Is home education the way forward?

March 20, 2014
More and more parents than ever are turning to home education and is it any surprise with some of the most recent news reports I’ve heard on TV and in newspapers. Stories of poor state educations and bad Ofsted reports are seeing parents taking their children’s education into their own hands.
Our twins are only two years old, but I am already thinking about their future and what sort of education I want them to have.

I firmly believe that children should be children. Nowadays far too many children are forced to grow up too quickly.
Having done some research and talked to a number of home educating parents and local home education groups, I can see a number of benefits to home education, but I also have a number of concerns too.
Future Prospects
My main concern is that if our children never experience a school environment, how will that affect them when it comes to gaining employment and how will they find the world of work. I wonder if being home educated would affect them in terms of social interaction and discipline/taking instruction from someone in authority.
I have no doubts in my mind that I am quite capable of educating our children at home, but I realise that there are a lot of things I need to find out before making a final decision.
I need to research all aspects and most importantly I need to find out what sort of impact it can have on their future.
The first place I turned to for more information about home education was my local council website. To say I was hugely disappointed is an understatement.
There was no information at all about home education. I thought there would have at least been some basic information, but there was nothing. The next step I took was contacting my local councillor. I thought they may be able to point me in the right direction and because I have had regular contact with them in the past via Twitter I sought this option to contact them.
I hit another dead end and didn’t even receive a response.
I then emailed the council directly. A few days later I had a reply to say I would need contact a specific person and their email address was included for me to contact them.
That was on Tuesday, 25th February.
I’m still waiting for a response.
Why is there such a lack of information about home education?
One of the benefits of being a blogger is that I get to discover lots of new blogs.
Two of the most recent blogs I have come across are Happiness in Learning, which is written by Katie who is mum to 3 year Jasper. Katie is a home educator.
The other blog is Adventures in Home Schooling, which is written by Prudence.
After reading both these blogs, I decided to contact Katie and Prudence to see if they could help me in my quest for more information.
In two upcoming posts, I’ll share with you what I found out and where we will go from there in terms of our decision to home educate.
Would you ever consider home education for your child?

Emily

I started Twin Mummy and Daddy in 2012.  

Over time Twin Mummy and Daddy has gone from strength to strength. I write about our family life, my love for running and our passion for adventure and travel.  

We’ve also started living a more eco-friendly life. As such I also write about our zero waste journey in a bid to encourage others to think about the impact they have on the environment.

I’m a keen runner and in April 2019 I ran the London Marathon for an amazing charity called WellChild. It’s one of my biggest achievements to date. I raised over £2,000 for the charity and learnt so much along the way.

This year we’re passionate about spending time outdoors. We’ll be sharing our travel, days out and camping adventures right here on Twin Mummy and Daddy.

3 Comments

  • Katie Clark

    March 20, 2014 at 9:44 am

    Thanks so much for mentioning me in your post. I'm looking forward to reading the posts about what you think. How terrible (although unsurprising) that you haven't heard anything from the council.

    Reply

  • Prudence Clarke

    March 20, 2014 at 2:01 pm

    I am looking forward to the next posts as this was a. Great read. It can be difficult to find the correct person to speak to at the council. In most cases you are best contacting the school attendance team ( WAG team) as they generally are the first point of contact for people removing children from school in order to home ed. If you are not registering your children at all then they probably won't be of any help. I would head to Education Otherwise for more info.
    I hope that you manage to reach a decision that you are all happy with – you have plenty of time yet:)

    Reply

  • Lea Woodward

    April 30, 2014 at 4:02 am

    I agree – there's very little information about HS, especially in the UK and especially for people still thinking about it/just getting started. We have a 4yo girl and 1yo son and will be home educating them both because I just don't believe the current system is set up to prepare kids to thrive, be happy etc in the world as it now is (which is pretty different from how it was when the systems were set up).

    I found your post in a great Home Ed group on FB (Home Education UK) – are you a member?

    Also, as I found so little (and being a blogger too), I'm in the process of setting up a new site (www.TrivasFoundation.com) on which I hope to interview and feature as many case studies and stories of happily home-ed'ing families as I can find, as well as pull together and point to the best resources we come across. Good luck with your decision – great to see you thinking about it at such an early stage 🙂

    Reply

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