Home Education South West Newsletter                        April 2010

as talking and not paying attention, with some 83% of staff reporting physical aggression such as pushing and shoving.  This is just Primary schools.  The quote from Socrates; “Education is not a matter of filling buckets, but lighting fires” springs to mind.  Perhaps the children’s behaviour in school is not the real issue here, but rather it is time we looked at the way education is presented to our children.  Schools cannot keep spoon feeding children a set curriculum and expect them to be enthusiastic and attentive.  With statistics like these it seems pretty conclusive that the current system is not successfully engaging with the children.

Children are born curious, questioning sponges keen to learn and discover all that comes across their path.  If that questioning and personal journey of discovery is squashed day in day out to make way for conformity in the classroom, children are understandably going to get bored and frustrated.

Empowering children to have a say in their learning and follow interests and subjects that they feel are important to their personal development would surely encourage positive behaviour.

Home education is a long-standing, tried and tested alternative to mainstream education.  In fact home education was the mainstream provision for a much longer period in our history than that which we recognise as mainstream today.  The education system that we have today was born out of a need to change, to meet the needs of the industrial revolution and developing world workforce.  In many ways it served its purpose very well.  However, the country and indeed the world is going through another massive technological and environmental change.  Education is going to need to be more diverse, personalised and innovative to keep up with that pace of change.

Home education is the ultimate personalised education for a child and there has and continues to be a significant rise in numbers of families choosing this option in recent years.  The flexibility and diversity that home education allows, means that individuals are able to keep up and adapt to our fast changing, social, learning and work environments.  Home Ed families benefit from strong parental input and care as well as socialising free from fear and prejudice such as exists in the playground.   Home educated children are happy and self-motivated learners; true free-thinkers.

Schools Minister Vernon Coaker said: “Good behaviour and an atmosphere of respect should be the norm in all schools.”  Agreed, but with ‘home-school contracts’ and proposed compulsory parenting classes and with-holding of child benefit given as solutions, this all seems very one sided.  This is not about mutual respect, this is about making families bend to the will of the school and the government’s idea of what we should be learning and how we should behave.  As the world and society changes with schools failing to keep up, so the government and schools turn to more and more aggressive laws to keep us in line with their narrow thinking.

We need to stop punishing parents for failures in our state system – this will not make children behave better.  Instead we need to let teachers, parents and children be free to learn together in a creative, self-motivated way that allows us to change and adapt to the challenges we face.                     

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Children, Schools and Families Bill R.I.P.?

“No committee days have been scheduled for the bill this month (March), which now lies helpless in its cradle waiting for its inevitable dismemberment in the "wash-up". So is this the end of the story?
Not if the election is postponed until June - a faint possibility still.
And not if the issue of home education regulation rumbles on - as I judge it will do - into the next parliament.”  Lord Lucas

Both Lib Dem and Conservative front benches have made it quite clear that they will not be supporting the HE parts of the CSF Bill.  So the good news is that it is unlikely to survive the wash-up.  However we should not get complacent.  Now that this topic has been well and truly brought out into the open, the next parliament are likely to want to re-visit this anomaly.  Although both opposition parties voice their support of EHE and neither advocate the kind of legislation proposed by Labour, there has been talk, notably by Lib Dem’s of the possible need for ‘light touch notification’,  whatever that would entail.  Let us keep reminding our MPs what a fantastic thing home education is and that there is no need for a change to legislation, just better understanding and genuine support.

HEC takes to the stage.

For the first time in its 21 year history the South Somerset Music Spectacular saw a group of talented home educators take to the stage. For their debut appearance, 17 children from the Home Education Centre in Chard performed their version of ‘Lean on me’. It was a fantastic opportunity for the children to get up on stage in front of a packed auditorium and they all thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It was also good for the wider community to see home education in action. Despite a lot of hanging around time during the day the children were happy, polite, well-behaved and amused themselves superbly.  They were true ambassadors of a positive choice in education.

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