Home Education

“An understanding heart is everything in a teacher, and cannot be esteemed highly enough. One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feeling. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.” Carl Jung

A recent newspaper article listed some statsitics on home education in Scotland. The surprising element for us was not that home ed is on the growth in Scotland, but that there are still so relatively few folks doing it. I guess that explains the reactions we get when we mention it. Those vary from enormous interest and relentless questioning, to downright hostility. So it’s not common and that’s why I’ve put together this page on this, our grand adventure blog – it is probably our single biggest adventure, and we’re just at the beginning…

First, here’s some things to help position our decision and answer some basic questions. I’m not a home education expert so please let me stress these points are to help you understand us more, not to provide any legal or statutory advice to any potential home ed families – there are plenty of support organisations to help you find out where you stand in your particular geographic location;

• Home education is not legal in every country.
• Home ed is legal in Scotland and there is no legal requirement to follow the school curriculum or take exams.
• Education does not = school.
• You do not need a teaching qualification to home educate.
• There are as many different reasons for home educating as there are children.
• WeeR wasn’t experiencing any difficulty at school, in fact he is a popular child with good grades.
• WeeR had completed 5 years at his local primary school.
• We withdrew him from school with the blessing of his teacher and no objection from the local Education Authority.
• We followed the withdrawal procedure outlined by Schoolhouse – the Scottish home ed support organisation.
• Unlike a lot of home ed kids WeeR didn’t ask to leave school, but he had no objections when we suggested it.
• WeeR’s primary school had received an “adequate” report form the Education Inspectorate.
• WeeR’s primary school head teacher by her own admission “doesn’t do computers”.
• WeeR’s primary school class ranged from 28 – 33 pupils at any time in a school of 400 kids.
• We live in a small village where WeeR regularly plays with 5+ boys he shared school with.

So, we’re only a few months in and we’re still very new and adjusting to life as a home ed family also running a business form home. There’s a great deal to learn and improve on and the further we go, the more interested and excited we are.

As mentioned above, there were no dramatic reasons for removing WeeR from school. It was a decision formed over a number of years through an amalgamation of many different factors. We accept it’s a radical decision: we might never have been brave enough to make it without a catalyst. The catalyst for us was the Grand Adventure itself – our 12 week long summer trip, with plans to repeat it throughout the year. On a practical level that would be tricky to organise around WeeR’s school year. But that’s not the only factor.

We made the decision after some basic research, lots of heart-wrenching and much frustration with his current school, accelerated by the school’s underwhelming HMI report which described the teaching as ‘adequate’. We decided WeeR was worth more than ‘adequate’ – we believe every child is. His teacher agreed he was difficult for her to teach. With such a large class of mixed abilities she was finding it difficult to keep his attention and teach him things he didn’t already know. She enjoyed him as a pupil (“his cheeky smile”) but recognised she couldn’t give him the attention and time he needed to thrive. She was the best teacher WeeR had experienced, along with his primary 3 teacher. His other teachers were underwhelming. His previous year’s teacher was somewhere far below adequate.

The school doesn’t have a reputation for bullying and its grades are probably average or above. It’s catchment area is quite wide, but mainly comprises kids from working class/ lower middle class families. Our purpose here is not to undermine the school completely. Just to comment on its complete lack of ambition in helping each child reach their potential. A combination of the school system, the head teacher, the staff and the culture of ‘if it isn’t bad, then it must be all right’.

WeeR had achieved reasonably high grades throughout his schooling – performing well in various ‘tests’ and in advance of the majority. Of course, the aim of every school in Scotland is to achieve a foundation level across the board. In effect this means that quick, bright pupils receive less attention and rewards than slower or disruptive pupils. We weren’t happy with this approach at all, and when at parent/teacher meetings the most the teachers can comment on is that his presentation and handwriting aren’t as neat as they would like, he was very ‘chatty’ and seemingly lacked motivation we had to question what he was doing there.

What do we want for our child? That he becomes an open minded, capable individual. That he is able to respond appropriately to local and global events. That he enjoys learning and equates it to something more than something he did at school. That he is able to experience the world from more than one location and experience. That he cares enough to contribute. That he experiences joy and play more than he experiences pain and suffering.

So now, we’re in the process of de-schooling. You see, after spending so long in the traditional education system ourselves, and after 2 years of nursery and 5 years of primary education with WeeR, it does take some time getting used to home ed. We’ve decide to follow an informal, autonomous child-led style of home ed. This means that rather than replicating school at home, WeeR can decide what he wants to ‘learn’ and how he wants to do it and for how long – with support from us, of course.

But it’s difficult to get out of the habit of feeling that if you’re not studying, then you can’t be learning. Of worrying that if you’re not following the curriculum then he might be missing out, and ‘fall behind’ his contemporaries. Logically, we know this isn’t the case, and it has been reassuring to learn from other home edders that this style of learning can achieve ‘results’. We’re finding our way and seeing some results and some natural preferences begin to stand out. We have many wonderful moments and some despairing.

Science Home Ed Style

It is sometimes difficult to be in a minority group. And for a 10 year old that brings its own challenges. So we’ve started to reach out for connections that not only boost our confidence as parents and provide us with tips and advice – and provoke questions – but that also provide WeeR with kids experiencing a similar situation. Hopefully this will add a missing dimension to what is essentially the biggest adventure we’ve ever undertaken.

So far the things that delight include;

• The freedom! No homework. No enforced timetable. No morning chaos. Lack of blame.
• The moments of hilarity and huge amounts of knowledge acquired and shared.
• The inherent desire to learn that wins through and the freedom and time to relax.

Home Ed Resources:

We have found Schoolhouse to be a godsend. Scottish law is different from the rest of the UK, so it’s useful to know the facts. It took us a while to get engaged, for a number of reasons. My advice is to be patient.

This page answers general questions about home ed quite nicely.

Schoolhouse also runs a Yahoo Group which serves the Scottish home ed group reasonably effectively, although we wish they’d introduce a Ning-like social network approach.

Books. There are loads of them. The ones we’ve read and recommend to date are:

• Free Range Education
• How Children Learn
• Dumbing us Down
• The Unschooling Handbook

Gibbons Family Education Tools:

I’m going to ask WeeR if he can put something together on this. More soon )