Home Schooling

I'm someone who has home educated her three children all the way through their teenage years after they were badly let down by school.

To understand the legalities, we could start with the actual law as it relates to home education in the UK.
Section 7 of the 1996 Education act states:

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full-time education suitable—(a)to his age, ability and aptitude, and(b)to any special educational needs he may have,either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.

It's the 'otherwise' bit that allows us to home educate. Basically it is always a parents responsibility to make sure the child has a suitable education, most parents choose to delegate that responsibility to schools, but a growing number of us either never send our children to school, or deregister them.

The Local Authority may make informal enquiries if they have reason to beleive an education is NOT taking place.
However case law has be made that says, once a LA has made enquiries, we would be sensible to respond.

there are some Elective Home Education : Guidelines for Local Authorities written by the Department of Education in 2007

interesting reading and not too heavy going, but you may all be especially interested to know that according to the Governement:

The parent is NOT required to provide any particular type of education and is under no obligation to:
*have premises equipped to any particular standard
*have any specific qualifications
*cover the same syllabus as any school
*adopt the National Curriculum
*make detailed plans in advance
*observe school hours, days or terms
*have a fixed time-table
*give formal lessons
*reproduce school type peer group socialisation
*match school, age-specific standards
*produce examples of ‘work’ for inspection
*seek permission to educate 'otherwise'
*take the initiative in informing the authority

We have home educated for ten years. We have always done so in a very informal way, where we have followed the children's interests completely. We have done no formal work at all, we have never folowed any curriculum or plan, we have "never had a home visit", the children chose not to meet with the LA, nor to send in any examples of work.

All three went to FE college and did very well indeed and all three will be in higher education by this autumn.

sorry the link to Informal Home Based Education should be this one

Hi everyone, I just did my first day with the grandchildren at my house. We are working on the topic "Autumn", and I found lots of useful information on the web, I was able to print off some information about why leaves fall in the winter (science) to start the day off, then we went and collected fallen leaves and covered them with paint and printed them onto a large piece of paper (will cut these out next week and decide what to make with them!). We talked about "conkers" as I had found some in their shells and we opened the shell - the children were amazed. In between some free playtime in the garden (around same time as schools) and lunch and snack, the children did some autumn themed worksheets (printed from the web) and started a little autumn excercise book which we stuck leaves and photos in. Its been a lovely day, although I do feel tired now! We have planned a schedule of themed activities for every Thursday til Christmas!

HI everyone who has replied to my original posting about homeschooling. I've just re-read all your replies and feel very heartened by all your comments. Since I last wrote in the summer I have had the children at my house every Thursday in "term time" (followed the school pattern so I get a day off every so often!). Its been a wonderful 3 months! We have done topics on Autumn, made leaf prints, mobiles, had a day on Remembrance where the children learned all about why we wear poppies, we visited a War memorial and I told them about some ancestors of mine who were killed in WW1 - they put pictures of them in their workbooks. The last four weeks before Christmas we did Advent (making a ring and lighting the candles), we made Snowmen calendars (which they took home), Advent Calendars (with old Christmas cards behind each window) and Father Christmas masks. I also borrowed the Travelling Crib from our Church and we did the Nativity story. All in all, its been a wonderful "journey" for me, and I know from my d-i-l that they have gone home full of all the things that they do on "Nanny's Learning Day". There seems no signs yet of any return to school so I am busy looking at plans for the "new" term - they are interested in finding out about what goes on inside their bodies (think we might do some hand printing and drawing round their bodies and painting some big pictures!) also Space and we will look at spring things as time goes on. I feel so lucky to have had this time whatever the future brings. Thanks for all your comments and tips.

Well done you!

I am a great believer in home education - school is such an unnatural environment. I cannot believe how people persevere with sending children to schools where they are unhappy. There was a programme recently about a wee lass who was mute at school but normal at home and they were trying to fathom what was wrong with her - nothing as far as I could see, it just needed someone to get her out of there!

I worked in Child Guidance (as it was then called) for a while and we used to see children with "school phobia" - my first move was always to ask what might be wrong with the school not what might be wrong with the child.

A lot of home educating parents get together with others following the same route some of the time and share expertise and also trips/sports etc.

nanajan this is homeschooling's greatest strength; you say, they are interested in finding out about what goes on inside their bodies - and so you plan lessons to explore this interest. Brilliant! My partly home-schooled son will finish his current college course at the end of April and will start work on the first of May having secured his ideal job, in the face of very stiff competition. He has only benefited from his slightly unusual education of school x 3 days and homeschooling x 2 days a week.

nanajan it sounds as if your GC are getting a wonderful education; well done. As a retired teacher I have always thought that home education done well would be the ideal for many children. The way the education system is organised has grown up around the needs of adults (mainly to get them out to work from the industrial revolution onwards) and the needs of children were hardly considered.

Not all of us have had the luxury of being in a position to home educate, but I expect more would choose it if they could.

Thanks for your all your helpful and supportive comments everyone! Thanks MrsJamJam especially for your message - sometimes I just wonder if I am "doing enough" and then have to tell myself that I am only seeing them one day a week and as they seem to enjoy coming so much it must be doing some good! This term so far we have explored the human body - we had fun playing some "brain games" (like Kims game) one week which they really enjoyed, we have drawn round our bodies and painted the drawing - these looked really good! Then we did a few weeks on "the solar system" and my five year old gc wanted to know why I didn't know the order of planets from the sun (which she managed to accurately set out) and also proceeded to tell me about inertia!! Last week she told me that flamingoes are pink because they eat food that turns their feathers that colour! The last couple of weeks we have painted pots and decorated them for Mothers Day, each child put a plant in their pot this Thursday and made a mothers day card - my dil was very touched when they took the plants to her on Thursday. I do enjoy doing this, but wonder how long I can keep it up before I run out of ideas!!

nanajan it's great to hear how the home schooling with your grandchildren is progressing. You won't run out of ideas - there is so much to share with them and they will present you with ideas at times, too. If I could go back 30 years, I would think again about sending my children to school so soon, and wuld have home schooled them, probably with a couple of friends who had children the same age - one friend was a teacher and the other a geologist - we did so many interesting activities together, and could have had our own little classroom of 8 children.

nanjan I am so impressed by your efforts to make sure that your grandchildren are having a fun and interesting learning experience. They seem to be thriving on homeschooling and I'm sure they will benefit from the experience. My DS2 had school phobia and we had a terrible time for his entire school life - like Carol I wish I had home schooled him. We had struggled through his primary years with him getting more and more miserable, and I suggested the idea of homeschooling when he was around 8 or 9. Unfortunately by this time he was so hostile to the idea of any form of education that he would not consider it. He had a home tutor for a while but the LEA were not too helpful and decided to withdraw this as there were 'sick children who really needed the resources'. They then threatened us with prosecution. My son attended for only one year of his secondary school and needless to say took no GCSEs. However at the age of 18 he decided to go to college (a struggle at first) and he started a degree course at the University of Nottingham last year at the grand old age of 22. He is thoroughly enjoying himself and has become a very social animal! Neither he nor I could tell you exactly what has changed but all I know is 1) he did not suffer for his lack of any formal education and 2) he has certainly not become a social recluse. However if I had my time again I would do more to relieve the stress he experienced and to make his childhood a happy one, which it seems is what is happening for your grandchildren

I think it is too easy for parents to choose to home educate in the first place and it puts some children at huge risk. I think all the difference is in the pre thinking any parent does about home schooling & their reasons for it. It can be very successful but sometimes disasterous. All the inspections, league tables, etc etc that schools go through and any parent can just opt out and DIY education with very little pre-checking!
My husband, as part of his job, has to visit families who home educate to check on the students and to see if they are recieving an appropriate education. He sees, as you would in schools, a huge variety including great successes and some kids who are barey literate and then some parents who want to put children back into school because it is not working. Of course it is not always easy to change back into school based learning, unless parents can or want to go privately, as demand for state places is at a premium at the moment so it is important to have thought it through thoroughly before setting out on this course.

I'm 100% in favour of home education, because it is not just about the education received but the environment in which it takes place. Some schools are nightmare places for children with bullying from staff and other pupils;and their size dictates that "crowd control" inevitably becomes a high priority - not a good atmosphere in which to learn. There is also the lack of control about the ethics/religious learning - that worries me.

If people want to take responsibility for their children's learning they should be applauded and helped to do so.

In many ways formal education is over-rated - a lot of what children learning school is irrelevant to their future lives and also to their personal development. At least at home the parents are free to run with a topic that fires the child's interest; and that topic can be used imaginatively to provide learning in many areas.

The recent programme about the wee lass who was an elective mute in the school setting concentrated on what might be wrong with the child. She was right as a trivet at home - maybe she just did not want to be shoe-horned into a "one-size-fits-all" system.

I Home-Educate my grandson. He's 9 and has dyspraxia and a lack of impulse control. We have tried school but it made him nervous and his behaviour was appaling. Now he is a happy healthy 9 year old, who does maths (and english) voluntarily. We cover lots of things - whatever he is interested in at any time. we're currently doing all about the human body, baking & cookery, wildlife (birds, bugs and beasties), etc. The difference with HE is that we can take ourselves off to zoo's parks, long walks to look at flora and fauna, our GP and practice nurse give him loads of posters and info for the bidy bit - we're not confined to classrooms on a daily basis. We use workbooks for maths and english; dice games domino games, etc etc. We have a large white board up in the kitchen on which we leave him bits of things to do (for reinforcing his learning), it's currently covered in examples of alliteration, tenses and some multiplication.
Today we've had poetry (Josh recited 'the Jabberwocky' whilst riding his bike), a discussion of different types of bird habitats (whilst feeding wild birds and identifying different ones), reading, maths, science and healthy eating combined (looking for a recipe then weighing and measuring ingredients and discussing how chemical reactions occur in baking/cooking), cookery (making desert for after dinner and preparing his own lunch), IT (making and playing his own game on PC), PE (dancing, bike riding). And on top of that lot he's also been very domesticated - he's cleaned and vaccuumed has room, swept out the toaster cupboard and washed it, helped to empty, clean and refill the litter trays, fed his guinea pigs, put out the recycling, helped tidy the linen cupboard and put away the laundry, as well as sorted all the dirty laundry and put the machine on. When we'd finished, we just sat in the garden and he said "Just think all those children in school will only be doing Maths, old silly maths ... I like the maths that we do, the maths that we do is good and quick ... but it's boring in school, no wonder so many children are bad tempered."

bidy? lol- should be 'body'

Well done Jams and well done to Josh, I have a DGS called Josh they are rather special aren't they ?

Well done Jams - this is exactly what I am talking about!

Thanks Glammana and Mishap - we love doing it. Nanajan - I also meant to respond to Crimsons post where she said that school is also about learning to be a social animal.
I remember when I first started to consider Home-Education, I did a lot of research. The thing I did take with a pinch of salt were anecdotal comments regarding how the personalities of HE children change once they get the school out of their system. Basically I thought it was a load of bunkum, propogated by HE'ers who wanted everyone to come around to their way of thinking. However, once Josh (and us too actually) became 'free' of the whole school system it became very easy to begin to see the difference between the restrictions of formal education and what can be a very freeing experience of Home-Education in terms of becoming a 'social animal'. School actually restricts our children in terms of their sociability. They are very restricted in the types of people they make friends with, the ages of people, the things they 'learn' (and I use the term learn, very loosely), culture, attitudes, opinions etc are all restricted within a school environment, they seem to breed a culture amongst children of wanting everything or not wanting to be seen as different or lacking in anything that others in their classes might have.
Josh's has friends aged from 2 years right up to 86. He baked scones and took them to a lady across the road and had tea with her - he loves to chat to her about her life (fascinating woman). He is fantastic with little ones, he can play quite happily at their level, when with older children (even teens and adults) he can hold his own very well in conversations and is polite, well mannered and very helpful. I have yet to see one incident of sulkiness, arguing or disagreement between him and any HE friends, yet the friends he remains in contact with from school are often noisy, argumentative, disrespectful of each other and things around them, they seem to be in constant battle for 'keeping-up with the jones' in terms of toys, electronics, clothes etc that they want or are expected to have by their school friends.
Josh does have an active social life - but on his terms. He isn't herded into a classroom of people of a similar age or forced to make friends with anyone. He doesn't sneer or riducule anyone who doesn't know something. He attends karate, cubs and stagecoach every week. He is a happy, healthy well adjusted boy, with lots of friends and he loves to learn.

Ph and well done nanajan - glad to hear it's going well and you are enjoying yourself. x

Homeschooling my son part-time was a wonderful experience and I'm glad to say that he agrees it was the same for him too. He finishes college at the end of April and starts work (in Greece) the same day. I'm really pleased he was able to get the first job he applied for, but (gulp) having two children working abroad is going to change the family dynamic enormously.

Hello everyone, its a while since I have logged back in to gransnet, as its been a busy summer but I need to tell you that my grandchildren returned to a new school this September, so my thursday homeschooling has sadly come to an end. Although we had a fantastic time, I began to realise that my dil was finding it increasingly more difficult to engage the children - especially the 8 year old boy who wanted to spend most of his time on his gaming machine, and the 3 year old was beginning to become quite difficult to control, and I felt she desperately needed to have other children her own age around her. I was beginning to feel very tired and anxious about the children, and the situation wasn't helped by my son, who 15 months ago became very ill and has not been at work - he finally got a diagnosis earlier this year of Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and this has put massive extra pressure on the family, and the 8 year old worried all the time about his Dad, and felt concerned about everything including his elder brother (who is autistic and goes to special school). I told my dil that I was not sure how much longer I could continue with their day with me (reluctantly) and then at the end of June she told me she had found another school, and we went on a visit and it really was lovely. The school has a very caring atmosphere, quite a few children there have difficulties (physical, emotional) and I instantly warmed to the head teacher and staff on our tour. The children were very excited, and the school had an attached playgroup who have given the 3 year old a full time place. They started in September and seem very settled and happy, and I am greatly relieved and hope this will take some of the pressure off my dil and maybe help my son;s recovery - CFS and Fibromyalgia is extremely difficult to treat and he currently has no idea how long it will be before he recovers sufficiently to go back to work, so its been a very difficult time over the last year or two. Despite it all, I am so glad that I helped with the homeschooling, and I can;t thank you all enough for your support through this time, which really kept me going. Thanks again. Nanajan