how come you're doing that, then?

This is the question I have been asked most in the past few weeks: by the butcher; by the checkout lady at the supermarket; by mums I used to see at school; by friends; by friend's mums; by family. As I am usually at home/out and about on my own with the sprogits, it falls to me alone to explain. However, I presume that Daddy Bells has also been asked this question by his colleagues. I'm fairly sure Grandma Bells has too. Anyway, here is my answer:

It is the right thing to do for us as a family, at this moment in time.

Simple as that. I know, I know, you were probably looking for me to say something a bit more detailed. And I will. But that really does cover everything!

There are a multitude of factors which contributed to our decision to Home Ed. Some are related specifically to the schools the children have attended; some are related to our (Daddy Bells and mine) experiences with school as youngsters; some are related to our sprogits' needs.

I must emphasise that our personal reasons are not necessarily the same as others' personal reasons. As in all matters there are no hard and fast rules. You will find home edders from all walks of life, as different as chalk and cheese, travelling different home ed paths for their own reasons. One man's heaven is another man's hell. And let's face it, life would be pretty dull if we were all the same!

So, to the nitty gritty.

1. School is restricting and I hated it.
Don't get me wrong, there were parts of school that I enjoyed. I loved music, I loved some of the teachers I had, I made some fabulous friends (a couple of whom are still on my "best friends" list today). However, I was bullied for not being pretty enough/having parents who had the wrong jobs/liking the wrong kinds of things/fancying the wrong boys/insert stupid reason here. I felt school was largely a frustrating and pointless exercise for me. It held me back, directing me to complete essays dissecting the nuances of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy instead of enjoying books for the sake of enjoying them; to critically examine and replicate the work of aclaimed artists rather than being free to create my own works of art; to learn to use less advanced pieces of IT software because that was what the course dictated and the teacher "didn't want to have to teach everything twice".

When I left school at 16 and attended the local FE college, under my own motivation, and completing the A level subjects I was truly interested in, I enjoyed myself. I felt like I belonged. I felt like I was developing as a person. Currently I am in the final stages of a degree with the Open University. I have, in the past 6 years, completed 9 courses, and have 3 weeks left of my 10th. Learning a single subject under my own volition has been much more satisfying and enjoyable than being force fed the "balanced" education that the national curriculum deemed I needed.

I realise my experiences have biased me. But I think there is some truth to be taken from it. I cannot speak for Daddy Bells - I'll let him share his own experiences if he wants to.

2. Nobody has my sprogits' best interests in mind like I do.
This stems from a few seperate experiences with the schools our sprogits have attended. For my first example: School #1 evicted the older children from the lunch hall into the playground after 20 minutes, regardless of whether they had finished eating or not. At several separate meetings, various members of staff (class teachers, the supervisor of the lunch staff, the deputy headteacher) informed me categorically that this did not happen. Yet, Little Clanger would consistently come home ravenous with the majority of her lunch uneaten, and when the reason for this was explored would reveal that she had been told to leave it and go outside to "make room for the little ones". Little Clanger is a slow eater. 20 minutes is not enough time for her to eat her lunch. Despite assuring me that they would make special allowances for her to have time to eat, the behaviour of the lunch staff did not change.

My second example: at School #2, there was an incident with another child. Little Clanger was bitten. Now, let's face it... kids do dumb stuff sometimes. The biter apologised, and made restitution. That part of it is laid to rest. However, the teaching assistant who was in charge of the class at the time and dealt with the incident did not inform the class teacher, and neither myself nor the mother of the biter were made aware of what had happened. So when I asked the teacher if she knew Little Clanger had been bitten she had no idea. When everything was sorted out I asked the teaching assistant why she had not told anyone. She said of the teacher: "Mrs ***** and I trust each other to sort out incidents like this satisfactorily without having to tell each other what has happened"; and of myself: "I didn't think it was serious enough for you to know about it". Erm... no. Just no. I don't think so.

Now you might think that we have simply experienced less good schools. Our problems will resolve with a new school. That brings me to my next reason.

3. Schools are all much of a muchness.
This piece of wisdom was imparted to me a couple of years ago by my late grandfather. He was involved in education for many years, first as a teacher, then as a department head, and after his retirement as a governor in his local primary school. He believed strongly that all children deserved equal opportunities in education, and that once given those opportunities children had equal potential to acheive greatness.

When we were considering moving to the area where he lived I asked him what the schools were like, and he replied that "as you progress you will discover that really, when you get down to it, all schools are much of a muchness". At the time, I thought he was suggesting that there isn't actually a difference between "good" schools and "poor" schools. However, I have reflected deeply upon it for a long time now, and I actually think he was making a more fundamental statement. Regardless of the specific school in question, the institution of "school" remains the same.

I must confess that realising this was a bit of a light bulb moment for me. As with the maternity system, schools are a conveyer belt, a machine. The education system is designed to take a large number of children, stuff them full of a wide variety of information, drill in them in how to behave and think, and then release them into the world with the hope that they are now ready for "life". If the problems we have, or indeed, anyone has, are due to the system rather than the individual school then moving schools will not solve the problem.

4. Emotional development is as important as, if not more important than educational acheivements.
In my opinion, knowing and loving oneself, having confidence to make the choices you feel are the right ones, believing in your abilities to do things, having both the insight to recognise your faults and the tools to improve them. These are far more valuable lessons to learn than those that teach you in which order the royal families of England succeeded each other, or a rhyme that reminds you which function out of sin, cos and tan you should use on your scientific calculator to calculate the length of a given triangle side.

And schools, due to the conveyer-belt system, are not equiped to look after the emotional needs of their students. Unfortunately, for us, that means that sensitive children such as Little Clanger are prone to feeling unloved, worthless, unable to do things, lacking trust in the adults around them, losing their self-confidence, self-efficiacy, self-worth.


For us, this is too high a price to pay. So, we have taken the tiller. We drive this ship now. It is the right thing to do for us as a family, at this moment in time. It may not be in the future. We will reassess continually as we go, and if it stops being the right thing then we will stop doing it.