Today I want to share with you our personal experience of home education. I can hardly believe that we’re now in to our 6th year of this lifestyle. Although this was never a path we had originally planned to take, we found ourselves stumbling in to the Home Ed world after our eldest son got off to a rocky start at primary school. The intention had been to simply keep him at home for a few more months until he turned compulsory school age, as he was still a few months away from his 5th birthday – but during that time we found a large and thriving home ed community locally, and as both he and I had made friends and settled in to the home education lifestyle – we decided to stick with it.
My two younger children have never been to school, and now that we’re coming to the end of what would have been their primary school years – I’m not sure they ever will. We’ve always agreed that – should any of them want to try school out, we will absolutely allow them to – but all three of them seem pretty adamant that it’s not on the cards. So it could well be that they go their whole lives without having experienced a traditional school – something most of us probably find difficult to imagine!
So what does life without school look like for an average family? What are the perks and pitfalls of this lifestyle? And – with 6 years of lived experience under our belts – would we recommend it? Read on to hear all about our personal experience of home education, and let’s get into it…
What Has Surprised Us Most
I think the biggest surprise for me personally has been the way that my approach to and philosophy around our home education has changed over the years. When we first started, I met and mingled with many seasoned home educators and I found that the majority of them did not do any “formal” schooling at home – by that I mean that they chose not to recreate a school-like environment at home and most did not do any traditional, written work with their primary aged children at all. These home educators are known as “Unschoolers“.
As someone who had been through the school system and only ever known peers who had, I found this to be a bit of a culture shock. I couldn’t wrap my head around how children would ever be able to “keep up” with their peers and succeed in the world without the kind of education that involved phonics, and handwriting practice, and spelling tests. Even as I tried to relax in to the home ed lifestyle more, I still spent years panicking about whether my kids were “Behind” school children academically and if this was going to damage them later on in their lives.
But now – I have to say, we have very much adopted an unschooling approach to education. After years of battling with my children, trying to force them against their will to complete work that didn’t inspire them or bring them any joy purely for the purpose of having evidence prove their learning in an arbitrary way – I realised that I was wasting the opportunity to break free from the usual restraints of a “One size fits all” education.
Instead of forcing them to complete written work to prove their knowledge – we started to simply have in depth discussions instead. Their knowledge and learning were demonstrated far more passionately through these conversations than they could ever be in a “Explain in 12 sentences why…” report. Instead of sitting down with a page of sums to work through, we started applying maths skills to every day life situations instead – learning about addition and subtraction by playing shops with pretend money, learning about fractions using pizza, using fun board games and video games to teach us instead of stale and monotonous work books.
We studied history by getting out and about to museums and workshops, watching movies and documentaries, taking part in hands-on science classes, and learning about nature and the world around us by actually being in it.
I don’t think I would ever have believed how much and how well a child can learn without the presence of a teacher, a classroom or workbooks – but my children and their home-educated peers have proven me wrong.
One of the biggest hurdles – and biggest surprises of all – for me, was learning to read. It was the one thing I was REALLY stuck in a school mindset about. I was terrified of my children not being able to read.
Unfortunately, reading was one of the things my son had hated most about his short time at school. He was told – at 4 years old – that he was “Behind” on his reading, and he got so frustrated with it that he told me again and again how much he hated to read. So I decided to back off for a while, and just let him be.
Every now and then, I would try again – I’d pick up some reading books and try to encourage him to learn to read in the traditional way, and every time he would end up in tears. I can’t tell you how many years I spent worried sick that we’d made a terrible mistake and left it too late, that he was never going to pick this skill up….
But all of a sudden, almost overnight, at 8 years old. He started to read. Without any more traditional reading practice, with no phonics lessons, with years gone-by since he’d picked up a Biff, Chip & Kipper book – he started to read of his own accord. It started off with reading signs on the street, and then before long he was asking for books to read for fun.
Now at 10 years old, he reads endlessly and at a level I think is far beyond his years. But more importantly than that – he LOVES to read.
Having seen this happen with my son, I decided to take a totally hands-off approach with my daughter. I never once tried to teach her phonics or practice reading with her. She never showed an interest in reading, and I was determined not to force it on her. Again…at 8, she started to pick it up all on her own. Reading street signs, and text in video games – and now, 3 months away from her 9th birthday, she is reading fluently. With no formal teaching at all.
These experiences have really taught me how very possible it is for children to pick up skills of their own accord, and how powerful self-motivated learning is.
My youngest is 7 – and he doesn’t read yet. But I’m not worried. There’s no hurry, and I firmly believe he will get there in time.
What We’ve Enjoyed
The best parts of home education for me are without doubt the opportunities to spend more time together as a family, taking trips that are both educational and lots of fun. The beauty of this lifestyle is the freedom that it brings – because we can travel whenever we want to without needing permission from a school, we can take advantage of off peak prices for holidays and days out which means that we’ve had lots of chances to enjoy some wonderful experiences together.
Our visits to Puy Du Fou historical theme park in France, hands on experiences with sea life in Orlando and many trips to the museums and historical sights of London have absolutely been my favourite although we manage to visit museums, aquariums and zoos at home most weeks too. My favourite part of home education is that we get to enjoy the best of the kids childhood alongside them, watching them have these hands on experiences and bonding with them over it – rather than just hearing about it second hand.
What We’ve Struggled With
I would be an outright liar if I said that I have loved our personal experience of home education every day. There are lots of perks and things I enjoy about it, but it is without a doubt NOT the easy option. You are not only solely responsible for your childs education, but you are also giving up the opportunity to have some of that pre-parenthood freedom back. Home educating your children means you limit your availability to work, it can impact you financially, and it also means that you pretty much never get a break or any time to yourself. Unless you have a strong support system around you who are able to help with regular childcare, you will be with your children a lot more than most people are. Which can be a blessing and a curse….because as much as we all love our children, it’s very difficult to be with them 24/7 with no respite in sight.
Our circumstances can be tricky, as my own disabilities limit my freedom and impact on my own mental health so I can often feel the weight of that lack of a break quite heavily. I’m not able to take myself off for some me time very often and at times the stress of that can be a lot.
Would We Recommend It?
This is a question I always struggle to answer. For us, the answer is yes – home education isn’t always easy but it suits our family needs and our lifestyle. I think we would have a more difficult time trying to “fit” our children within the school system than we do home educating them, and so it works for us. But every family is different and there is so much to weigh up before making the choice to home educate…do you have the flexibility with your work or the financial freedom to be able to make the commitment? Do you have a support system able to help with childcare or the ability to find other ways to give yourself some occasional respite? Is there a community of home educators around you that you can mix with? All of these things and many more need to be given some serious thought before you make your choice.
But would I change our decision to home educate? No. It isn’t always easy, but it works for OUR family.
Commonly Asked Questions…
What is the legal stand point on Home Education in the UK and do you need to teach a certain curriculum?
In England and Wales, education is compulsory for children but attending school is not. The law states that any child who is not subject to a school attendance order can be home educated (However I believe that there can be some specific stipulations around children who attend SEN schools which would need to be investigated on a case-by-case basis).
You don’t have to follow the National Curriculum, but the Education Act says that children have the right to an ‘efficient’ and ‘suitable’ full-time education, defined as, ‘an education that equips a child for life within the community of which he is a member.’ It is entirely up to you to decide how to provide that education: it could be through following the National Curriculum closely, using it as a guide, or not following it at all and letting your child’s interests dictate their learning. The choice is yours, as is the interpretation of “an efficient, full-time education” – there is no set amount of hours that you need to stick to or times of the day to dedicate as “school times”, as home education does not need to be delivered in a school-like fashion with workbooks and lessons.
Do you purely follow the children’s interests?
Whether to follow a child’s interests or use a curriculum – either the National Curriculum or one of your own choosing – is a personal choice that each family needs to make for themselves. We started out using the National Curriculum but I soon realised that I found it lacking in many areas, and so we started to use it as a guideline for certain subjects before eventually disregarding it altogether.
We now follow the children’s interests around 90% of the time, with some subjects and topics added in of my own choosing to ensure a balanced and varied education. covering subjects that I believe to be important.
What does your daily or weekly rhythm look like?
This is something that, again, will vary greatly from family to family as everyone has their own work life and personal needs to juggle around home education. For us personally, we have a very loose timetable that we follow on a week-by-week basis but it’s adaptable and often needs to be changed at short notice if a work opportunity pops up last minute for example. We base the structure of our week around the regular groups and clubs that the children attend, and plan out the rest of the days based on the work commitments we have and the learning we’d like to cover that week. This is a very flexible approach that works for us, but some families choose a much more strict timetable – the beauty of home education is that you have total freedom to decide what works best for you.
How do you balance work with home education?
I’m fortunate in that I already worked from home when we decided to home educate, so our lifestyle was flexible enough already to allow this choice to be feasible for us. If you work a job outside of the home with strict required hours, it will be a struggle and you will need to weigh up the pros and cons carefully.
Of course, even a work-from-home job can be a juggle when you have children at home all day long and an education to provide them with. We tend to make use of online classes and YouTube lessons from providers such as Theatre Of Science who do a great job of providing entertaining lessons which keep the kids busy whilst I get some work done!
Some people I know tend to work in the mornings and focus on home education more in the afternoons, but I prefer to have days where I focus more on work and days where I focus more on home ed. This just seems to work better for me, personally.
Is it difficult to balance different ages and stages of education with siblings?
This hasn’t been too much of an issue for us, but that may well be because my children were all born within 3 years of each other and so their skills and stages aren’t that far apart. I find that my younger two children work to a higher level than I’d usually expect which I think is thanks to the influence of my eldest son, so for us it’s been a positive thing. I do plan in some one on one time too. For families with bigger age gaps, it would probably be wiser to split the time you have between the children to ensure everyone is getting what they need – although in my experience home educated kids do often tend to be good with self-directed learning, which helps.
Will I be able to give my child enough for them to “succeed”?
I think the answer to this is going to depend very much on how you measure “success”. If you’re somebody who is very focused on your children attending the best universities at the earliest possible opportunity for example then you will probably need to invest in tutoring and you will certainly need to pay for them to sit GCSE exams (these must be paid for privately for home educated children.)
In our case, my partner and I don’t have specific aspirations for our children other than their happiness and autonomy. If they decide to attend university, we will of course help them to access that but we’re also just as happy for them to choose vocational courses or to choose a creative path without formal qualifications if that’s what they wish. As our measure of success is based more around personal happiness than academic achievement, this isn’t something we worry about. We believe that there are many routes to success and many ways to be successful in life.
Bear in mind too that you can also make use of some resources like free maths worksheets to ensure that your child is going to have a much better education – and also to help you personally to be able to teach them more effectively. So all in all, this is absolutely the kind of thing you can do to help them succeed.
We focus our attention on discussing with the children what their hopes and goals are for their lives, and then looking at ways for them to work towards those – knowing that there is never just one route to be taken.
How do you ensure that the children get adequate social interaction with their peers?
We encourage the children to attend social groups and mix with other children – both home educated and school-attending children. We have been surprised by how good the kids actually are at making friends considering they haven’t attended school – they never go to a park without making friends there, and they are incredibly confident at initiating conversation with their peers and forming friendships without our help. Simply by taking them to places where their peers are, they get lots of opportunities for social interaction and – unlike at school – they’re not limited to socialising within their own age group, instead they mix with all different age groups which I think is valuable.
How easy is it to find home education groups and social opportunities?
There are usually Facebook groups for home educators in different towns and cities, in my experience this is the best way to find groups and clubs to attend. You will want to research how active your local home ed community is before making the decision to home educate, fortunately where we live there is a sizeable and thriving active community of home educators.
How expensive is it to home educate? How do you afford it?
Home education can be as expensive or inexpensive as you choose. You can keep costs down by setting a budget for any educational outings, buying resources second hand, etc. We find that the cost of home educating can creep up easily when you start signing up to all of the many groups, classes and workshops on offer so we started to set a monthly home ed budget – this needs to cover the groups that the kids attend, as well as any one-off workshops and resources for the month.
Things you may need to buy include paper, pens, art and craft supplies, reading materials and text books, online subscriptions for educational resources, subscriptions for streaming services for educational materials, internet access, some technology for accessing online resources, transport to and from various groups, memberships to clubs as well as places like National Trust or local Zoos etc. You will likely also find that your children go through clothes faster as they’re not wearing uniforms every day, and you will certainly find that your food shopping costs go up as having hungry children at home all day is not cheap! But when compared to school uniforms, school trips and regular charity days, it probably evens out.
How do you get any time for yourself and look after your own mental health?
This is, without doubt, one of the most difficult aspects of the home education lifestyle. Of course different people will have different experiences, and if you have support from family, friends or a partner then it makes things much easier. My partner and I both work from home, so we try to ensure that we each take some time to ourselves every day while the other holds down the fort with the kids – it doesn’t always work out as parents of high needs children will know, and sometimes it may just be 20 minutes to sit alone and have a hot drink, but it does make a difference.
My partner is able to drive and so he goes out in the car on his own for some headspace, whereas I don’t so instead I choose to invest in therapy sessions and regular nail appointments which gives me an hours peace and quiet once every 3-4 weeks – it may not sound like much but it helps a lot and that hour of relaxation is almost like pressing a reset button on my mental health!
It’s important to get creative and think of ways that work for your own situation which will enable you to get a bit of headspace every now and then – whether that means budgeting for an occasional babysitter, calling on family or establishing a babysitting exchange arrangement with a fellow home educator whereby you take it in turns to give each other an hours break while you watch each others children – it’s important to find a way to get that headspace for yourself.
What support do you get from the government when home educating?
Unfortunately, none. There is no funding available for home educators and home educating your children is not seen as a reason not to work, so you won’t be entitled to any financial support in order to home educate. You do have the option of seeking support from the local authority education officers but this is really just signposting and practical advice. If you choose to home educate, you are pretty much on your own.
Where is the best place to find home education resources?
We regularly use Twinkl and Chatty Zebra Curriculum, as well as using tutors who provide very affordable group tuition online for home educators such as the £2 Tuition Hub, Learn Online With Zoe, Theatre Of Science and Music With Will all of whom can be found via Facebook. It’s always worth asking for advice on resources in Home Education groups online.
What do you do when your kids are not interested in the work even when you’ve tried to make it fun?
This happens fairly often, and my own personal response is not to force it as – in my experience – this rarely has a positive effect. Children who are forced to do something against their will are not usually receptive, so it’s a waste of everyone’s time. Instead I would wait and perhaps try again another day, have a discussion about what aspects they’re not enjoying and think about whether we can find a different approach. I have yet to come across anything that can’t be tackled in a variety of ways, and usually one of them will work.
How do you encourage independence and resilience in home educated children?
I suppose the answer to this is the same as it would be for any other children – by encouraging them to have a go at things themselves, and talking through failure as part of the learning experience. If anything, home educated children are probably more likely to develop independence as their learning is usually more self-directed than it would be in a traditional school. As for resilience, I personally don’t believe that the sort of resilience people speak about in relation to school attendance is something that should be applauded as it’s usually spoken about in reference to children learning how to “deal with bullies” and “stand up for themselves” – as someone who experienced years of bullying at school, I can confirm that having no other option but to “deal with bullies” did not encourage any resilience in me – instead it shattered my self confidence and led to PTSD. This isn’t something I want for my own children, and I don’t believe that school is necessary in order to build any resilience. All human beings will naturally build resilience skills throughout their life, and there are some aspects of school life that we’re taught we need to be “resilient” to which – in actual fact – are simply not things we need to accept in life.
Do the kids ever feel like they’re missing out on school?
My kids know that if they chose to attend school, we would allow it. But they have never expressed any sense of missing out – in fact they are usually quite horrified by the lack of autonomy their school friends have, it shocks them to hear of needing to ask permission to go to the bathroom and so they are always very clear in their desire to never attend!
One thing I have battled with though is my own fear of them missing out – although my own school experiences were largely very negative, I did enjoy a handful of aspects of school life such as the memory of singing hymns in assembly and the cakes we had at lunch times. I worry that my kids are missing out by not having these experiences, or the shared memories to reminisce on with their peers when they’re older – but on the whole, I think they are getting far more out of their home education lifestyle than they’re missing out on.
I hope that reading through our personal experience of home education has been helpful in reaching a decision about your own child’s education. I firmly believe that there is no One Size Fits All approach to education, and I am sure that you will make the right choice for your own family…Good luck!