Home Education

A Dad's View

When my wife and I were courting and the subject of children came up I was delighted to learn that she too did not want to send her kids to school.

When she became pregnant with our first child the issue came back to the fore and then the doubts. Can we do it? Is this the right thing to do? Will it count against them? What about friends, what about exams, what about etc etc? Is it just my experience of school causing unreasonable bias, after all, it can't be like that for every one. However, at the time, I worked in a secondary school (supposedly a good one for the area) and every day (at least it seemed like every day) I witnessed things that reinforced my views.

I came to think of sending children into this environment as brave! The problems were not all the same as they were when I was at school; although there was still the violence and bullying (both pupil and teacher), but the drugs culture was more pronounced and viewed as normal. Problems with kids that I saw as being partially the fault of the school were blamed on the parents. The attitude never allowed the school to see faults internally although with internal politics the teachers could often find things to carp on about each other; the contradiction not apparent to them.

How were we as parents to resolve our doubts about sending to school or education at home? We decided to find out more. We looked into whether problems with schools were common and we looked into HE. So when dd1 was born we joined EO with a view to research. We read 'School is Not Compulsory', we read the newsletters and we met with others. It was very liberating – our thoughts were not silly, abnormal nor likely to disadvantage our child but a sensible reaction to accurately perceived issues.

We enjoyed our year's membership of EO and learned a lot, we made our decision to HE, got on with it, and vowed to rejoin EO when she got to compulsory school age; which we did, and we have been members ever since. She is now 10 and has been joined by 2 sisters. They are all very happy.

Since then we have promoted HE together and have met a few of the 'unsure husbands'. Each time, I think, the bloke just needed reassurance that this was lawful and wasn't some 'loony-tune' idea of a group of hippies or 'hot-house-ers' or some such 'other' group of popular prejudice. Once past this the usual doubts of us all – socialisation, can I, what about – can be met with the usual answers, newsletters shown, research mentioned. A common complaint of the wife was that when she gave these same answers they made little impact. The men often needed to get past the pre-conceived ideas of HE, and perhaps see another bloke, before the reasonable doubts could be tackled.

If there are any blokes out there with doubts about what your partner is proposing; let me, an ordinary dad, reassure you. HE is not a quirky or foolhardy idea of a tiny few, dads without beards do it too and genuine academic research has shown it in a positive light.

You wife doesn't have the opportunity to get a decent job to bring any money in. Your kids end up staying up late and sleeping in late. They pretend to be getting on better than they used to when at school, but secretly they're all plotting to get at you.

House work never gets done because your family are too busy learning things and going on fantastic days out you would have killed for as a child and wish you could go on now if you didn't have to go to work.

Initially I just thought it was another hair brained scheme of my wife and she'll fall apart after a couple of months, but she seems to actually enjoy it and so do the kids. Another reason to think they're plotting against me.

You can't even use the trick of putting your kids down by telling them that other kids are doing better than them because you know that your kids are becoming much nicer people than their old friends. No petty jealousies, no trying to fit into the 21st century "have it all" mold.

Will that do as a start?

I'm going to lie down now as I've come over all shaky and emotional.

Yeah, but you don't teach, funding, socialising, etc.

As things have turned out its been the best experience I could have had and it has converted me totally.

About 2 years ago the boy was in hospital, he had ME. Of course at this time we had to say he was education otherwise. “Oh!” said the doctors, “School teacher in the hospital, ok?” I could read their
minds, "We'll see about that he must be thick ".

Two weeks later our son had taken all the maths, geography etc they could throw at him and he walked it. It was one of my proudest moments both for my boy who remembered all the teaching but also for the teachers, us!!

We have found ways to make life educational for him from planning which route we go on holiday, to getting him to clear his toys. He sticks old ones on eBay and he is making a profit. This brings in profit and loss. And good ICT skills as well.

My other child has autism and is due to start year 7 in September. We're trying the statement route and don't hold out much hope. The Senco in the high school, when asked how much training they had had in the subject, said some one had given the school a talk . So we will probably be educating her at home as well.

Personally hell would freeze over before I sent the kids back now.

According to my wife, she had decided her children were not going to attend school, before they had even arrived. I can vaguely remember her telling me of her views, and I can recall that I was not too keen! This was about nineteen years ago.

I was quite happy at school, so I assumed every one else would be. It was a very small village school, where I could go in in the morning, sit at my desk and write, as this was something I enjoyed. The little old lady who cleaned would go round and light the fires, which gives you some idea how things have changed!

The first load of bumph we received from the LEA included the statement, ‘do not consider HE because you did not like school’. How else do you expect a mother – who cares about her children – to react? Anyway, as I’ve said, I was not too keen, and probably forgot all about it, but my wife wrote to EO, and asked if it was possible to educate your own children at home. She received a helpful reply, including the advice: ‘The main problems will come from health visitors, the LEA and the SS’, all of which have proved true, unfortunately. However, nineteen years later, possibly longer, we have three healthy children, which is the main thing. They all seem happy, and my son has been reading this as I write, with no difficulty at all. This is in spite of a visit from the LEA who, from a cursory inspection of one piece of written material, diagnosed him with ‘learning difficulties’. Oh, what a way to destroy one’s confidence.

I would say, to any fathers who worry about their children learning at home, they won’t – they will learn wherever they are, but you try explaining that to an LEA bod on a visit. Go with your instincts, as my wife has done all the time she has been raising our brood.

The transfer to secondary school was due in 2001, and we both saw our son's attitude towards school start to change as the reality that he was going to meet up with the peer group from our village school, began to dawn. His first 12 months in secondary school were horrendous to say the least; we were meeting regularly with the year head and the head teacher and getting nowhere. During the second year in the school, things went from bad to worse. We as a family were being verbally abused in the street, the bullies congregated outside our house, we were threatened, our house was attacked and our overall safety was in jeopardy. The police were contacted but seemed fairly powerless, but thats another story. All this in a quintessential English village in North Lincolnshire.

Our saving grace came from an unusual quarter.......my Mother. An avid reader she had come across an article in a women's magazine about HE. She suggested we looked into it further, so through the power of the internet we did. You will probably have noticed that I am using the term we....this decision was very much a joint decision between my wife, my son and myself...I was certainly not dragged kicking and screaming into it, I could not bear to see my son go through any more torture at school and this seemed like a good avenue to pursue.

Through the EO website we found a lot of information. However, I have to say that we found one person in particular an excellent mentor, we spoke at length on the phone with a current HE'or, and we exchanged a lot of e-mails with her. I tended to pursue this line as I admit, I was the one that wanted to be completely certain that we could handle the move to HE, even though in my heart I knew it was the best decision.

In December 2003 we withdrew from state education, and from that day on we have not looked back. We have had to sell our house, because even though he was not at school, the bullies would not leave him alone, we have sinced settled close to the coast in another very small village. Our son has no contact with children in the village, because we have not managed to locate any of his age (!!), but we are talking about a village of less than 30 houses. However, this has not stopped him from making friends and getting on. He currently returns to the area where we used to live once a week, to carry on with his passion for fencing. He has worked part time at Oxfam, and is currently a volunteer at the local museum, where his fascination for history has taken over his life. On the education front a bright young lad who was frustrated in the state education system has found his feet again, his confidence has returned, and he is currently working on a number of correspondence courses with both NEC and Little Arthur, (the latter I would strongly recommend).

Most of all though our son is now happy....and that is the best reward any father can have in my eyes. I no longer arrive home to a sad faced young man, upset after a day at school, I arrive home to be greeted by a happy young man who has just completed another fantastic day as a home educated child. Finally, my wife, a great tutor and mentor to our son is also smiling when I get home and is not stressed and wanting me to drive her straight to the school so she can throttle the teachers (!!)

Yours a very happy father....