No, not all home-ed children have the same degree of freedom, and not all schools are equal either. I suppose it comes down to which bits of the home-ed “package” you think are important. I want all of it.

I think childcare is a little different, in that a childminder can cater to the individual in the same way the family can. A nursery can’t, of course. BTDT with both.

Benefits of school – after 4.5 years of home-ed, I’ve only been able to identify one benefit that can’t be had in another way, and that’s for me, not them, and it’s the ability to go Christmas shopping during the week without the children in tow!

If I weren’t working, we wouldn’t be able to afford this school, nor would we need the childcare, so the discussion would never have arisen. Given that I am working, and pretty much have to for at least a little while, we will take the best we can from this.

Deb, you haven’t offended me, doubt you’ll offend anyone here when all you are doing is stating your very reasoned and reasonable point of view. I like a bit of debate – if I wasn’t up for it, I wouldn’t have posted

And hey, I was at school for 14 years, and I had plenty of conversations about cosines at 9.30

Doesn’t offend me, and I don’t know what I’d do if we found ourselves in the situation where I had to work too for some reason – I just think the change has already started, and finding somewhere great for the children to be is the best way of making sure it’s a positive change.

I don’t think home-educating parents stop being home-educating parents because their child goes to school. I think all good parents “do home-ed” some of the time.

But I do think a home-educated child loses a lot of what being a home-educated child means when he or she goes to school.

Because school – any school – means losing some of what home-education is about. Freedom. To learn when you want, play when you want, sleep when you want. To learn what you want. To spend the day outside when the weather’s good and not go out for a week when the weather’s miserable. To change your mind about plans for the day at a moment’s notice.

School means following the school, rather than yourself. A schedule. A routine (whether it suits you personally or not). A requirement (or at least expectation) to be somewhere at a particular time. I’ve yet to see the school that is willing to explain sines and cosines at 9.30 pm, as we did a couple of weeks ago. That was when he wanted to know, so that’s when we did it. We could have done it even if he’d spent all day at school, I suppose – but I somehow doubt that he’d have asked then.

Bear in mind that I’ve done school with one of mine, and nursery with two of them. There is a difference, and while school – any school or this particular one – might be a good solution for a particular family at a particular time – it’s not the same as full-time home-education. And going to school – even a new, small, progressive, thinking school (as ours was) – does change a child. Maybe for better, maybe for worse. But definitely change.

Sorry, and hope everybody doesn’t hate me now.

To various of you, um, I do know multiple parents who treat school as a one stop childcare and view it that their responsibility ends at the school gate. We have one friend who wouldn’t dream of describing herself as a home educator I suspect – but is downsizing her life so that she can drop her son at the school gates and pick him up without him having to use after school clubs, and make sure that her time with him is fun.

ps Jenny, your comment was in moderation when I wrote the main body of this, wasn’t ignoring you, honest
Sarah, yes, this is for Small as well. There’s an outside chance they’ll be in the same room, can’t decide whether that is good or bad. May well have to renegotiate the whole thing in a couple of months anyway, but we can but try.