NotSheep

A few months ago, during a conversation with a friend, I realised I’d never written anything on this blog about why we started home-educating. I’ve been meaning to write a post on the topic ever since, and coming across this post on my rss feeds reminded me.

We never planned to home-educate, but when George was very small, I realised that he would have to start school when he was just two months past his fourth birthday - and I mean proper school, sit down at your desk and be quiet and have you done your homework school. His nursery year would start two months after his third birthday. And I knew in my heart that it was not right for him. I had no concerns about his academic ability, but he’d always been an intense child, a spirited child - and I was sure that if he was forced into a formal school environment at that age, one of two things would happen: either he would be squashed, lose his spirit, lose who he was - or he would fight it, not fit in, be labelled a troublemaker and who knows what else. I didn’t want either of those things to happen.

He can’t have been much more than a year old when I started to try to find a way to delay his school starting-date by one year - that’s all I wanted; I felt that year would make a big difference to him. I spoke to people in various government departments, some of them more helpful than others. I discovered that there was absolutely no flexibility in school starting dates here. And I realised that the only way to legally avoid sending him to school at four years and two months was to home-educate him.

Barney had been through two years of pre-school and while he was in his first year of school - two years before George would have been due to start - I spoke to the school’s head teacher. She felt strongly that children were starting school too young, particularly boys, and was all in favour of our plan to delay George’s entry into school. We realised that there was a possibility that George would not be able to go into the first year of school when he was five, that he might have to go directly into the second year; it was all going to depend on the wording of the admissions documents that year. The head teacher was willing to work with us and give him a place in first year if it was at all possible - but the school was heavily over-subscribed and we knew we were taking a chance. We also knew that even if he started in first year, he might have to skip a year at some point, in order to be moving to secondary school along with all the others born in the same academic year - something the Education Department would insist on. We didn’t like that idea, but decided that we couldn’t make decisions based on worry about it. We didn’t know how things would work out - but we knew that sending him to school soon after he turned four was a recipe for disaster. We decided we had to do what was right for him at that time, and worry about the future when the future arrived.

George would have been due to start school in September 2001. In the early part of 2001, Barney was in his second year of primary school. He was doing well and seemed to be happy - although looking back now, I can see the early signs of boredom and discontent. And we always seemed to struggle to get him ready and out the door in the mornings - most days I almost had to pry the books from his fingers to get him into his school uniform. One day, sometime around April, Barney said he wanted to be home-educated too. I was surprised; we’d never even mentioned the possibility of that. But we said we’d give it a try over the summer holidays and see how things went.

One Monday in early June, we were having the usual morning: “Barney, please go get dressed… Barney, we need to leave in ten minutes, get your school uniform on… Barney, put down the book and get ready!… Barney, we need to go in two minutes, go get dressed!” And Barney said, “I want to be home-educated!” I replied, “I know, and we said we’d try it out over the summer - now please get ready for school!” And he said, “I want to be home-educated now.”

I argued that it was silly to refuse to go to school right then - there were only three weeks left until the end of term. And then I realised: there were only three weeks left until the end of term. What was he going to miss? Even if home-education was awful and didn’t suit us, what would he have lost? What would they do in those three weeks that he couldn’t catch up on? Was it worth arguing with my child about this? Was it worth making him feel that his feelings weren’t important to us? Of course the answer was no.

And that was the day we started home-educating Barney. Because I didn’t know what he’d done in school since September, we went back to the start of the curriculum for school year. In the next eight weeks, we covered the entire year - and the next year. By mid-summer, it was clear that we were going to be home-educating for a while. George could hardly wait to get started too. Freddy was two years old; he would sit at the table with crayons and “work” too

At the time, I felt that it was terrible that the system was so inflexible that children had to start school even when their parents were firmly convinced they weren’t ready. I still think that - but I’m also glad of it, because otherwise we might never have moved in the direction of home-education. Six years on, I’m convinced we made the right decisions. I have absolutely no doubt that, had we sent George to school six years ago, it would have destroyed him. Perhaps that sounds melodramatic, but it’s not intended to be; it’s just the truth. I also believe that if Barney had stayed in school we would, within the next year or so, have witnessed him change too, would have seen more problems related to boredom.

I’m sometimes asked if we’ll always home-educate or if our children will go to school in the future. I say I don’t know, which is the truth. I never expected to be home-educating now. All I know is that we have all gained a huge amount from home-educating for the last six years, and that it continues to be best for us right now.