Another option to schools- Education at Home (Home Schooling versus Conventional Schools)

Name: January

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Product:	Home Schooling versus Conventional Schools
Date:	09/08/05 (262 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Lots more time and bonding with your child

Disadvantages: Some parents don't have the time as they work

In my opinion there is not contest when it comes to choosing home education or convential schooling. I would always choose home education, for the fun, bonding, enjoyment, freedom and love you get back from child.

It’s hard to hand your kids over to the education system when they are little, but imagine how you’d feel having to send them to school when they are older and are having a problem, either with keeping up with their work in class or by being bullied by other kids.

I have experienced both with my eldest son David and like most other parents used to go into the school to talk to the teachers, but when the teachers begin to believe your child is a problem and a disruption to the class, things begin to get very stressful.
They don’t see it that your child is just having a problem or that it’s a cry for help, they try to tell you that your child is bad and that the best thing to do is to punish them.
Here’s my true story of David and what I ended up doing.

After moving to Wales I enrolled David into junior school, he was only ten and was very small for his age. He is now twenty five and still only five foot four and size 26 waist, at ten years old he looked seven years old and because of his size the other boys used to pick on him to see if he was “hard” as they say.
David soon learned to fight and to look after himself, a natural south paw as they say in boxing, but this didn’t help his cause at school. He got a reputation for having a temper but being the only English child in the school apart from his sister, he used to get blamed for starting the fights.

To add to this he had an attention disorder but in 1989 it was called bad behaviour not A.D.D so David’s work suffered and his behaviour got worse, he was egged on by the older boys to play up for the teacher’s and his desperate need to fit in with the other boys seemed to send sense out of the window when it came to being naughty.
He soon learned that if he was naughty in class the bigger boys would laugh and like him, he wouldn’t have to fight at play time and he could also get out of doing his work because he couldn’t concentrate and also the teachers would send him out of the lesson.

At home he was totally different, an adventurous boy always making dens, climbing tree’s and finding branches to make into bows and arrows. He had a great imagination but school time was a disaster. He eventually started to play truant and one day the headmaster called me to say he had been found in town.
I made an appointment to go into the school and see the teachers.

It’s hard being told that your child is a monster, an unruly fighting disorderly child, but like other parents we have to take it on the chin and try to work with the teachers to see if we can wade through the problems.
I was told David had fights, was disruptive in the classroom and was cheeky to the teachers.
You can imagine the mood I was in when I got home and when David came home in the taxi, he was sat down and given a talking to I can tell you.

David has always been an open boy with me, he still is and when I confronted him about the fighting, he said he had to as the other boys would bully him if he didn’t fight who they told him to. They also egged him on to be naughty and the teachers hated him. I tried to explain that the teachers were only telling him off because he was naughty, but he was adamant that they really didn’t like him. We came to a compromise that he would try to be good and not to fight or to be naughty in class.
Two weeks went by without any incident, then David came home with a huge scratch down his neck. I thought he had been fighting again and asked him where he had got the scratch from. He told me a teacher had done it on the bus on the way home from swimming.

He had been sat on the back seat and was standing up with the other boys, when the teacher had gone to the back of the bus and told him to sit down, being cheeky he said that the other boys were standing up so why had he to sit down.
The teacher then grabbed him by the neck and pulled him into the seat, this had made the scratch, she then sat with her arm across his stomach and was elbowing him in the ribs every time he tried to move.
Now, I’m not a naïve parent as you learn in time that your child is capable of making up stories to get out of trouble, so flying off the handle isn’t the first thing to do in these situation.
My husband went up to the school and asked to see the teacher who David had accused, she said David was making it up and that she hadn’t even been sat on the back seat.
David was then told off for making stories up and for fighting.

My husband went out to his mates later that night and when he came back, he told me what he had been told.
He walked in his mates house and his mate's wife asked how David was, she said that her daughter had come home really upset as she was sitting on the back seat of the bus watching David get elbowed in the ribs by the teacher, he was crying and the teacher wouldn’t let him move.
She also saw the scratch the teacher had made grabbing him down into the seat. My husband then went round to other mates houses to ask if their children had seen anything and all the children on the back seats had said that David wasn’t lying.

I felt sick, I should have believed him and the next day I went up to the school and told the headmaster what had happened, he basically told me that that he though David was lying, when I said that other children had seen this happening, he said they were probably sticking up for David as they were scared of him.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing, so I said “right until you find out what really happened David is staying at home, you can send the education officer round and we can investigate the matter“.
After four weeks of David staying at home no-one had visited us, the teacher accused of the incident left the school to work somewhere else and even though we only lived about three minutes from the school gates, no-one came to see why David wasn’t in school.

Six months later we moved to another village and David was now eleven ready to start secondary school, I bought him a uniform and enrolled him in the nearest school which was eight miles away in the nearest town, he had to go by taxi to the bus root, then on to school.
All was well, until a few weeks later, he never got off the taxi. I rang the school and it was shut, only the caretaker was there. I was frantic.
It was bonfire night and dark there were no mobiles in them days and the caretaker at the school was ringing all the teachers to see if anyone had seen him.

At seven o’clock at night he arrived home with a teacher, who had taken him to her house.
Another teacher had made him stay behind in his last lesson to finish his writing as he was slow at writing being dyslexic as well as having A.D.D, so he had missed the bus which met the taxi.
The taxi came home without him and we were in a panic. David had gone to see if any teachers were in the school and one of them had offered to take him home. My faith in the school system had had it, why hadn’t the teacher brought him straight home?
We never found out as he never went back to school.

This is just a little part of the trouble we had with David, other things happened, lots of stress was dealt with and David’s learning ability was nearly zero.
He wasn’t a bad kid, just a boisterous lad, desperately trying to fit in. I blame myself sometimes sending a small English child into a welsh speaking school, but you think that they will have your child’s best interests at heart, not just write him off as a dunce and let him slip further and further behind, until he loses interest all together.

I know that other parents are going through similar things with their children at school and this is why I am writing this experience with my son for you.
I learned about a charity called education otherwise, they help you to teach your child at home.
You have to write a letter to the education office and deregister your child, so that the truant officer doesn’t call.
Not a lot of parents know this and some parents have been fined for keeping their children off school.

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Here’s the Education Act for your information:-

The responsibility of parents is clearly established in section 7 of the education act 1996 ( previously section 36 of the education act 1944)

The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient full time education suitable:-
(a) to his age, ability and aptitude and
(b) to any special educational needs he may have , either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.
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Suitable education is defined as preparing the children for life in modern civilised society and to ensure them to achieve their full potential.
Provided the child is NOT a registered pupil at a school, the parent is NOT required to provide any particular type of education, and is under NO obligation to :-

Have premises equipped to any particular standard.
Have any specific qualifications.
Cover the same syllabus as any school.
Adopt the National Curriculum.
Make detailed plans in advance .
Observe school hours, days or terms.
Have a fixed timetable, give formal lessons.
Reproduce school type peer group socialisation.
Match school, age-specific standards.
Seek permission to educate 'otherwise'
Take the initiative in informing the LEA.
Have regular contact with the LEA.

If a local LEA officer requests and informally asks for information that a child is receiving education, you can provide samples of work, projects or hold a meeting with yourself the child and the officer if wished to discuss the child’s progress.
The LEA officer has no right to force entry into your home.

To de-register your child you have to notify in writing the school where your child attends and the local education office asking them to take the child’s name off the register.
This is what I had to do with David.

Teaching David at home became a challenge, I was shocked at the fact that he couldn’t read or write well for his age. Getting David’s attention was hard as he hated pens and paper, so I had to come up with ways of tricking him into learning.
Buying the Beano comic every week got him interested in words, leaving notes on the fridge to say there’s a treat in here for you, also helped, playing hangman word games with him taught him to spell and lots of other games we made up.

Art he loved and we’d go to galleries and museums, providing he’d write just a little bit about it afterwards.
Swimming, football, skateboarding and walking was fun for P.E
Libraries provided all the books and different levels of educational books can be bought in most book shops.
I taught him English, Maths - which he developed an interest in, P.E which we loved, Science, Art, History, Music and made sure he had a good social life with his friends, as this is important for them to learn social skills too.

David is now a trained Chef and went on to college. I was so proud when he got his first job. I look back at all the stress there was when he was little and dread to think where he might have ended up had he carried on at school, probably got in with a bad crowd and ended up in prison or worse.

As a parent I think it’s a duty to take full responsibility of your child, educating David was hard work but it was my responsibility as a mother to see that it happened.
I wouldn’t hesitate to do it again and have been asked to teach some of my friends children who are having similar problems at school.

If you are having problems, then take the alternative approach, there’s plenty of help out there.
Libraries, swimming baths, museums, places of historical interest, adventure activities, science museums, internet.

Visit www.educationotherwise.org for more facts and help.

The learning facilities for a child at home are now so much better than when I taught David, as the internet is there to help too.
Education otherwise can help keep you in touch with other parents in your area and help with idea’s.
There is also a small fee to join their site if you want and they will send you a card which your child can carry to show the truant officer, if they are stopped in town by the police for not going to school.
Your not alone if your tearing your hair out with the school your child’s in.
There are plenty of parents now turning to home education, it's fun, a challenge, rewarding and helps put a stop to the stresses which may be occuring in your childs school.

Good luck and have fun.

You can if you try.

Summary: Definately the best