Home education: different, equal & more effective for some

Has home learning for your children during lockdown prompted thoughts of continuing to teach your children at home on a more permanent level? Dr Ambroz Neil and Wendy Charles-Warner Co-Chairs of Education Otherwise, offer their insights into the world of home education.

At the end of the summer holidays, when many parents are sighing with relief as schools reopen and their children return to the care of others for most of the week, home educating families gather for their annual ‘not back to school’ picnic.

All over England and Wales, those families celebrate the pleasures and triumphs that result from their choice to home educate with spontaneous music, crafts, art and community spirit. It is that community spirit which most embodies home education in this country and many others, a community which embraces difference and enfolds it with support, care and enthusiasm.

To the outside eye looking in, home education can be an enigma, comprising as it often does, very little that is familiar to those who travel a more familiar path of using schools to educate their children;butitisthoseverydifferenceswhichhave the ability to make home education so effective.

Few of those looking from the outside in would even realise that every single parent in this country is a home educator, until they choose not to be, as they actively have to register a child in a school, from the default position of home education. However, every parent dipped their toes in the home education waters during the Covid 19 lockdown. Home education, as with every other choice, comes with challenges, but that toe wetting enabled families to weigh up their individual needs and to choose the right way forward for them.

What is it that makes home education different?

We start with the fact that a state school must provide the National Curriculum and an independent school, or academy, must provide the child with a broad and balanced curriculum, including English, mathematics, science and religious education. Home educating parents have much greater demands put upon them, as they are required to provide an education suitable to the child’s age, ability, aptitude and any special needs they may have.

In short, the parent must provide not only a tailored education but everything else as well. No school is required nor is able to provide a totally individualised education for a child. This requirement for home educating parents might seem like an enormous task and in many respects it can be, but what this actually does is to provide significant freedom for the child to learn and grow at a pace more akin to them as an individual, free from any constraints but those created by their family’s choices.

‘To be nobody-but-yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight…’

E.E. Cummings: ‘A Poet’s Advice to Students’

Simply put, home educating parents aim to increase the child’s degree of self-determination over their learning.

In practice, when a child has a greater degree of self-determination, not only can they have input into the choice of educational approach but he, or she, can study each subject at their own pace, spending as much time as they wish on each topic. This gives us a useful comparison with a school setting; in school each child typically follows a lesson for a certain amount of time, in a set term.

For a child whose interest is gripped by the subject at hand, that short moment in time is far too fleeting, just as it is for the child who struggles to understand and needs more time to allow concepts, information and ideas to be absorbed. For the home educated child there is greater flexibility to stay with the topic for as long as they need to absorb it, to understand it.

‘This year Cerys really got into the Egyptians, and we almost lived the times for several months until we moved on. She learnt to write in Hieroglyphs, we cooked Egyptian meals, played Egyptian games and created models of Egyptian homes. It was wonderfully enriching.’

Manon, mother of Cerys aged 11

An important point here is that there is greater flexibility for the child to learn in a manner that is more suitable and at a better pace for them. That is not the only advantage however; learning is also more likely to be in a more familiar environment, one-to-one or in a small group setting. This flexibility can enable children to embrace their individuality.

Are socialisation or examination achievements compromised?

Those who know little about home education usually ask similar questions, such as: ‘but what about socialisation?’ and ‘what about exams and getting a job?’ These are understandable concerns. In the case of the former, socialisation simply looks different to those who have not experienced home education. Home educated children can take examinations at any point, or not at all if their ambitions do not require it. It is not at all unusual for them to take examinations and even professional qualifications that are not available to school children, some even achieving degrees prior to the end of compulsory ‘school’ age at 16.

‘My son sat a maths GCSE at age 9, because he just loves maths, then decided to do a maths degree straight afterward. He did eventually do more GCSEs, but not until he was halfway through his degree and in fact, he sat his last two GCSEs at 16, after he graduated.’

Father of home educated young man.

‘Eleanora wanted to be an opera singer from a very young age, so we never focused too much on sciences, as they were not key. She achieved her ambitions and is so happy to have arrived where she wants to be.’

Gilly, mother of Eleanora, always home educated.

Flexibility to specialise

Home educated children have a wide variety of opportunities in addition to different examinations, which are not routinely available at school: They might learn to carve, fly a plane, take ballet lessons, learn geology standing inside a volcano, develop their own bakery, give a TED talk, create their own film, or develop their own publication. Some even get to enjoy ‘world schooling’; travelling the world to learn from different communities. For some children, home education is simply the best way to reach their potential: fostering their entrepreneurial spirit, creativity and boosting their self-esteem.

Home educated children will very often develop a deep love of learning. After all, when you enjoy what you do, you wake up each day looking forward to doing it! They can attend events and trips at any time throughout the year, free from crowds and often at lower prices too, as ‘out of season’ is irrelevant when they are not tied to term dates. They learn through life, are in the community and of that community. Every day is a new day, a new opportunity.

While not the panacea for all education woes, home education is different and equal…or perhaps for your child different and better suited?

Education Otherwise is a charitable organisation which has been supporting elective home education in the UK since 1977. The charity liaises with Government and Government bodies and provides advice to families, Local Authority officers, schools, and other agencies. Education Otherwise operates a national helpline and provides signposting to resources, together with links to over 330 local, regional and national community networks and family support groups for elective home educating families. Education Otherwise also publishes regular academic articles relating to home education and maintains a data base of relevant research. Through this work, Education Otherwise aims to promote, maintain and improve public awareness of the availability of choice for families, who may wish to make educational provision for their children otherwise than through state-maintained or private educational settings. https://www.educationotherwise.org/