home education

The subject of home education or home schooling can sometimes be seen as an excuse for children to stop learning.  Home education is a controversial subject, it has been considered by some people as illegal.  The option to keep children out of the formal education system, or to take them out after they have started is perfectly legal and is becoming more and more common.  This is the case for mainstream schools and schools for students with learning difficulties and/or disabilities.

The idea of school being legal and home school as illegal relates more to the idea of “schooling” and “school” being mixed up.  Education or “schooling” is required by law for all children of compulsory school age.  However, school is not the only way for them to receive this education.  Homeschool is a long established and valid way to educate children – dating back many decades. 

There are many advantages to homeschooling.  The main one being the amount of flexibility that is available once you are not tied into school timetables.  Children can concentrate on topics that they are really interested in and can carry on working on them for longer if they get into subject.  It can make it harder to get a child to do a topic that they are not interested in, however, there are lots of ways available to make every subject more interesting.  A natural interest in many things will develop if a good lead into a topic can be found.

There are no problems with bullying – which is good if this is why you removed the child from the education system in the first place.  It is also good if you have a quieter child who might not stand up well to criticism in schools.  It will also be helpful in preventing a child from becoming a bully as there is no reason to lash out at anyone and more time can be taken to correct any bad behaviour without outside influences.

Children can have breaks from learning whenever they want to and not when they are told, which means that they can carry on when they are into something or break if they are stuck and want to refresh their minds. 

There are of course still disadvantages to home schooling.  There is the lack of social interaction, although there are lots of “after school” activity clubs which are perfectly accessible to the home educated child.  They are more likely to pick an activity that they are interested in if they haven’t been influenced by peer pressure or simply attending a group because their friends are.  It is difficult to provide all the aspects that school can offer, these are mostly the things that require a large number of people though, like team work activities and games.

Parents also have to pay for nearly all of the educational equipment and books required.  There may be some funding available from certain Councils, although this has not become very widespread as yet.

The whole experience of home schooling can be very rewarding for both child and parent, providing there is the proper commitment from both parties to getting the most out of the endeavour and it is possible to gain a much deeper relationship than might otherwise be achieved.