our children has already been made and is unshakeable).

If I might say so there is a good deal of hearsay and secondhand information in your posts. I'd be very worried if people took this as advice - you make a definitive statement about GCSE and then say 'forget it, I'm not an expert', then make it clear that your idea of being an expert would be to have taken it yourself! "She led me to believe" is a bit of a thin foundation to base your child's education upon. I've done a lot of research before I made my decision and discussed it with a lot of people; teachers and parents.   I'm trying to decide what to do about my children's education if we end up moving to France shortly (much sooner than expected earlier on in the year when I took them out of primary school here).  That's why I'm reading this forum and asking opinion's of people who have experience in France of both the state education system and home schooling.  Any replies could be considered as hearsay too, but it all adds to any other research I will do.  I've been looking at the French education sites but unfortunately my French is not good enough to follow them well.  Are you saying its not a good idea to ask these kind of questions on this forum or to give credence to any advice or opinions which might be expressed? Debra

Skills - reading yes: look say may be on its way out but not in time for my kids, I'm afraid.  There have been a lot of documentaries on the subject since I took the kids out of school.  Things seem to move more slowly than you realise.  After all, Why Johnny Can't Read was published in 1955 I believe and yet US schools are still using look and say and still having the same problems.  Professor Orton proved that problems were caused by sight reading in 1917 (again, haven't checked that date - its from memory) and the late Romalda Spalding developed her method after working with him.  The reading area was the initial reason I started looking into what they were doing at school.  I had taught my eldest son to read phonetically but didn't have time to do this with my younger son (and wasn't there for my stepdaughter when she was first learning to read) and they both fell foul of the sight reading method. Arithmetic (the mathematics they were covering at this stage): I had children in year 1, 2 and 3 who were all totally confused about what the national curriculum stated they were supposed to be able to understand at this stage and had become totally negative about doing 'hard maths' (what their teachers told them it was).  When I looked at the work they were doing at school I could understand why and in my opinion there were much simpler ways to teach them basic arithmetic skills. Ofsted - when we moved here last year it was because of the school's Ofsted report.  It was the best school within a 30 mile radius of where we needed to live.  This changed this year apparently. The reading scheme was ORT (am I allowed to say that?) and no, apparently the head teacher couldn't just stop using it.   I don't know why, because at a previous school when I asked if my eldest son could change from this one (when he first started school) he was immediately moved onto a Ginn scheme.  That school was a CofE school so maybe they have more scope to make decisions like this? Maths - OK, we had 3 papers to do and the first was Arithmetic and calculators weren't allowed.  The other two papers we could use calculators.  I understood from the friend (sorry if she's not an expert after having done the exams) that calculators were allowed in the whole exam nowadays.  My experience is that my year 3 daughter was using a calculator to do addition, subtraction and multiplication and division.  Manually, she could add numbers up to 100 but only using a number square or by drawing dots and counting them - both of which methods are counting, rather than adding, as far as I can see.  She couldn't divide or multiply manually.  I'm sorry, but that just doesn't make sense to me. GCSE stuff - no, I'm not an expert.  I've clearly stated that my children are primary school age and its their education at this level that I'm taking responsibility for.  As far as my children are concerned they are going back to school when they are due to start secondary school.  Hopefully they will be better equipped to deal with the work at this level than if I had left them in primary school.  My comments are based on my experience with their primary education and that of friends children at only three schools in my area.  I also have discussed the same issues over and over with a lot of people from different areas who have experienced the same problems. Am I doing this for my kids or myself?  I had a career break to be with my children full time until they were all at school full time.  This was extended a little longer than expected because of personal circumstances.  However, just prior to taking them out of school, I had fully intended returning to work in a career that would have fit in with my children's school hours.  I was looking forward to venturing out into the adult world of work again.  Fo

Just a thought Dick - I hope you don't think I'm against teachers in any way.  I'm not, at all -  I helped out at  my local school and had nothing but admiration for the way they had to try and handle 30 kids at a time and try to direct their learning.  Since it seemed a career that would fit in well with my own children's 'hours of work' I had fully intended to become a teacher myself once all my children were at school full time. I had the option to embark on this new, second career but I decided to home educate my kids instead.  I did consider that I may be able to help change things from within - or help more of the kids that were having problems.  However, I decided that I had to make my own children my priority and the only way I could see to do this was to home school.  In my experience all they seemed to learn at school was how to emulate the bad aspects of other children's behaviour and language and how to cope with the hurtful, frustrating or disappointing aspects of school life.  Rather than have my children crying because they didn't understand something and the teacher had promised to explain later - and didn't get the time - I decided to keep them at home, bring them up fully myself instead of letting other people take over for a good chunk of their lives, and give them one to three (or often two to three) attention instead of one to thirty.  Their education is my responsibility and its my choice to home educate because I believe thats what is best for them at this time.  I believe the point of this thread is whether thats possible or perhaps wise when a parent takes the children to live in a different country with a different culture.  I'm not sure on that one myself, which is why I joined in this discussion.  The reason I'm reading this forum is to try and find out more about how the French education system works.  I wasn't happy with the UK system (sorry if that offends you) but I feel I ought to give the French system a chance before dismissing it and assuming I will continue to home educate in France.  Any advice or opinion on this is welcomed. Debra

Forgot; GCSE: I'm not an expert in these because I took GCE's and 16+ exams myself.  However, when I was discussing the whole literacy and numeracy subject with another parent (who also had problems with what was being taught) she told me she would love to home educate but didn't feel that her level of numeracy and literacy were up to it.  She had passed GCSE's in both English and Maths (she's a fair bit younger than me) so this led to some discussion over what is tested in these exams.  She led me to believe that a lot of the marks towards them are based on course work (which might not necessarily be your own) and also that there is no longer a maths paper that tests arithmetic skills without the use of a calculator or an English Language paper that tests the use of correct grammar and spelling.  This is only what she told me about the exams she did at school and I haven't investigated further as my kids aren't there yet - so please don't slam me if its wrong! Debra

[quote]I'm sorry, but that doesn't seem to answer the question that Gail and I asked - what is 'real education'?Do you really believe that skills aren't tested in GCSE? Have you discussed with teachers why t...[/quote] Sorry, I'll try again.  I guess to me real education for the primary years is teaching them the basic skills they need to go onto further study at secondary and higher level, thoroughly and efficiently and to automaticity so that a lack of these skills doesn't hamper them later on. This includes the basic literacy and numeracy skills as well as study and self discipline skills. Yes, I've asked the teachers - the head teacher at my local school who recently left (with whom I had lots of discussion about their methods) and the recent replacement.  They both said they have to follow the national curriculum and the currently used methods.  They don't have much control over how and what they are allowed to teach (and the recent replacement finally admitted the teachers don't much like some of these methods themselves).  They do their best within the rules they have to follow. An example is that I identified a problem with the reading scheme the school were using (over and above that it was a look say scheme: a problem that existed even if you accept that method as OK).  They acknowledged the problem but all they could do was report the problem to the publisher and ask them to do something about it.  They couldn't change reading schemes or divert the children to another at the point that the problem existed, but had to follow it and live with it until the publisher changed it. I'm not sure if this is because they are contracted to that publisher and scheme, as happens in the US, or if its one that they are told to use from above - but to me it seemed the publisher had more control over my children's reading tuition than the teachers did. Debra

[quote]There's something I'm still not understanding. Do home-educated children "opt out" completely? I mean, do they not do the baccalaureat or A-levels? So university is out of the question, or would ...[/quote] "So, is the child limited by YOUR abilities and interests?   What happens when YOU can't work out a mathematical proof or a piece of differential calculus?" I'd ask hubby (the more mathematical one) and I guess if he couldn't do it I'd book some time with a private tutor!  There are numerous web sites which offer support, I believe.

As I said, I only intend to educate my children at home for the primary years (or until we move permanently to France perhaps) because I've looked at what they are expected to cover during those years and I feel capable of teaching them myself.  I intend to cover what the national curriculum expects and more (I feel it doesn't cover much in the primary years).  However, a lot of people do home educate older children with great success.  They might not cover the same subjects as at school but simply help the children learn what they want to.  After all, if its a topic the child is interested in they will soak it up apace.  A lot of people don't see the need for children to study all the topics they have them studying at school, and I can understand this.  (I myself only feel that four of my subjects passed at secondary school were ever of any use to me: Maths, English, Office Practice and Typing - they didn't do Computer Studies when I was at school but if they had, I would have found that useful too.  Other than those subjects, the only study which has been useful to me in my career has been at night classes (HNC, after work) and at home (OU degree), both of which were done 'later in life', years after school years, when I had found the area I wanted to work in and was prepared to study for it.) Other home educators try to give the same education as would be provided at school but do it at home in what they feel is a more beneficial environment than whatever schooling is provided locally (not everyone can afford to move house if their locally provided schooling is not good enough in their eyes).  You can purchase curriculums online which the kids can study themselves (a good preparation for later further education studying) or some colleges of further education will take children in evening classes.  There are also certificates that are recognised in Europe and the US which are recognised by universities.  It is possible to build a curriculum from the information given on the national curriculum sites - they're very detailed on what is expected to be covered term by term.  You can provide the child with the materials and off they go.  Home educated children are often more mature and able to self discipline themselves to study because of this experience (like I said, good experience for higher education).  Also, home schooling is often a learning experience for the whole family, with the parents studying ahead of the children so they can help. The OU doesn't require passes in GCSE's or A levels to take a degree course so this is an option for home educated children who didn't take exams.  Also, a lot more universities nowadays are taking people who don't have these sorts of exam passes.  I've read on the HE sites that they are often impressed with the maturity and study skills shown by home educated children. I'm not certain what will happen with our children as they get older - I suppose it depends on the experience they have when we try to send them back to school at secondary level (or primary if we're in France).  A case of suck it and see.  However, maybe because I'm fairly new to home educating, I don't feel confident to handle the broad secondary education myself, though with revision and studying ahead of the children, my husband and I could probably manage a fair few subjects between us.  But - time and experience will tell.  Debra PS if you read some of the home education sites you will see a lot of answers to your question.  The US sites are very big on using outside curricula.  I suppose it depends on how much you are already capable of, what you can afford and how much input you want to have in preparing their work as to whether you buy these.

Hi Georgia, How do you get on with teaching them French?  I'm home educating in the UK but am a bit worried about doing it when we move to France because of the language aspect.  I also feel OK about teaching them myself here during the primary years because I feel capable of covering what they would do at school in the UK (and more) but I wouldn't feel so happy about covering the French primary years (are they very different?) and would be worried I wouldn't be able to prepare them sufficiently to cope with the later school years in France.   I have so far intended that my kids will attend secondary school, whether here or in France.  Will your children attend school after the primary years?  If so, how do you prepare them for it? Debra 

The criticisms about the French system (which I have no experience of yet) seem to be based around that they do a lot of rote learning whereas I found that the current ideas in UK schools are that rote learning is unfashionable and 'whole language' or 'whole maths' learning is in.  In practice this seems to mean they no longer get taught the basic skills I was taught at school which DID involve rote learning.  Things like how to do basic arithmetic operations manually on paper (as opposed to on a PC spreadsheet or calculator) and how to spell and write using correct spelling skills or correct grammar.  Learning multiplication tables off by heart might have seemed boring at the time, but imagine trying to do long multiplication or division if you hadn't learned them?  Spelling and grammar might have seemed boring at the time but imagine being unable to write a letter without referring to a dictionary over and over again, assuming you had enough of an idea of how to spell a word to be capable of looking it up in a dictionary. I've got examples of work from my children's files from school where various versions of incorrect maths answers have been ticked with a 'good' when either the working out is completely wrong but the answer is correct (because they've used an alternative method to work it out in their heads) or where the working out is correct but the answer is wrong.  There is nothing to explain that they went wrong somewhere along the line because apparently to be told they got something wrong might make them feel they are 'bad at maths'.  Meanwhile, they do think they are bad at maths regardless because they don't understand the roundabout ways that they are being taught to do simple arithmetic.  In the same way, stories and reports are ticked and nothing is said about the appalling grammar or atrocious spelling in case it makes the children feel bad.  As long as the content is appropriate its ticked as 'good'.  Even when they do a spelling test, when they are tested on a list of 10 words given the previous week, what they do is get them to write a story using these words.  If they spell the 10 words incorrectly in the story then those words will get marked with red pen.  However, any other incorrect spellings are ignored as irrelevant. It took me a while to go through the books and figure out what they were trying to get across in the work they were giving them.  Why don't they just teach them how to do it?  In frustration, I taught my daughter how to do column addition (not meant to do this until year 4) and she was jumping for joy because she understood it and wanted to rush to school to tell the teacher about her 'new easy way' to do addition and how she could add any numbers up - not just those up to 100.  Much easier than counting along a number square or in a test, when number squares weren't allowed, adding 44 to 36 by drawing 44 dots, then 36 dots, then counting them all up to arrive at the answer. When asked what they do in literacy hour, my son told me that's when they prepare their write up on their Science project (which doesn't get marked for spelling or grammar because its about Science, so only the content is important).  My daughter was very interested in her history project about the Victorians and was really excited about making some Victorian toys like she'd seen in the museum they went to for the school trip.  This arts and craft project was mentioned right from the start of the history project -  probably as an incentive to keep them interested, and it worked.  However, she came home upset one day because she'd been told they didn't have time to make toys now because they had to move onto the next subject.  Oh well, I said - perhaps the next subject will be just as interesting - what is it?  With a dramatic wail - "

Don't know how you resisted, Deby!  I used to drop my kids off at school and then stop for a coffee in a friends house over the road.  Her child was in the same class as one of mine.  If I stayed long enough to catch playtime I couldn't resist watching through the living room window - and neither could she!  No way I could live where she does as my routine would be based around the school playtimes!  I'd also probably spend a lot of time worrying as they always seem to play so rough......... Debra

Whereas in UK schools there seems to be a bit too much practical and skirting around real learning.  It sounds as if a school system inbetween that of France and the UK would be ideal!  Debra

I've really enjoyed reading this as so much of it is relevant to the experience I've had in the last few years.  I have three children, an 8 year old who is aged in the middle of her peers, a 7 year old who was born in early October so is the oldest in his class and a 5 year old who was born 27th August and so is the youngest in his class (and I hated sending him to school right from the start as he seemed far too young compared to the others - but I didn't actually know at the time that there was any choice in the matter).  In Easter of this year I made the decision to remove all three of my children from our local village primary school.  Its supposedly a very good school - the main reason we chose to live here.  However, I found that my daughter was suddenly having problems with reading and spelling (caused by the national curriculum methods and timescales of teaching reading and spelling which I have detailed on another post) and my youngest son was starting to show similar signs. This started me off looking into the way our schools are teaching these days.  My middle son was bored and way ahead of his peers in literacy but hated maths and said he didn't like it when they had to do 'hard maths'.  My daughter expressed the same sentiments.  The teachers at the school actually use this phrase from year 2 onwards 'right, time for some hard maths'.  Obviously they didn't study much child psychology during teacher training!  Can you imagine the shutters coming down over their eyes?    My youngest said he didn't do maths yet, just 'addings'.  When I looked at the way they were teaching maths (they were counting on using squares, not adding, and using calculators to do things they couldn't yet do manually) I realised that I wasn't happy with either the maths or literacy part of the National Curriculum.  That was after it took me some time to figure out what they were actually doing and what they were trying to teach by the methods they used.  There was only Science left - and they didn't seem to do enough of that for it to be a worry if they missed it for a while. After trying hard to teach them out of school hours I realised it was unfair, too tiring for them, and continuing at school was unproductive because we were using opposing methods.  I looked at the National Curriculum for the whole of the primary years in both literacy and maths and decided that both areas were taught in a really odd way and I could cover what they did in primary school in at least a third of the time at home. I waited until I was at a point in my career and finances where I could afford to give up work to bring my children up myself.  I had intended to return to work once my children were all at school if I could find a job which fit in with their school hours.  The head teacher at our school had advised me to apply for a job with the local education authority which would have fit in well with their school hours.  Returning to work would have given us more income to enjoy a better lifestyle, but we could afford to do without it if we lived simply.  (Does that make us middle class??) The decision to home educate wasn't a financial one - it was simply made in the best interests of our children's education.  They have only been out of school since Easter but in that time we have met up with other home educating families from all walks of life and they all have one thing in common - that they want to give their children the best education they can and don't feel that the current schooling methods in the UK can help them to do this.  Some of the families had issues with bullying - which two of my children have experienced in certain degrees.  Some families have children with special needs which they feel can best be answered at home.  Mostly, people have a number of reasons for

Hi, I was a bit concerned to hear that they teach using look and say in France, but my husband tells me that Expatica have a link on their site somewhere that gives all the French phonograms with an audio link to hear the sounds.  Apparently one of our learn French courses has this too, so I guess we'd better get on with that once we're happy with the level of English reading and spelling our kids have! Debra

Hi, That a mixed method works best is a common misconception which the head teacher of my local primary school tried to tell me.  After I'd given her a lot of reading she was horrified at the damage the schools were causing some children by doing this.  She had never heard of Professor Orton or Romalda Spalding and didn't know that sight reading was invented to teach deaf mute children to use. "When you teach a child to read you soon realise that very many words are simply not phonetic. 'Who' for example. Or 'know' and 'now'. " This is simply not true.  My children can now tell you exactly how to mark these words to show how they work phonetically.  A very high (high 90 odd %) of English words are phonetic.  Those that aren't have a reason which can be explained to a child to help them remember how to spell them.  If you read up on Spalding ( look at http://www.riggsinst.org/artp25.htm which includes a list of phonograms, or  http://www.donpotter.net/ed.htm which includes a lot of discussion on reading methods) you will find out that there are 40 odd sounds in the English language (44 if I remember correctly)which can be represented using 72 phonograms (combinations of letters which  make up sounds) and there are only 29 spelling rules to use.  As Linda Shrock Taylor says (read one of her articles - there are a lot more in her archives http://www.lewrockwell.com/taylor/taylor81.html  isn't it easier to learn just 72 phonograms and 29 spelling rules than to learn the couple of thousand of words sight reading programs start you off with before learning how to build words?  You can just learn the phonograms and rules from scratch and be able to read anything straight away, whereas the national curriculum method takes nearly all of primary school to get children to the point where they can read anything - but only if they are not in the 40% of kids who have problems with the method and end up being diagnosed (unnecessarily) as dyslexic. I've read tons on the subject and now feel quite strongly about it.  When children learn a whole word they store it as a picture in the non-dominant side of the brain, whereas when they learn to read phonetically they read the word from left to right and use the dominant side of the brain, the part of the brain that processes linguistics - and after all, print is only speech written down, so that is the correct side of the brain to use.  The problem comes when the child starts trying to build words correctly, from left to right, later on.  Half of us don't store images in the non dominant side of the brain from left to right, but store them from right to left.  Its the children that do this (eg my daughter) that show signs of dyslexia, because when they try and train themselves to read from left to right, all those stored images of words interfere and they get mixed up.  Once a word is stored on the right (if you are right handed) side of the brain, it stays there - the child will never read that word phonetically. Its quite frightening to watch the results of this - my daughter's reading suddenly deteriorated rapidly.    After going back to basics, learning the phonograms and doing Rudolph Flesch's reading exercises for practice, she's now a better reader than ever.  However, because she spent all those years doing sight reading she still occasionally reverts to guessing from the general shape of the word or finds it hard to break down some new words.  The parts o

I know this discussion was a while ago but I've only just read and can't help myself - I really feel I need to comment.  I have three children aged 8, 7 and 6 (yr 1, 2 and 3).  The eldest is my stepdaughter and was taught to read before she came to live with me 2 yrs ago.  At that time she was a more fluent reader than my eldest son.  I taught him to read using books from school - not the Oxford Reading Tree.  When he first started school they gave him a set of words to learn to read before he could start the reading scheme.  He learned 25 words (which I made sure he spelt out phonetically, didn't just learn the whole word) and then they gave him an Oxford Reading Tree book containing only one of those words (in the whole book).  I objected and said he'd found it boring and silly and could we please have some real books.  The started him on a Ginn reading scheme instead, and he was fine with this and I continued teaching him phonetically - supplementing with Ladybird readers at home.  (I later found out that the Ginn scheme was used for teaching phonetic reading).  We moved school after that to a school that only used the ORT - but by then my son was reading well phonetically so there were no problems.  My step-daughter was moved down to a level lower than she had been on because she didn't 'know' the character names, which I thought was a little odd.  My youngest son started nursery at this time - learning these character names in preparation for starting ORT when he went to primary school.  Half way through my youngest's year 1, we started having problems with my daughter's reading in year 3.  She had slipped behind my eldest boy and was having real problems with spelling as well as frighteningly detiorated reading skills.  My eldest boy was reading ORT books way behind his ability simply because they had to all go through the scheme, at a rate of one book a week (which was usually a fortnight) but I complained to the head and ended up bringing home five of the books a week until he moved up a couple of levels.  My youngest boy (yr1) was ahead of where they expected him to be on the scheme so I wasn't aware of any problems.  He always seemed to be able to read his books when he brought them home.  However, my stepdaughter seemed to suddenly appear dyslexic in her reading and spelling - but showed no other symptoms of dyslexia. I ended up looking long and hard at the way schools teach reading nowadays and found out that the ORT is a sight word reading scheme.  The kids learn jolly phonics at school (basically what the first sound of each letter is) but they don't learn to read phonetically.  They are shown a word and told what it is and remember it by the shape and length of the word.  They are given 'incidental phonics' in that they learn spelling groups all through primary school but this is really not at the right time or amount to learn to correctly read phonetically.  Some kids get away with it - but up to 40% of kids start showing dyslexic symptoms like my daughter did.  Usually in year 3, when their brain is overloaded with pictures of words and can't take any more and when they are suddenly expected to decode words when they've never done it before.  Then what? They get sent to remedial reading classes - where they teach them to read phonetically.  Why not just do that in the first place? I did a reading test on my three.  YR1 - ORT from the start and now at level 5: came up as a non-reader.  He couldn't read the word 'hen' and yet he could supposedly read 'anniversay' and 'grandparent' in his school readers.  He could spell 'hen' but not read it - we haven't had that word yet.  YR2 - came up as 4 years ahead of his age group (the one I had taught phonetically without realising that wasn't what they were doing at school).  YR3 - one year behind

or can it be done in this case because the spouse buying the property only has children from the current marriage?

'Although I would ask about 'usufruit' which would mean that your husband would have full use of the property during his life time in the case of you dying first. He would be able to live in it, or get the rent from it, the only he thing he would not be able to do is sell it.'   I understood this couldn't be done if there were children from a different relationship than the current one.  Are you saying it can be done if one spouse buys the property, giving usufruit to the other, even if the spouse buying the property also has children not from this marriage?

Hi, I'm married to a fisherman of 31 years and we did have a giggle when reading all the comments.  I fish too (case of can't beat em, join em, probabably) and also prefer to holiday with my husband so we would be interested in fishing holidays where wives are catered for.  I would be looking for other activities too and the swimming pool would be a good draw for me.  The comfy gite accomodation rather than a bivvy tent is also a draw for a fisherman's wife, believe me.  The night fishing ban hasn't been a problem for us in the past but then - problem - we also have 3 children aged 5-8 who also like fishing, so that would rule your site out for us, and is also probably why the night fishing ban isn't a problem (have to be up early with the kids so it would be torture if we stayed up all night fishing!)  Having said that, if we didn't have kids and your place was advertised as a romantic getaway with comfy gite accomodation and a nice swimming pool, and fishing too (definitely with details of stock and a few pictures of fish caught) then it would probably be very attractive to us as a couple.  My thought is that you don't seem to target anyone in particular as much as you seem to exclude people in particular. Hubby says if you have coarse fishing available (as it seems you do) then the best place to advertise (where he, a long experienced coarse fisherman, would look) would be in Angler's Mail (magazine), Angler's Times (newspaper) and Improve your coarse fishing (magazine) as well as an internet search. Just an extra thought - but have you submitted your site to all the free submission search engine sites?  Does it come up on a search fairly near the top?  Spending a bit of time doing this and adding suitable keywords in your html header might be a big help.  Debra  

Hi, Am I reading this correctly: I couldn't provide B&B in France if my house doesn't have a garden? Debra