We Don’t Want Your Education
Four local parents (three of them former teachers themselves) explain why they home ed their children. Some names have been changed.
Rebecca
I have many years’ experience of teaching in state primary schools, both in London and Hastings, and have met many wonderful teachers. I myself love teaching, but I hate working in schools. The system of endless assessments – squeezing square-shaped children into round holes – has reduced the best teachers to stressed-out exhaustion.
The aim of state education is standardisation. Each child’s development is assessed at first arrival in reception class (possibly the day after their fourth birthday), then again at the end of the reception year. At the end of Year 1, there’s a statutory screening test in phonics, and in Year 2 there are SATs (Standard Assessment Tests in maths and English). Teachers may try not to apply pressure on their pupils, but it is inherent in the way that schools work.
The schools I have taught in have had increasing numbers of children with special needs, children for whom English is a second (or third or fourth) language, children with complex home lives. Their progress in language was often phenomenal, but I was told I failed the grade as their teacher if their phonics level–at the age of five or six – was not up to standard. The idea is that children will be motivated by behavioural approaches that reward ‘positive’ or ‘pro-social’ behaviour. It all boils down to compliance and – on the flip side – shame.
What I wanted for my own son R, who is now aged six, is that he should be able to pursue his own interests and dive as deeply as he wants to in something he’s engaged in without carrying the weight of other people’s expectations – especially in a system where adults have their own agenda on the line.
I have no concerns about R’s socialisation. He is friends with people of all ages–from four to 74, not just his peer group. At school, children are kept in ranks of their own age group. How would he learn about operating in the ‘real world’ better from that, compared to living directly in it?
We frequently meet with groups of other home ed families in different contexts – including in local woodlands, the beach, a hired community hall, workshops, tuition groups, swimming, skate parks, art and activity groups. Combined, they give us a wide range of educational and recreational opportunities. Parents contribute financially to the extent they can afford. Hastings Museum has a programme of workshops and events for home-ed families and allows us to use a space for a Lego meet-up.
I respect the right of East Sussex authorities to ‘make enquiries’ about R’s education. When they did, I replied with a 13-page letter setting out the provision I was making.
Of course, educating R at home takes a huge amount of time. If I were a lone parent, it would be even more difficult, but I do know those who manage to do an excellent job without a partner. My partner is in full-time work, and I’m aware that we’re in a position where we have some choice and flexibility that comes with financial stability.
Richard
I taught French and Spanish for many years in a state secondary school in Bristol, then at a prep school in Kent. My own children are now aged 12, nine and seven. My wife and I feel at odds with the values that underpin mainstream education.
We are committed Christians, and want our children to be educated in the values that we believe in. Parents have a fundamental duty and responsibility to bring up children in the way that they think is good for them, and they should be in charge – not politicians.
I have joined with like-minded parents and offer my teaching skills to be shared among a home-educated group of (currently) 14 children for up to 15 hours per week. We meet in a room provided by a local church in St Leonards. It’s not a school as such, still less a church school; it’s a community of learning for home-schoolers, led by me, a professional teacher.
The children study core curriculum subjects: maths, English, science, history, French, Spanish and music. None of them is old enough yet to be taking GCSEs, and I don’t need to gear them up for exam-passing. There are plenty of online courses which provide test papers and exam revision, if that’s what’s required.
As to finances, my wife has a full-time job in the civil service. I do make a monetary charge for my teaching services, but I tailor my fees to what other parents can reasonably pay.
Ellen
My husband and I both attended state schools in West Sussex, passed the exams we needed to, and regard ourselves as reasonably well educated. But as parents of two young children, now aged seven and five, we have looked much more critically at the current state school system. We feel that, at least in early years, kids should have more freedom, individual choice and individual attention than mainstream schools give them.
We have been very influenced by a book published in 2013 entitled Free to Learn by Peter Gray. The sub-heading – Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant , and Better Students for Life – chimes with our parenting style. Both our children enjoy learning, and our seven-year-old daughter is making progress in reading and writing – she actively chooses to do it. But we prioritise play. As we see it, that’s the most natural way of finding out about the world.
We have joined a very active group of like-minded parents, forming a WhatsApp group serving around 80 children across this part of East Sussex. The adults share their skills for the wider benefit, enabling larger-scale social activities. I ran an arts club last year, organising arts and crafts activities for 11 kids of various ages. Hastings Museum, the garden at Great Dixter, Amherst tennis club and the local fire station have all hosted group gatherings.
Of course it’s time-consuming for us as parents. But both my husband and I work part-time and flexibly to enable us to find the time. I’ve also read that children typically learn as much in an hour of one-to-one teaching as they do from eight hours in a classroom, where there’s so much waiting time, not to mention the stress on teachers of coping with increased numbers of SEND kids, undertaking assessments, delivering paperwork etc.
We’re not set on providing home ed indefinitely. If our daughter wanted to try a year in school, that would be fine. She might find an amazing teacher. And I think if we had the money, we would look for a good private school. I used to teach PE and dance in an excellent private school in London. But our choice while we live in Hastings is to keep on our current course.
Laurel
Over a 15-year period starting in around 2008, four of my children opted out of school (their choice) and were home-educated.
It was my youngest daughter M, at the age of six, who started refusing to go to school. My (now ex-) husband and I decided to take her out temporarily and provide alternative education at home. At first I made rigorous lesson plans for her, but soon I realised that she would learn far better and quicker in free form: we went with what she was interested in (dinosaurs were an early subject). She blossomed. Then her older siblings asked to come out of school too.
We joined a group of other home ed parents and children who met up for three hours every Friday at Concordia Hall in Hastings. We used that as a base but also had communal gatherings in Powdermill woods and received help from youth workers attached to East Sussex County Council. (I believe that they bid for, and received, an EU grant to provide funds). The age range was huge – from children doing GCSEs down to toddlers – but because the atmosphere was positive, and the children had made the choice themselves, it was in my view the best education they could have.
At various stages my children opted to rejoin mainstream education, took and passed GCSEs if they wanted to, and have grown up into (I believe) happy, well-adjusted adults. They learnt to adapt to different environments, and that you don’t have to submit to school processes in order to function in society. Learning how to learn is itself a life skill – not taught in schools.
They saw more of adult life than most kids, and were well educated, in a broad sense, in all the ways of the world. One now works as an SEN co-ordinator, one is a cleaner, one is an accountant.
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