Here we have both - straight out of school (5 or 6 year course) and post-Bachelor's degree (4 year course, the one I'm doing). I would approximate it to about a quarter of all med places in Australia are the high-school-leavers, and the other three quarters is postgrad. I did go for the school leavers' one but didn't have the marks to get in, so I did a BSc first.

Same here. There's even a small number of med schools which are exclusively for post-grads. But overall I'd say about 75% of med students have come straight from high school. About 15 - 25% do a science degree first, and if they do well enough they can apply straight to second year of medicine.

Which is why the testing every other grade works, in Colorado you are required to teach them certain subjects, BUT you have the option to teach them what they want to learn in that subject. You can teach them what you think is important as well as what they want to learn. I absolutely think there is room for both what the state requires and what interests them.

i think the idea of unschooling is awesome, following your childs lead is great. But i totaly agree there has to be a range of subjects in there, for the reasons you've said here it would be stupid to limit their options because they didn't want to learn it when they were a kid!!
I don't necesserely agree with that article, but i thought it was relavent to the discussion here.

I have not seen anything in the press etc which attributes Kyra's death to "home schooling". Yes she was removed from school but I do not believe this was for the purpose of home schooling her but simply to remove her from the public eye where professionals were becoming suspicious of the way in which she was being cared for (or not being cared for more precisely.)

The article posted by November Butterfly is just beyond ridiculous. I am sure that many children are successfully home schooled and that this "works" for many families. However, the extreme view of the article author that those who attend mainstream school are slaves (oh the extensive list of things which make us "slaves"!) is utter rubbish. Her opinion that sending a child to mainstream school is child abuse is offensive to any child who is a sufferer of abuse. To suffer abuse is horrific, far more horrific then attending a mainstream school would be I am sure!

Arrghh, annoyed now!

Actually I think this whole post was in response to a comment I left on someone else's diary. I did NOT once say that Kyra's death should be used as a reason against homeschooling in general. But I did say it's too easy for a parent to remove a child from school under the pretence of homeschooling, and harm them in the way Kyra was, and for that reason (as well as ensuring a child is receiving an adequate education) I do think someone has to be checking up on kids who are homeschooled. Most will be absolutely fine though.

Hmm. I did some looking around after posting my reply and apparently there have been a few reports which mention that Kyra's parents had removed her from school and then claimed to be homeschooling. I hadn't noticed this in any reports before though?
I was just shocked by the extreme and ridiculous views by the author of the article. Gahh!
I agree with you that some sort of regulation or monitoring would be beneficial although I have no idea how this would work "in practice"..