Why I educate my children at home (From Bournemouth Echo)
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Why I educate my children at home
7:00am Tuesday 10th March 2009 in
A TYPICAL day for the Joyce children might include maths, English, art and maybe an outside activity.
It’s an average school day but in fact Eden, 11, Callum, eight and Clark, five, don’t go to school – the youngsters are among a growing number of children being educated at home.
Once seen as a bit of a hippy thing to do, home schooling is becoming increasingly popular, with 150,000 children – around one per cent of the population – now being educated at home.
Home schooling support group Education Otherwise reports that 20,000 parents have taken their children out of school in the last 12 months.
Bridget Joyce first became a home educator six years ago, when she felt Eden was bored at school. Eden returned to school 18 months later when her brother Callum started school, but after another year, Bridget decided to teach them at home and they haven’t looked back since.
Five-year-old Clark is also now home-schooled and Soloman, three, and Cody, two, also join in with a number of activities.
“We do a structured approach,” explained Bridget, from Peverell Road, Turlin Moor.
“But that’s mainly because, with five children, my life has to be structured.
“I believe they should do maths and English, but whatever else they do is up to them. We mainly cover the national curriculum, especially with maths and English, mainly so they can do exams later.
“We do maths and English most days and they’re very tailored to their abilities because they do different key stages.”
The children take part in various history and geography projects, as well as learning about events such as Mother’s Day and St George’s Day.
But they are also able to take part in activities organised by outside groups, such as local wildlife watches.
“We’re very aware of the need for exercise,” said Bridget.
“We take the dogs for a walk every day, we do our own vegetable patch and they know more about the natural world.
“The children are equipped to go out and live on their own, they’re more worldly. The children have home-educated friends and schooled friends, so they have a wide variety of friends.”
Eden has a heavier workload than her siblings, so dad Malcolm, who was made redundant in October, now helps her in the evenings with extra maths and computer tuition.
While Bridget would prefer to home educate all the children, she asks each of them when they reach school age what they would like to do. They have all chosen to stay at home and Eden even wants to continue secondary education with her family.
It’s also up to the children if they take GCSEs, but the family must buy their own syllabus, arrange for the children to sit the exams at a local school and pay to have the papers marked privately.
The family has to pay for all its own educational materials, but Malcolm admits it’s one of the only down sides to home schooling he can think of.
“You do have to be committed,” added Bridget.“You can’t play at it because it’s your children’s future. But if you’ve done a couple of hours and it’s a nice day you can say ‘let’s go out’.
“Or if you’re having a bad day, it doesn’t happen very often, you can say ‘just put your books away and we’ll carry on tomorrow’ because they’re not going to learn in that frame of mind.”
Bridget’s used to receiving mixed reactions when she tells people she home schools. But she’s convinced it’s the best thing for them.
“I’ve done this because I want to do better for my children,” she said.“People say to me ‘why do you home school?’ It’s just because we can and actually, it’s really good.”
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LEARNING CURVE: The Joyce children are all home schooled by their parents Bridget and Malcolm
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homeedecho says...
10:40pm Tue 10 Mar 09
This family may not home educate in the same way I do, they may not have the same priorities I do, but I respect that they clearly love their children and are doing what they know is best for them.
Home education (HE) is not an anti-school option - but schooling stakeholders usually raise their hackles at the mere mention of HE – sour grapes, job threat – or just misunderstanding?
All parents - yes ALL - should support the right to educate one's child at home, unhindered and un-interfered with by the local authority - because EVERY parent knows that schools and LAs aren’t perfect – they can’t cater for everyone.
For example, ask almost any parent of a child with SEN or G&T or medical needs such as type 1 diabetes – never mind all those children who simply hate school!
Luckily we are seeing a very strong movement toward support for free choice – parents are starting to recognise that they may one day need to make a different choice and they want that freedom still to be there and are championing home educator’s rights.
Some critics wave warning flags about “wayward” parents circumventing the oversight of schools, but the movement toward educating out of school shows that even struggling or low income or working class parents can make better teachers than the state - anyone knows that but research also bears it out (Rothermel).
The massive movement toward educating one’s own children really is testimony to the over-riding public belief that parents - not the state - know best. Most parents now feel that the state really has gone too far with the “5 fruits” and “5 outcomes” and no holidays in term time and “get to school 15mins early for exercise class” (that should be PE but is off curriculum because of funding).
That is not to say that the majority of parents think home education is best, but a greater number every day are realising that it should be the parent's and child's choice. Parents who use schools realise that when all is not well in school, or when a parent simply wishes not to use school, that it has to be right to look after a child's needs out of school without the very institution that fails so many children being put in position of judge of the alternative. If your plumber wrecked your boiler, would you accept that is him that has to monitor your own attempt to fix that boiler – would you ever!
Thank goodness for that and for Emma’s ability to resist manipulating the truth in favour of a “juicy” anti home education story!