What exactly is home education? You could say that the name itself indicates the definition – it is education that takes place at home, outside of school. A situation in which parents decide to educate their children without sending them to school. And in England it is very simple.
Legalities
Education Act of 1996, Section 7
Duty of parents to secure education of children of compulsory school age.
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 [F1(in the case of a child who is in the area of a local authority in England) or additional learning needs (in the case of a child who is in the area of a local authority in Wales)] he may have,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.
The “Otherwise” bit is the one that gives us the right to home educate.
Education is compulsory, school is not!
But what…? I don’t have to be a teacher, I don’t have to have qualifications and the child doesn’t have to take exams or study in accordance with the national curriculum???
The answer is NO. Not in England. (In other countries – that’s another matter.)
Does this mean you have no responsibilities? Of course not. You must make sure your child receives a full-time education from the age of 5. However how you approach this is entirely up to you! Thanks to the absence of rigid adherence to a national curriculum you will have flexibility to focus on your child’s pace and preferences. For instance, you will be able to incorporate hands-on activities, interactive projects, and personalized learning plans. Moreover, you can extend learning beyond traditional academic subjects to include life skills, critical thinking, and social development.
The law does not currently require you to notify your local authority of your intentions to home educate. In practice tough this means that if you have made your decisions before sending your child to school, you may never see the local authorities and do not have to provide them with any information.
However, if you made the decision when your child was at school, you must notify the school, which will remove the child from the school register (the school will off-roll the child) and notify the local authority. Then you can expect that someone from local council will contact you soon. They can write or phone you and ask to visit in your own home to discuss your children education and whether you agree for a home visit or not it is entirely up to you. You can send statements and reports to the LA offices instead or even meet them away from the home.
It is good to be aware that the LA has no right to insist on a visit or test your children. On the other hand do not ignore LA request – just think through how you going to demonstrate to them that the education you are providing is adequate.
It is a good idea to join your local Facebook group, where you will find lots of helpful advice how to deal with local authorities. My local council is relatively friendly and supportive towards home education, but I know that unfortunately this is not the standard everywhere. A fantastic source of information about your rights and responsibilities towards Local Authorities is: www.educationalfreedom.org.uk. Also it is good to check your LA website what information they provide about Home Elective Education.
Practicalities of home education
Now that we have established the legal basis for home education, we can move on to the practical side – how to go about it? There may be as many answers here as there are people who educate their children at home. This is the beauty of home education: you can adapt it to your lifestyle and views and, above all, to the individual needs of your child – this is tailor-made education.
Your child needs more time to understand the subject, or maybe he is exceptionally talented and was just bored at school? At home he can learn according to his own rhythm and pace. Have you dreamed of traveling around the world? Maybe road-schooling, i.e. teaching children through traveling, will inspire you. Do you love reading books but don’t find time for it? Let me tell you a little secret… reading interesting and inspiring books with children is also a form of education.
After several years, I met families where learning is tightly structured, with a weekly lesson plan just like at school, as well as families where there is a lot of freedom and laid back approach. I would place myself more on the structured side, i.e. we have a weekly plan and a curriculum that we stick to, but I still leave myself the possibility of changes or deviations from them. If there is an opportunity for an interesting field trip, I will not give it up just because we have English and Maths planned that day. Routine – this is probably the best way to describe my approach to homeschooling. In a routine, you know exactly what will happen next and at the same time there is room for flexibility and adaptation to your needs.
My boys like to see their schedule posted on the fridge in the kitchen. They come to check what else needs to be done to finally have free time. At the same time, if I see that one of the classes took us more time than planned, I can leave out another lesson in favour of the one that takes more time.
It’s not a race, it’s a journey where sometimes you have to stop in an unexpected place because you’re amazed by the views or you need some fresh air (i.e. a fresh look at the subject!)
We started this year with a new plan on the fridge. After the first week, we changed one of our live lessons to pre-recorded because live-streaming lessons weren’t working that well. I’ve also planned to read and study Treasure Island, but seeing how slowly we’re going, I think I’ll focus only on reading. Instead of taking extra time for studying this good book in more details I’ll use the time for our native language lessons. Being flexible and observing what works and what doesn’t is the key to a good schedule. And most of all – relax, education doesn’t have to be stressful.
Here are some useful tips to get you started:
- Spend some time researching home education, what are the styles, methods, what other people do.
- Get in contact with other home educators – start by looking at your local Facebook group.
- Think about why homeschooling is important, what are your immediate goals and priorities? Writing them down will help you later to keep reminding yourself why you are doing this!
- Talk with your child about what you think is the most important and what you should do, listen to what he thinks.
- Explore textbooks, workbooks and online resources.
- List all the subjects and activities that you want to cover and prepare a simple schedule.
- Follow the schedule and be flexible. If something is not working, change it. This is the process and there is no rush or deadlines.
- If your child used to be at school it may take some time to adjust – let it be, use it to explore what she’s good at, what interests her, what she enjoys. You may notice that some tasks take less time than you would expect. For example maths at school class might take entire period while at home your child will do it in 20 mins. That’s normal – you don’t have 30 children and all the disruption. At home children will have more free time which usually is spend on all sort of creative and educational activities – trust me on this one!
- And remember – you are building here their curiosity, a lifelong love of learning as well as positively wonderful relationship with your children.
