Home education: just a vanity project?

Oct 31, 2013

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Most of the time when I mention I home educate people either ask me if it’s legal, or tell me they couldn’t do that. They don’t have the patience, or the knowledge, or the courage – I’m fairly sure I’m seen as some kind of a saint or perhaps superwoman.

I’m neither. Just a parent. Choosing a path that I hope is the best I can choose for my children. Isn’t that what all parents try to do? Or most, anyway?

But a little while back on twitter, where I do spend far too much time in between maths lessons, housework, nappy changes and cooking, I spotted a couple of conversations that really bothered me.

There was this:

@VoluntaryAnarch @Educationchat yes a real vanity project designed to pander to individual whims & does nothing to advance social cohesion
— Krysta Parsons (@KrystaParsons) October 20, 2013

A what? A vanity project? I don’t really know where to start with that. I honestly can’t see how anyone can think that parents home educating are doing it out of vanity, or for their own benefit – it’s all about the children. And as for the social cohesion bit, well. My children are out and about in day to day society all the time. They meet children from a wide variety of schools, people from all sorts of walks of life, and I do my level best to promote tolerance and understanding at all times. I suspect by social cohesion the tweeter might actually have meant social conformity, and that is *not* something I’m about to promote. My children are individuals, as are all children, and I want them to have the time and space they need to grow into themselves, explore their own interests and choose their own paths.

But that conversation was one I only saw in passing, and didn’t really get to me. If it hadn’t been for the second one I’d probably have forgotten it almost instantly. The one that really bothered me was where an author I follow had a pop at the people behind free schools being the same as home schoolers, parents who think education is easy, right up until their children fail at A level and university.

I’m paraphrasing, as the tweets have been deleted, presumably because I challenged them. But this particular set of assumptions really bugged me.

I don’t know any home educator who thinks of this as an easy path. And I don’t know any parent who takes educational choices lightly. We all agonise over what is best for our children, I think, and expend blood, sweat and tears trying to set them up for life the very best we can. I know (oh how I know) what we’re doing carries some risks, and that if my children went to school and performed at least averagely, I would not be criticised for that, whereas if they do the same via home education, eyebrows will be raised. It will be my fault for making the wrong choices, gambling with their futures.

Except as my children grow, they are more and more involved in choosing the path they take. The older two have considered, and at this point, discounted school, even knowing that gaining qualifications will be more complicated outside the system. And don’t they have the right to make that choice?

I think our society benefits from a wide variety of educational provisions. I wouldn’t ban independent schools, I’m not convinced all the free schools are a good idea, but I’m not sure they’re all bad. In a different time and place, had things gone a little differently a few years ago, I’d probably right now still be working in a montessori school, with flexi schooled offspring and working on opening a secondary, which might well be a free school. And guess what, I’m not a qualified teacher. Not QTS anyway, though I am montessori trained and qualified.

I don’t think that QTS is the be all and end all. As long as it’s possible to get rid of teachers who don’t come up to scratch, I think that training on the job isn’t such a bad strategy. I actually think that having the majority of teachers who’ve been to school, university and back to school again is a bad idea, and that some outside experience and influence is a good thing. But that’s just my opinion, born of my experience on a (uncompleted) PGCE, in primary and secondary schools and through conversations with a number of teachers (quite a few of whom home educate).

More than anything though, I wish that people would open their minds to alternatives in education. Because the model we have now, which was set up a long time ago, hasn’t moved with the times, and isn’t benefiting our children or our society. Again, just my opinion. But there you go.

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Comments

38 responses to “Home education: just a vanity project?”

Charlotte
31 October 2013
“I suspect by social cohesion the tweeter might actually have meant social conformity” – that is EXACTLY what I was about to say when I started reading your post.
As for home ed being easy?! Why is it that it’s always those with kids in schools that say that. I often wonder what my life would be like, being able to ship everyone off for the day to be talked at by a bunch of strangers, just so that I could do what *I* wanted to do, rather than what I thought was best for my children.
argh!!! This is why I don’t even *discuss* home ed anymore most of the time. Grr.
Reply
1. Jax Blunt
  1 November 2013
  To be fair, I’ve no idea whether the person who said that has any children, in school or otherwise. I think she doesn’t. I’ve done the shipping children off, to montessori (not very much talking at going on there) and what I had to do to achieve that was work round the clock at a very stressful job. It was a stressful job I enjoyed, but all in all, I think this works better for us just now.
  Reply
Midlife Singlemum
1 November 2013
Whilst I would love to teach my daughter everything she needs to know in Primary School, I don’t have the luxury of not having to work for pay during school hours. I know you guys are not rich but you are surviving with your work fitting in around the children’s education and this means you are working less (for pay) than you would be if they went to school. Added to that you have to take and collect them to/from extra-curricular groups like swimming club and scouts in order to have local friends, a social life, and enough people for team sports. So from where I sit, home ed is the opposite of selfish. You are occupied with the children all day every day. I’d say there are better ways to be vain.
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1. Jax Blunt
  1 November 2013
  When I saw the start of your comment I was terribly afraid I’d offended you, which was absolutely not my intent. Breathed a sigh of relief by the time I got to the end!
  Is it a luxury to live the way we do? I suppose it is in a way. It doesn’t feel desperately luxurious when I’m standing in Lidl counting the shopping budget I have to admit, and yes, when we both worked outside the home, we were very much more handsomely recompensed, unsurprising given that we’re both IT professionals. Occcasionally I do miss that. And more than anything, I miss a little time to be me (which is why I’m tapping away on the netbook in the kitchen before waking up the children to start the day!) Just a few minutes of Jax before the mummying starts….
  Reply
buriedunderbooks
1 November 2013
I can understand feeling confident enough to home school your own children, but would be interested to know why you feel teachers managing the learning of large groups of learners with differing needs do not need any formal, professional training. Obviously on-the-job training is important, but suggesting teachers do not need any formal qualifications implies that all one needs is a dollop of enthusiasm and willingness to listen to colleagues. Both are vital but need to be underpinned by a sound understanding of how children learn.
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1. Jax Blunt
  1 November 2013
  Hi there, thanks for commenting. My experience of the PGCE, granted a long time ago, was that it didn’t cover that kind of topic very much at all. Or it only covers it within the model of education as we have it, not really addressing the many plausible alternatives that we could consider.
  I’d like to come back to this later in the day when my own brain is rather more active for a longer response if that’s OK.
  Reply
  1. buriedunderbooks
    5 November 2013
    When I did my PGCE I felt it did cover those topics but I can certainly see your point about it only preparing students to teach within current educational parameters – I suppose it is designed to create teachers rather than educators, a broader concept.
    I think as a teacher I am quite sensitive to what I see as the de-professionalising of teachers. I know that some people are “natural” teachers – the girl I worked with in my main placement school was one such phenomenon – but most have to learn how best to manage students and their learning. In this context, needing a qualification, such as QTS, makes sense. The government seem to think that just because someone is very intelligent (as proven by a 1st degree) or they have worked in industry this automatically makes them a better teacher than someone who is moderately bright (measured by a 2.1 or 2.2 degree) but has been trained in education and has experience of managing learning. This is a fallacy.
    Anyway, ramble over!
    Reply
    1. Jax Blunt
      6 November 2013
      I would certainly agree that having a first is not a good indicator of teaching ability, in fact very often people who just understand stuff are the least well placed to explain it.
      I’m not against professional teachers at all. But I do think we need more educators, experimenters and innovators with wider experience and also more innovative schools.
      Reply
Katie Clark
1 November 2013
I agree with everything you said in particular “More than anything though, I wish that people would open their minds to alternatives in education.” One model doesn’t suit anyone and this is widely accepted in most other concepts, why should education be any different? We made the decision to home educate largely because we felt that we could give our child a better academic education that the local schools could. As we have become more involved though and found out more about home education in practice, our focus has shifted to trying to provide a more rich education than is possible in a school setting: variety; outdoor experiences; heritage; visits. Just opportunities really. Our original reason, I suppose, could be described as vanity – we thought we could do better. but when it comes to our children and what is best for them, surely a little vanity- if it is indeed that, is a good thing? We are showing our children to have conviction, to trust in their own beliefs and not be afraid to be a little different if they think it’s right.
I too am constantly whether home education is legal and also how my child will socialise (this question drives me bonkers!) but upon receiving an answer, most people I encounter, do actually accept the positives of home education and respond with a “Gosh, I didn’t even know you could do that. That sounds great.” So that’s got to be a positive!
Reply
1. Jax Blunt
  1 November 2013
  Yes, I think more and more people are realising that home education has positives, but the more we can talk about it, write about it, and be ambassadors for it, the better I think. Thanks for commenting.
  Reply
sustainablemum
1 November 2013
I don’t think there is anything vain about making a conscious decision. We are legally responsible for our children’s education whatever form that takes, so perhaps for those children who do not do well in exams in a school environment the parents should take more responsibility for the results than they do. It is one thing to delegate responsibility to others it is another level to then abdicate from it entirely when things go wrong. Schools can be wonderful places and there are some wonderful teachers but the whole premise of the education system does not sit well with me.
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Fiona Nicholson
1 November 2013
I saw the Twitter furore and wondered whether the person who used the term “vanity project” was making a sloppy over-generalisation from those old photos of 12 year olds getting Maths PhDs, flanked by triumphant parent.
If someone asked me whether my home education wasn’t really just a big vanity project the first thing I’d do would be to ask them to define their terms and quiz them about why they are projecting it’s about ego rather than control (ah I see you mean if YOU home educated that would be why…)
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1. Jax Blunt
  1 November 2013
  Hm, I’m not sure I like the idea of it being all about control any more than I like the idea it’s a vanity project to be honest.
  Reply
  1. Fiona Nicholson
    2 November 2013
    Hi Jax, I expect it doesn’t sound very appealing for me to say my home ed is fundamentally about not ceding control to someone else. But it happens to be true in my case.
    Reply
    1. Jax Blunt
      2 November 2013
      That’s fine if it’s just yours you are describing, it sounded more general than that though.
      Reply
Shea
1 November 2013
Interesting post. I’ve several minds about it, as I taught for years in the US, and often taught semesters for homeschooling co-ops. Some were very very good…some were awful, and were truly a vanity project for the parents (or even worse, a heavy handed reaction to ‘mainstream Godless liberal indoctrination’ – yes, a homeschooling parent actually said that to me once). I think as long as the same standards and evaluation is applied to homeschoolers/unschoolers as traditional schools are kept to, they can be fantastic things. If not, we have issues like the Josh Powell legal case: http://www.sheawong.com/homeschooling/
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1. Jax Blunt
  1 November 2013
  Hi there, thanks for commenting.
  The social and legal situation in this country is very different to the states. You could say that the same standards are applied in that it is always the parents always have responsibility for education, and can discharge it, either by sending their child to school or otherwise. Education is supposed to be suitable to age, ability and aptitude, and I know many home educators that would say schools regularly fail children in this regard. If it appears to a local authority that there is no evidence of education they make enquiries of the parents and if not satisfied, can apply to court for a school attendance order. I think this would have been done without a second thought in a situation like the case you refer to above.
  The difficulty comes when people try to evaluate home education in a way that makes it look like school and expect for example written work or the same number of hours to be applied. Given that children are usually getting much more one to one attention, they don’t need to put in the hours that are spent in a school day. (And actually, if you take out registration, breaks, moving between rooms, getting set up, clearing away and so on, the actual education hours in a school are much shorter than you might at first expect anyway.) In terms of evaluation, I’m not sure how you’d apply that. There’s no mandatory registration, and no need for children to be regularly tested at home – getting out of the testing system is one reason many people give for withdrawing their children in the first place.
  I hope this helps to give you a bit more information about the system here.
  Reply
  1. shea
    1 November 2013
    I had the opportunity a few weeks back to do a one-off for a HS co-op here, and based on those kids/parents, I hope they are the norm as they were lovely.
    However, I think some form of standards testing should be mandatory regardless of education route. I don’t care how many hours a kid puts in a day (as you say, one on one or small group work can bring about amazing results quickly), but I would be highly concerned both as a parent and long time educator if a kid was falling behind in basic educational standards (reading, writing, maths, etc) not because of malice on a parent’s part, but on a simple lack of understanding of his or her perhaps unique pedagogical needs.
    Reply
    1. Jax Blunt
      1 November 2013
      This is a difficult discussion to get into in blog comments, but I’ll kick it off anyway. How do you judge whether a child is falling behind? If you had measured my son in the September he was age 5, you’d probably have been very concerned. He didn’t even know his letters. By January he was reading Harry Potter. Yet in many systems he wouldn’t have even started formal education. So what standards should you judge against? You could argue that children are only falling behind because they are being measured against the wrong standards at the wrong times.
      I am against any further regulation on home education in this country and campaigned against registration when the last government tried to bring it in. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one.
      Reply
    2. Jax Blunt
      1 November 2013
      I also assume you don’t think much of unschooling where there is no overt teaching? And yet I know several graduates of this method who are very successful in their chosen fields. Interrupting the process with mandatory testing or evaluation could have completely destroyed this process for them.
      Reply
mamacrow
1 November 2013
we had an excellent visit from our LEA early on in our HE journey, who told us her bench mark was whether the kids were thriving. I know that sounds a bit woolly, but actually, that’s a very good judge – do they seem happy, content, have plenty to occupy them, plenty of down time. Are they basically eating and sleeping well?
I know some kids have chronic conditions or don’t respond to strangers well, but it’s still a good basic rule of thumb – are they enthusiastic? do they have that sparkle, that drive? And do the home edding parents have this too?
Tells you much more than any number of tests. My mum agrees and she taught primary and junior aged children.
Reply
1. Jax Blunt
  2 November 2013
  If the parent is supposed to have that drive I think we’re sunk. I’m just tired all the time.
  Reply
Looking for Blue Sky
1 November 2013
Interesting post and comments – and I think that accepting that everyone should be more open-minded about everything to do with education is the place to start. Every family is different and what works for one, may not work well for another. All that matters I guess is that the parents really care about ensuring that their children get the kind of education that will work well for them xx
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Ross Mountney
2 November 2013
Agree entirely. Well said. I’d add that all the HEors I’ve met are far more inclusive and encouraging of social cohesion that the unnatural social clustering found in school where the desperation for survival and being top-dog is more likely to divide and degrade those less able! Unless of course you take ‘social cohesion’ to mean dumb obedience which is more often the result of an overly prescriptive education that’s as outdated as the fifties as you say!
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1. Jax Blunt
  3 November 2013
  I see a bit of both tbh, some inclusive HEors, and others who really aren’t. We met a family who told me to my face that we weren’t suitable contacts because I let my children read Harry Potter. And I also know that many school using parents are aware of the good and bad of school and work to overcome its shortcomings with their children. I don’t see this as an either or situation. We’re all just doing our best.
  Reply
  1. Ross Mountney
    3 November 2013
    True again! 🙂
    Reply
Katherine
3 November 2013
I have to say I am very pro free schools.
We came to home education because I don’t agree with the prevailing educational model – same age classes, early literacy, frequent testing, everyone studying the same things, adult driven educational goals and teaching.
I wanted my children to be developmentally ready for reading, writing etc, rather than have to struggle. I wanted them to spend lots of time playing, and learning practical everyday skills. I wanted them to have control over their own social life and learning and to be able to learn different things depending on their passions.
For us that meant home education, but it would be wonderful if there were more than a tiny number of schools who provided the kind of education I wanted for my children. And ideally schools paid for by tax payers, rather than parents having to pay extra for certain educational options.
I think parents should be able to discharge their legal responsibility in more diverse ways currently exist for most people.
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1. Jax Blunt
  3 November 2013
  I think overall I agree with you. The problem is that the state needs to feel it’s getting its money’s worth and very often the alternative educational models are difficult to quantify progress. I’d love to see more Montessori based nurseries and schools, and would seriously consider using one if it was available free. But the only one here is private.
  I’d also like to see more schools like Summerhill, or the Sudbury valley model from the US but our political masters are so blinkered with what they consider the right educational way to be that I can’t see that sort of thing happening any time soon. So home education it is for us also.
  Reply
hharicot
3 November 2013
Thankyou Jax, I enjoyed this blog post and all the comments too. We home educate, child led the first and autonomous the second. I am not so comfortable with autonomous ed, but it is the only thing that works for BB. so there we go.
As a liberal of particularly high sit on the fence liberalness, I have also struggled with the, ‘well home ed works for x, because they use y style, or the parent was a teacher so understands, or because you have middle class aspirational values, but what about the semi illiterate [judged ? purely on the fact receiving benefit] or those that left school at 16, or those with religious fundamentalism, or other very narrow codes’. It is hard isn’t it, very hard not to place/project your [in my case] aspirational, middle class, non religious, child centric, liberal everyone should have the best chance viewpoints onto others. where does the victorian in me ‘do gooding’ stop. clearly with physical/emotional abuse, but from then on it all goes a bit grey and finding the line is difficult. I think currently, where home education is concerned, we probably have a good ‘line’ it is a bit woolly – suitable to age and aptitude and taking into consideration special needs. It did once upon a time also say preparing for life within the community the child was part of – or something like that, but it is now modern society. I struggle with many of the laws within the states of america, and whilst i, as a woolly libertarian, think the lad should be allowed to be educated as that is his choice. However, although being raised as a creationist within gender parameters is clearly not something I would opt for, I think that the age/aptitude and within community is probably enough legal requirements, and that different communities shouldn’t be pressurised into white middle class idealism by the state.
I also think that there is too much focus on what people should be able to do by 18, and if they can’t they have failed. [and no, this isn’t my cop out line for if home ed goes horribly wrong] Does this mean that they are a failure for the next 60 years of their life! We should grow up about education, realise that it is never past the age to learn, have integrated learning opportunities open for all ages; chances for the kids who didn’t have the right learning environment for them, or the right mindset at the time, to be able to address that when they have the inclination/desire to do so. Adult education should be more valued. Much of what takes so painstakingly long to learn as a child has been shown to be learnt very much more quickly as an adult – often because the will and application is there. Reading is a skill best learnt at the childs own pace. forced reading and improvement doesn’t bring joy and reading for pleasure. Neither of my own have read quickly, but once they have read, have progressed rapidly without hours of struggling to complex and interesting books. Maths colleagues explain that maths might be best being investigation led and no theories or practice till beyond the age of 10 etc.
I could incoherently rant/ramble for ages [need to go to bed I think]. I just think we have got the ‘purpose’ of education that the state requires for good little citizens and a dash of victorian workhouse and the joy of education that a child desires prioritised all wrong.
Reply
hharicot
3 November 2013
having pressed post without rereading, I apologise for the enormousness of that last comment! you can’t tell within the box
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1. Jax Blunt
  3 November 2013
  Hah, never apologise for enormous comment, especially when it’s relevant and interesting.
  Reply
Circus Queen
3 November 2013
How on earth could choosing to be home with your children full-time be seen as the easy option?!
Reply
Susan Balkerson
4 November 2013
Hmm. Let me say at the start that I don’t have a problem with home education itself, but I do wonder about some parents’ reasons for doing so. The fact that one of your commenter admitted that it’s all about control for them rings alarm bells for me. The double-edged sword of parenting is that as your child grows, you can’t help but lose control as they become their own person, grow in independence and go out into the world. Keeping them at home to educate them is fine but if you’re deciding what they learn and want to be in full control of that, how on earth does that child develop the skills to be an independent learner, or even an independent person? As much as it has pained me, my own children’s growing independence is a beautiful thing to observe.
The state has a responsibility to ensure that its citizens have a decent education and come out of education with skills to become decent citizens and be able to be useful to an employer or possess sufficient skills to be able to set themselves up as a self-employed person (or own a business). The government therefore should really be checking that children in home ed are getting a decent education but the difficulty of that is deciding how to benchmark that. Much as I loathe tick lists, surely they need a framework to understand if the home education a child is getting is really suitable? I know it’s comparing apples to pears and all but there does really need some hymn sheet everyone could be singing from.
I would be concerned that you, as the educating parent, feel you are tired at the time. I do not know your domestic arrangements or the age of your children, but I struggle to understand how one parent educates a number of children all of whom are at different stages of development – surely, this is as hard, if not harder, than a teacher teaching a class of mixed ability children of similar age? If you do not have the energy to teach all of them, how can you say you are constantly doing the best for your children? If a teacher in a school was constantly lethargic in delivery and attitude, would you expect more of them and be disappointed in them? Personally, I would be and would be talking to the school about it. Why is it different for you? Who determines whether you are performing correctly?
Teachers have to be on top of their game constantly, they are observed regularly, more so if they are newly qualified. And do not think that a teacher who is not performing well is not dealt with – these days, schools have no choice to expect the highest standards and cannot keep those who don’t consistently teach at least good lessons, have an attitude of constant improvement and aspire to be outstanding. What I know of PGCE I agree to an extent that there is a lot of teaching by rote; a lot of them are coached through their first interviews and trot out standard answers they have learned rather than inherently know. Part of the problem is that a large proportion of them have come straight out of university and don’t have other experience. On the other hand, people who have been through the Graduate Teacher programme have usually worked in a wide range of industries. Only the best of the best get a place anyway and they are more articulate, able to think on their feet. They often display a passion that is lacking in PGCE graduates as they know that that is what they want to do.
Passion is what it’s about. If someone doesn’t have passion for education, whether a pupil, a teacher or a home educator, the end results are definitely not going to be as good than if they do. Where home ed steps over the line between a decision that is right for the family and a vanity project, it’s usually that passion is lost or circumstances change and the parent can’t see that they are no longer meeting the needs of the child or children, they become blind to their needs and set in their beliefs. A home educator needs to be asking themselves hard questions regularly – if they aren’t doing the best for your children, how can they expect others to do so?
We all change, every day. Some children may suit a home education at different stages and I think we need to recognise that it might not be right all the way through for every child. Only you (that’s the general you as in all home educators, not you specifically) can know if the decision to continue with home ed is still right for your child. I think when home ed gets a bad press is when some home eders put their blinkers on and refuse to accept that anything other than home ed is right for their child (and as we know, most children are pretty amazing little things and adapt far better than many parents realise), particularly where it is not going well.
Also, I’ve seen home eders who are very critical of mainstream schools like they are all hot beds for small people and dens of iniquity. The fact is, some incredible things happen in schools every single day. I also don’t believe that in most cases, there is a huge amount of difference between schools in terms of overall performance. A child will do well in most schools and unless they need special additional assistance, they wouldn’t necessarily do so much better in an outstanding school than an inadequate one. Some home eders take on a holier than thou attitude about their decision.
Finally, home ed is a luxury. If you can afford to raise multiple children, home educate and have money left at the end of the month, you are reasonably well off even if you have to watch every penny. You are definitely better off than those parents who both have to work full time to keep food on the children, or single parent families who either have to rely on benefits or work in low paid jobs. Home education definitely is not a viable financial option for all. It is just not accessible to many and never will be.
Reply
1. Ruth J
  4 November 2013
  Re: control
  Control is a problematic word, because it connotes some kind of power-crazed “control freak”, which isn’t really what we’re taking about here. At the end of the day, the parent is legally responsible for the provision of education, and if they aren’t allowed to have control of it, then that’s responsibility without power, which just isn’t fair.
  You seem to assume that the desired control is over the child, when in fact, home educators are seeking control of the education – often to increase the freedom of the child. Of course children can and should gain gradual independence in their education, but at a pace agreed by the family that knows, loves and supports them, not one dictated by an institution, based largely on their chronological age.
  Re: state responsibility
  This is very much an ideological point, and many, many people would argue with your assumptions. For myself, I am perfectly happy for the state to OFFER an education to all, but deeply uncomfortable with the idea that they should somehow ensure its acceptance by individuals. If the government turned to me, as an adult, and said I had to learn wood turning, whether I wanted to or not, I would fight pretty hard. If they forced the issue, I would likely be put off carpentry for life.
  It isn’t, and should never be, the job of government to oblige people to become educated against their will. That goes for children as well as adults. Not only is it counter productive, it flies in the face of individual freedom.
  Re: tiredness
  Everyone gets tired. Heaven knows that every teacher I know collapses in a heap every half term. Tiredness is not in and of itself a failure to be and do whatever is required. Being exhausted by the demands of her smaller children does not prevent Jax from overseeing the much more independent educational activities of her older children. Home education doesn’t require a class teacher darting around at the front, using an extensive bag of tricks to keep 30 different personalities engaged. It’s not even necessarily the role of the parent to explain the content to the child – often it’s just a case of being the sounding board while the child processes what they’ve read/watched/heard elsewhere. The more independent their learning, the truer this becomes. I, too, worry about Jax’s ongoing tiredness, but not because of the effect on her children or their education – just because of the effect it has on her.
  Of course people change. Jax’s children have been in school in the past, and are out now through their own choice, by the sound of things. If anything, it sounds like she is putting their needs ahead of her own, rather than the other way around.
  Reply
2. mamacrow
  4 November 2013
  Firstly – tiredness is more to do with being a parent than specifically home edding I think, and in fact I personally was far more tired when I had *only* four children and two were in school, than I do now with seven children and home edding!
  Secondly – home educating is NOT a luxury, it is a simply another way of doing things. You can do it with lots of money or very little or somewhere in between, exactly the same as school (extra costs being uniform, school trips, after school clubs, etc etc).
  Thirdly – I can only speak from personal experience but home educating a handful (7 in this case, although the eldest has now started college and the youngest is under a year so really I suppose I should say 5) of children of different ages and stages is MUCH MUCH easier than teaching a class of 20 – 30 of the same age. And yes,I have done both. For a start, which ever way you look at it, 7 is always going to be less than 30! Plus the amounts of assistance needed will vary and fluctuate so you can go from one to the next and schedule in sessions with the older ones at opportune times like the evenings, etc. etc.
  Reply
3. mamacrow
  4 November 2013
  ‘The state has a responsibility to ensure that its citizens have a decent education and come out of education with skills to become decent citizens and be able to be useful to an employer or possess sufficient skills to be able to set themselves up as a self-employed person (or own a business).’
  Popping back because I forgot to comment on this! No, the state is NOT responsible for this. Parents are responsible for ensuring that their children receive an appropriate education and this is enshrined in law. The state provides schools to do this should parents wish to outsource and incidentally get some child care while they work. The state does this on our behalf and uses our money, through taxes, to do so.
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4. Jax Blunt
  5 November 2013
  Hi Susan
  It’s usually my experience when someone starts with “I don’t have a problem but” that they do actually have a problem. And you’ve come up with a wide range of criticisms, both general and personal, while offering no grounds for your expertise.
  The state doesn’t have the responsibility you are ascribing to it, it is enshrined in law that the suitable education is the parents’ responsibility. That can be discharged by school attendance or otherwise. Beyond that the state changes its mind regularly as to what constitutes a suitable state education so it’s quite hard to take that desperately seriously. They also fail regularly to ensure the employability of state school leavers or so we’re told, so I’m not sure settling for those standards is quite what I have in mind.
  There’s little reason for you not to know of my domestic arrangements – quite a lot of them are detailed in 10 years of archives on this blog. But I have four children, ranging in age from 1 to 13, and I’m myself 42. And when I say I’m always tired, I’m probably slightly exaggerating, given that I manage to run several miles, several times a week, and I do get through the days generally speaking without falling asleep 😉
  No, you can’t design a tick list style framework to assess home education. Our home education is tailored to each of our children individually, and changes regularly to suit changing interests and needs. And as I say in my post, both the older children are involved in the decision as to where they receive education, and both have chosen to remain home. It’s a decision that’s revisited regularly.
  Teachers are doing a very different thing to home educators. I’m not going out of the house 5 days a week to deliver lessons to mixed ability groups. I’ve done that. I had up to 10 children in my montessori classroom, ranging from 5 to 10, and I’ve taught at primary and secondary levels during teacher training as well. Home educating isn’t teaching in the same way at all. Sometimes I’m imparting knowledge, sometimes I’m setting work, sometimes I’m discussing ideas, sometimes I’m playing games. And sometimes we’re just living life, and that’s educational too.
  My children are indeed amazing things, but two of them aren’t that little any more. Don’t they get the independence of choice that you talk about? Or isn’t it true independence to choose something outside of the norm somehow?
  Home education is no more of a luxury than any other chosen lifestyle. We work to support our chosen lifestyle, and yes, sometimes it’s a difficult choice and we have to make sacrifices. But you could say the same about any stay at home parent, and I know single parent home educators who I don’t think regard it as a luxury but as a chosen way of life. And as such, I think it’s a lot more financially viable than you realise. It all depends on priorities.
  I’m sorry if any of that comes across as too personal, it isn’t intended to be, but your comment struck a nerve with me and I’ve taken time to ponder on it and give it a full response. Again, thank you for commenting.
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