Home Education - a real alternative

Did you enjoy school? If your answer is yes, chances are that you were intelligent, academic, from a wealthy family, well dressed, well-liked, didn't have red hair and consequently got on well academically and socially and were never bullied.

Bullying isn't the only reason that children - and particularly teenagers - hate school - there are many other reasons, but I know of two families who had teenagers who committed suicide because of bullying at school and, despite endeavours to discover and stop it, it still goes on.

The saddest thing is that children who are bullied often believe it's their fault - they are not good enough and that's why they are not liked and picked on. This is simply not true - everyone is different, each child is good at something and all children like different things.

What is really important is that children and young people feel they can talk to their parents about it - that they are believed - and that the situation is dealt with sensitively. If your child is reluctant to go to school there's often a very good reason. Imagine waking up every morning and absolutely dreading the day ahead and feeling powerless to do anything to change it. When this feeling of dread becomes worse than the horror of suicide, it is easy to see why someone can make the ultimate choice with tragic consequences.

Home education is a real alternative and, with internet access to learning anything online, it is relatively easy to do. Electing for home education means no threat of prosecution and, if nothing else, you can find out the real reasons why your child hates school and so something about it. They can always go back to school – it can easily be a temporary solution. You just write a letter to your local education authority stating that you are electing for home education - and do it.

It is difficult doing GCSE’s at home – and we found it impossible because Kirt couldn’t go to school to do exams or practical tests – but you can do IGCSE’s online http://www.cie.org.uk and there’s always the Open University. In practice you are likely to find that your child soon gets really involved in learning about what really interests them, they will research it online, find out the forums and other sources of information – and really enjoy learning.

When Kirt, our middle son, had difficulty going to school we felt we didn’t have a choice – it was the law – children had to go to school – and this view was reinforced by grandparents and friends. Eventually, after struggling for over a year of persuading, cajoling, pleading, often driving to school and coming home again, we were sitting in the rest room at school when the Education Welfare Officer came over to me and said: “Are you sure it's Kirt that doesn’t want to leave you – or you that doesn’t want to leave Kirt?” If I had realised exactly what she had said at the time, I would have hit her. As it happened, it didn’t hit me until on the way home – it was one of those ‘light bulb moments’ when it feels like someone has just switched a light on and, all of a sudden, you can see things clearly. I said to Kirt: “If this is the level of understanding you are experiencing at school, you’re not going back!” and he never did.

Our journey into home education began with a fatal car accident on 22nd December, 2003. We were travelling back from a visit to see Father Christmas at the Candle Workshops down the A41 when a car came out of a side road, stopped, but then carried on across our path and we had no way to avoid it. The car hit us and burst into flames. Kirt was in a position in our car to see clearly everything that happened and the fact that the other driver involved never got out of her burning car. All the family suffered afterwards but it had a profound effect on Kirt – not immediately - but if wasn’t long before he couldn’t bear me being out of hearing distance – he was terrified something would happen to me. Children grow up believing they are safe, nothing can happen to them - and they don’t see the consequences – we have to teach them to cross the road carefully, not to throw stones – we protect them. Because we couldn’t protect Kirt, he felt vulnerable and lost his trust in being safe. We didn’t of course understand why he was like this at the time, post traumatic stress disorder was just something we’d heard of – and it was quite a long while before this was diagnosed and even longer before we were offered treatment.

Once we had taken the decision, it was such a relief not to have to go through the same process every morning. Kirt really enjoyed being at home and learning. To begin with, we started doing ‘lessons’ at home, but then we met up with other home-educating families and learned that this was not necessary, We were told that it takes six months to ‘deschool’ which meant really finding out what your child is interested in and using that subject to learn everything else. Kirt found he liked programming and he’s now working freelance for web development companies learning new programs as they come out. His mind is tuned to learning programming languages and to him it is not work, he enjoys it. Since he was thirteen and home educated full-time, he has mixed with all ages, he could hold his own with adult conversations, he’s very capable of looking after himself and very independent. At 19, he now travels all over the country and has not suffered from not having GCSE’s or going to university.

Happy to answer any questions about Home Education or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder