Home Education and social skills

Mindful of the commonly-held view that home-educated children do not have the opportunity to develop ‘social skills’, I thought readers might be interested to hear of my 16 year old daughter’s experience of her first job interview.

Two Saturday posts were advertised in our local branch of Boots. These jobs would involve handling the main till on the busiest day of the week, and later being trained to serve on the pharmacy counter. No special qualifications were needed, though clearly the ability to deal with other people was a major requirement.

My daughter, who has been home educated from the age of eight, applied along with eleven others, including one other home educated teenager.

Both posts were offered to the home educated applicants. The manager of Boots, who had conducted the interviews, gave us some interesting feedback. She said that the home educated candidates had stood out way above all the other applicants; in particular they had been far more outgoing and confident.

This has certainly reinforced our view that the practice of putting children in groups of 30 or more, of exactly the same age, is not the ideal way for them to develop socially.