homeschooling

Home education, how's it looking these days?

14th January 2019 by Jax Blunt 8 Comments

I still get a fair few contacts via social media about home education, so I thought it was probably time for a bit of an update on where we are, how we’re doing and what it looks like these days. Also, I was inspired by Adele over at Beautiful Tribe who wrote a beautiful post about resetting homeschooling intentions, and that sounded like a great idea to me.

For the sake of completeness, I’ll cover the whole family, even though some of them aren’t home educated any more.

At the moment, Big (rapidly approaching 19!!) is still at home, doing a Level 4 course in Music at college. That’s equivalent to the first year of a degree in terms of qualification level (for those of us at the back completely lost if it doesn’t say A level, O level etc). It’s very hands on, and she’s already gigged several times. If you’re interested in what she’s up to, you can follow her musical adventures on instagram or facebook.

Small, who really really isn’t small any more, not that he was at the time we started calling him that, is also at college. I’m still unclear as to whether he’s technically home educated at the moment, but given he’s in college 2 1/2 days a week, also doing music performance but at level 3, I figure he’s fairly effectively educated should anyone come knocking. There’s also music practice on three instruments these days, music composition, computer club, fencing, guitar lessons and gym and a variety of other hobbies. He’s rarely not busy, and it’s all self directed, which I love.

Which leaves the actual home educated offspring, Smallest of all (who obviously isn’t, on any measure, drat the whole funny giving of online names!) and Tigerboy. Both of them read independently, and Smallest is on a reread of Ballet Shoes at the moment. I did however find her a bundle of interesting titles at the library, including the sequel to the Lotteries, another Noel Streatfield, and the wrong Rick Riordan book. Will add all of them to the Amazon affiliate widget at the bottom of the post. She’s full of scientific type questions just now, and we’ve been working through some of the science kits they were given at Christmas, with admittedly variable results.

The solar puppy for example, not so good. (Have added it to the widget, but for information, not as a recommendation!) I could *not* figure out how to get the incredibly small wires through the very small gap to attach to the also small coil. Suggestions gratefully accepted in the comment box.

I had higher hopes for the food science kit, but while it has a great booklet with it with loads of suggestions, it doesn’t actually include the ingredients you need for some of the things. Like the fruit jellies for example, which was what Tigerboy desperately wanted to do. So that had to wait until I’d shopped for gelatin. (The ingredients actually called for isinglass, but I’ve no idea why they wanted that instead of gelatin. I went vege gel in the end.)

Other than that, we made it to a new group that started up relatively near us last week. It’s held in a soft play, so plenty of exercise opportunities and while we won’t make it every week, mainly because it requires me to be in two places at once, it is good to have it available. Tigerboy is still doing his home ed trampolining session too, and coming along nicely, although it appears the hypermobility that the older two both have has struck again. Unsurprising given the genetics aspect really. I’m told that trampolining will help him develop core strength so that’s good. Also, I read this really interesting article about suncream yesterday, and will be making even more of an effort to drag the kids outside very regularly so that they can build up a bit of a tan to protect them from sunburn. (I will probably stick to sunsuits for beach days though. The in and out of the water, along with the wind makes it too risky for very blond children, and sunburn *is* a cancer risk.)

As to home education intentions and or the resetting of them? Well, I’ve started myself a bujo, but a very pared down version, and when I get the hang of it, I want to get the kids into it too. I want them to form their own intentions and be aware of what they are and aren’t doing, although obviously I’ll still be guiding them. I’m more and more aware of how children can and do educate themselves if they’ve got the environment and assistance to do so, and that seems to me to be the ideal. I don’t know I’d go so far as to call us unschoolers, but it’s probably the nearest label there is. So that’s where I’m going – being more aware of our regular activities, making sure we’ve got group things to go to, they’ve got library, outdoors, science and so on on offer throughout the week.

Did you do anything to reset your home education at the start of the year?

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Tell it to the Moon – guest post on home schooling by author Siobhan Curham

1st August 2017 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

As regular readers will know, most of my children are home educated, and despite growing numbers of children educated outside school, it’s a topic rarely touched upon in fiction. So when I was offered Tell it to the Moon to read and review, and I realised it included a home schooled teenager, I jumped at the chance to read it, and also to host the author on a blog post on the topic.

Over to Siobhan.

Home-schooling is a subject very close to my heart and so I jumped at the chance to write about it in my novel The Moonlight Dreamers and its sequel, Tell it to the Moon.

The novels tell the story of four girls who form a secret society, inspired by Oscar Wilde, and one of them, Sky, is home-schooled by her father.

In Tell it to the Moon Sky has to start high school for the first time at the age of sixteen when her father can no longer afford to take so much time off work to educate her.

I was really interested in exploring the school system through the eyes of a teenager who has never been a part of it before. Although bright and eager to learn, Sky is shocked by the regimented nature of school and she really struggles to adjust. Through her character I was able to highlight some of the ways in which I think the education system is failing our young people. At this point I need to make it clear that I don’t believe that it’s teachers who are failing our students but the government. Every teacher I know is deeply disillusioned with the changes that have been made to the education system in recent years – with the obsessive emphasis on targets, administration and results having a detrimental effect on their ability to teach in an inspiring and creative way.

I think one of the main benefits of home-schooling is that it frees young people from the rigidity of the education system and peer pressure and bullying, allowing their true selves to flourish. Instead of being educated like battery hens, home-schooling provides young people with an education more tailored to their own specific needs, talents and goals. In my experience, when done well, home-schooling creates independent and free-thinking young people who are confident and at ease in their own skin.

It’s this confidence and free-spiritedness that Sky draws upon when she decides that she isn’t going to let the system break her. Instead, she decides to be the change she wants to see in the world, and starts campaigning for a more inspiring and less regimented education system – where young people are free to be their true selves. My hope is that her story inspires other young people to campaign for an education system that gives them the best possible start in life – with all the advantages of home-schooling.

***

It’s great to have a character in mainstream fiction who has experience of home schooling (or home education as I tend to call it), but is not exceptional for it. Sky isn’t home schooled because of illness or religion, it just appears to have been an educational choice for her family. (I confess at this point that I’ve yet to read Moonlight Dreamers – the fact that it included home schooling passed me by completely at publication!) She slots into school admirably well – I suppose if I were to quibble it would be around the lack of hassle that this last minute school arrival causes. From experience, schools are a little nervous to put people in to full GCSE courses without prior educational experience, so I’d have thought there would have been a little more red tape to cover on the integration.

Other than that, I like the way the other teens take it all in their stride, I think maybe sometimes it’s us, the parents, that make the bigger fuss. I was a little surprised there wasn’t any mention of the wider home education community – it’s thriving in London, and I’d have expected Liam and Sky to have a support network working towards exams with them. Plus, sitting GCSEs outside school is awkward to arrange, so I’d have also expected there to be some financial commitment to the arrangements already made, unless that’s part of what pushed Liam to get Sky into school. Those are the sorts of things that might be more interesting to parents than teens though, so maybe not the sort of thing Sky would be thinking about.

Teeny logistical quibbles aside, I really enjoyed the book, and am definitely here to cheerlead any positive portrayals of alternative education – Tell it to the Moon definitely falls into that category. There’s lots more to the story than Sky and her school experiences, and I’m going to seek out the first book and read it too.

Tell it to the Moon is published on Thursday 3rd August, and available at all good booksellers, including Amazon (affiliate link)

100 ways to home educate – guest post Tammie Griffiths from Aspire Chaos to Calm

16th February 2017 by Jax Blunt Leave a Comment

As yesterday’s blog on different ways to home educate was on fb, I’m reposting it here (with explicit permission!) so that it can be easily found as part of the blog hop 🙂 You can find Tammie on facebook or twitter

My article is in the comments 😉via Ripl.com

Posted by Aspire-Chaos to Calm-Connecting & Reconnecting Families on Tuesday, 14 February 2017

It was when i was carrying my eldest E almost 13 years ago that i started researching education options, i didn’t know about HE then but it didn’t take me long to stumble across it after looking at private schools, Waldorf/Steiner, Montessori, progressive schools and all the rest in between. I knew straight away that that would be the path for us.

What style/philosophy do we follow? Well it has been a bit of a mix, starting with Waldorf/Steiner with my eldest, she didn’t show any signs of wanting to do any formal learning, although well ahead in her speech and comprehension she just had no interest in the more formal stuff, preferring to play, do art, go to classes and socialise (insert a snigger here)

At 7 we introduce formal learning and even then I was up against her battle to not want to do it. It was tough for me to take a step back and trust that it would work out but it did. As she got older we started adding in maths and English as part of a structure (for me more than her) E went to Explore Learning (the tutor centre) for a time and she did well there.

When E was 6 i had K a whole different character, as she grew and developed her own way it became clear that she preferred to learn at a younger age and the Montessori method worked well for her and still does, in some way she has been easy, or is that i have just become more experienced? Probably that.

As time has gone we have got far more structured in our approach, most likely due to me becoming self employed, i feel i need to establish some kind of routine but also K has always needed much more of a routine than E ever did. And that is what i love about HE, that fact that i can tailor the educational style to the child is great! It makes it far more enjoyable for everyone. We still stick with structure in English and maths and the rest of the time being child led, i remember one time E focussing on a Tudor project for 2 YEARS!!!!! Yes 2 years……..what we don’t know about Henry the viii…hahaha.

It is great for them to follow their passion something they would not necessarily have the opportunity to do in school, they are heavily focussed on their swimming and drama and i love them having the opportunity to do these things alongside voluntary work and HE meets.

E now attends Inter High, an online high school which she enrolled in back in September, it seems to be going well, we hope that this will benefit her in working towards some kind of iGCSE or equivalent, She is off to do PGL with them this year too. This gives me more time to focus on K now she turns 7 this year, i can see where her strengths/weaknesses lay.

I also host Aspire an HE meet for families in our borough, that has brought about some great connections with families and some firm friendships made….for more info on any of the things we do please do get in touch, however you choose to HE, no one can tell you it’s your journey.

Today’s post is with Nevine and her purple sheep and tomorrow we’ll be visiting Lydia at a new adventure

Find the rest of the posts here. And if you’d like to join in, drop me an email

Playing home education bingo.

18th May 2016 by Jax Blunt 6 Comments

Most of the time I’m happy to talk about home education. I love to chat about the different ways children learn to read. (Phonics. Picture books. Reading eggs. Montessori materials. Osmosis.) I can enthuse for hours about following interests, the value of playing online games, how great the world of nature is and so on.

And other times, it feels like I’ve said it all before, and that I’m banging my head against a very big, very solid brick wall.

When I go on facebook and the home education groups are full of people pulling their year 6 children out of school because they’re fed up of stressed children who aren’t being children, and yet some Baroness feels she can blog about parents feeling entitled, and failing their children by taking action to protect them from that stress.

But the principle that parents should co-operate with teachers and the school in the orderly testing of their children must be beyond argument. It was a terrible example to set to their children – that is, if you don’t like what today holds, or you find it stressful, just skip it.

(You’ll want to sit down before you read the rest of that article. Or even better, protect your blood pressure, and don’t go there)

Yes, that definitely feels like a very solid brick.

No, Baroness Deech, it is NOT a principle carved in stone that parents should cooperate with teachers and schools in the testing of their children. Perhaps you could explain to me how testing enhances the educational process? Because I don’t remember that research. Or perhaps you could point me to the national agreement that shows precisely *how* learning archaic language terms will help our children reach their full potential, because I must have missed that one too.

Another set of things I seem to have missed are the law changes that require home educators to register with their local authorities. They much have happened, surely, given that Sir Michael Wilshaw, head of Ofsted, pontificated about the process on Radio 4 the other day. (You can read another home educator’s take on that here .)

No, they haven’t happened. Sir Michael is either badly informed, guilty of wishful thinking, or just completely misspoke.

Hard to tell which.

As a home educator, if your children have never been registered with any school, you don’t have to tell anyone that you are home educating. You just carry on with the education that you’re offering.

If, and only if, your children are in school, then you need to inform people. The process differs in the different parts of the UK, but in England, in a mainstream school what you do is deregister by informing the headteacher. It is then UP TO THE HEADTEACHER to inform the local authority.

Not the parent. And the local authority do not have to follow up on it – they have powers to make informal enquiries IF it appears that no (suitable) education is being provided. Many local authorities overstep this line, and many home educators spend a lot of time supporting newcomers through this minefield. I do a fair bit of it myself, in the online world.

It’s another tick for home education bingo.

Along the path to home education, it’s almost impossible to escape conversations about socialisation. It’s difficult to know what this refers to – for some people they are talking about friendships, for others they are talking about children acquiring the unwritten rules of society. Here to tell you that both of those things can and do happen out of school, so it’s kind of a red herring either way.

Another topic that will probably come up is neglect – you can reply that home educated children are subject to exactly the same oversight as every other child, with local authorities social services departments having perfectly adequate powers to investigate. In fact, many home educated children are referred to social services just because of people’s ignorance around home education. Education is not a welfare issue, no matter how many times people talk as if it is.

Tomorrow I will probably bounce back and be my usual cheerful and patient self regarding all of this nonsense. I’ll paint, sew, cook, explore nature, read books, troubleshoot computer programs and assist my children with all their home education activities, just like I am doing today in and around this rant. I’ll do it with a smile, probably.

It would really, really help if people like Baroness Deech and Sir Michael could get their facts straight and stop spreading misinformation in the meantime.

The death of Dylan Seabridge – home education in the news.

23rd January 2016 by Jax Blunt 11 Comments

The last couple of days home education has featured on several radio shows and BBC news because of a leaked report into the death of a child in Wales in 2011.

The case is tragic. Dylan Seabridge died of scurvy (although apparently his parents dispute that) without contact with medical services. There *was* a family referral to the local authority a year before his death, but it’s unclear what form that took. That’s pretty much all we know, because nearly 5 years on, the SCR (serious case review) hasn’t been released. We have politicians saying lessons must be learnt, but without the review no one can really be learning anything.

And with nothing else to blame, it’s home education in the firing line. As Dylan was home educated, that obviously means he was invisible. (Remember that local authority referral? Not invisible.) From Neil Carmichael (chair of the education select committee and MP for Stroud) proposing a register on Radio 4, to the BBC Any Questions show today asking ‘do we even need homeschooling?’ everyone is up in arms.

We should be registered. We should be monitored. Our children should be tested regularly, seen monthly, and get at least 4 good GCSEs. (Yes, I’ve seen someone saying exactly that.)

But, as one home educator asked Neil Carmichael – how will putting my child’s name on a list make them safer?

It won’t. It can’t. So either this registration proposal is just a waste of time, or it’s the thin end of a wedge we’ve seen before. Get ready for schemes of work, annual inspections for all home educators and school at home for one and all.

Where’s the harm in that, people ask, surely if you’ve nothing to hide you’ve nothing to fear?

Well, for one thing, the act of inspection could be harmful in itself. Parents know that children in schools are tested regularly. Does this raise the standard of education? Politicians would say it does. Either way there’s plenty of evidence it raises the stress level of school children. Why would I want to bring that into my home?

I don’t follow the National Curriculum (I’m not legally required to, any more than free schools, academies or independent schools are). We don’t have set lesson times or subjects. We are rarely to be found sitting round the kitchen table except for at family mealtimes. Despite this, I’m confident that I’m following the law as specified in section 7 of the education act 1996

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.

This house is bursting at the seams with educational stuff. We count birds, spot house numbers on nature walks, do montessori activities and paint. Oh, and we read, watch TV, play games, build duplo, draw, go skating, visit the zoo etc etc, so on and so forth.

The children also have a lot of time to follow their own special interests, which vary from child to child and time to time. This is how it should be.

How would I fit their learning into someone else’s boxes? I’m sure I could, but the time I would take doing that would be taken away from their days. The effort I would have to put in would be effort I couldn’t spend on them, and I might start worrying, and interfering, and trying to teach them, and the whole balance of their learning experiences would be disrupted. (Great post from Gill here that goes into this in more detail.)

Monitoring my children wouldn’t keep them safe, and it wouldn’t enhance their education. There’s nothing wrong with the safeguarding laws in this country as they stand – except that there are times when they aren’t applied.

Instead of spending money on consultations about pupil regulations and so on, how about spending money on that?

homeschooling

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