Why I chose to home educate

I sent my son to school at age 3. I’m shocked by that now. He’d been to a crèche 2 days a week up to age 2 and loved it. He’d been to a nursery 3 days a week up to age 3 and enjoyed much of it. At age three all the children disappeared into schools- free full time childcare.

At first he was only there in the afternoons- only one and three-quarter hours a day. The place was swarming- over 50 three to four year olds and four staff. The noise, the “crammed-in” feeling was overwhelming for an adult. One boy wailed constantly, was inconsolable and usually occupied one member of staff full time. My son’s nursery nurse was of the old school, long since tiring of children and their ways. No-one seemed to smile. Violent episodes and most tears went unnoticed and weren’t responded to.

My son, a very verbal and bright lad, complained that it was too noisy, he was bored and he didn’t want to go. He began wetting and soiling himself- though he never told me until we were well away from school. I had seen his nursery nurse humiliate a girl who had wet herself, holding up her knickers and growling harshly at her, so I fully understood why he didn’t want them to know.

He hated assembly- the three and four year olds were forced once a week to go into a hall full of older children. He couldn’t cope and tried to hide. This became an issue. He learned to swear. This became an issue. He escaped and got out onto the road. This became a big issue. I was summoned to see the head. In the meeting I was patronised, lied to and my baby daughter was spoken to harshly by the nursery nurse, who growled that she was a “dirty girl” for reaching out to a bowl of pot pouri. In this meeting they claimed that my son’s successful escape attempt was a behavioural problem, (like Drapetomania, a psychiatric disorder only suffered by Black slaves, characterised by an “irrational” desire to run away). When I pointed out that I had thwarted another child’s escape attempt when no member of staff was in sight of the door, it was dismissed. They said that I would have to stay with him in the nursery. I didn’t go back. I wrote about my concerns that a three year old could escape, to the school and to the educational authority. Neither replied.

So we had a term at home. But he was a bit bored, I had a demanding baby and yearned for paid work. So we tried another school nursery. Aged nearly 4, he started in a bigger space, a warmer nursery, more smiles and greetings- surely everything would be OK now? Well, just to be on the safe side I spent the first few days with him. On his first day 3 boys surrounded him and threatened to beat him up, out of sight of the staff. The same thing happened two days later. I told my son to make sure he brought any incidents to the attention of the teachers. But they ignored it. He had a tendency to hide when overwhelmed. This was considered “not safe.” He was not cooperative. One example: He was sitting sideways on the carpet: Teacher: “can you please sit facing forward like all the other children?” My son replied, “I’m quite comfortable thankyou.” This became an issue and he was evicted from the room. They had a “punishment regime” (though they called it assertive discipline) and when children in the nursery “misbehaved” they were sent to the “big school” to sit in on year 6 class with the meanest teacher in the school. My son was deeply distressed by this but made a number of friends in that class who felt sorry for him and gave him sweets and comics, when the teacher wasn’t looking, to stop him crying.

He was labelled “highly intelligent and poorly behaved” on his Stage One special needs papers. He was integrated early into reception class to meet his intellectual needs. This was a disaster, as the teacher from hell was in charge. She had trained as a secondary school maths teacher, couldn’t cope, moved to primary, couldn’t cope with year 6 so she was moved to reception (possibly in the hope that she would leave) where she had spent most of the previous year off sick. She didn’t make eye-contact with her 19 four to five year olds and I wrote down a few disturbing incidents from the first few days. One day my son had diarrhoea in the morning at school and didn’t make it to the toilet on time. He said he’d told the teacher who said there was nothing she could do about it so he sat in pooh all day. When I went in to discuss it with her the next day she was off sick. The following week, a freezing January day, I picked him up soaked to the skin. Only his socks were dry. Again this had happened in the morning when another child had been throwing water at him and he had been left soaking wet all day. I challenged his teacher about this and she said, “Well, he was playing in water when he shouldn’t have been.” I pointed out that he saw it, as I also saw it, as a punishment and I didn’t think it was appropriate to leave a 4 year-old soaking wet all day.

Then there was the playground. By going into reception he now shared the playground with children up to age 11. Sometimes it was a ten year old in unstoppable motion who ploughed into him. At other times it was being thrown against a wall. Lunchtime staff failed to respond to most of these incidents. I mentioned my concerns. The staff were “vigilant” for a week, witnessing and responding to some incidents. Then it was business as usual.

Things deteriorated. Many meetings. Most afternoons my son was sent out to the head's office. One day, he refused to do some work because he had already done it the previous week while his teacher was off sick. He was sent to the head. His teacher remarked to him as we left, “If you misbehave again tomorrow, you’ll have to miss more of my lessons.” What an encouragement! The next day when I went to collect him, his teacher snarled that he was with the head. He wasn’t, he was dancing along the corridor singing, “I’ve escaped from Mrs R...” At this point I was told that someone from behaviour support would be visiting me at home that evening. In walked Mr Tough Guy whose opening remark to me was, “I mostly work with Afro-Caribbean kids, some of whom come from utter devastation, so when I saw this white boy misbehaving in school I thought he must have been seriously abused.” So that put me at my ease. I was further shocked when he called my son into the room, forced him to sit on his lap, restraining him from leaving and demanded of my son, “Tell your mum what you were doing when I saw you in school today.” My son was four years old. I talked to this man, who made all manner of allegations, and discovered that he didn’t know my son was on special needs, knew nothing about him and my son had not been referred to him. He’d been in school observing another child that day. I wrote to complain to this person's boss about his confrontational manner and spurious allegations. He denied it.

So I spent a day at school with my son to try to see what the problem was. I was horrified by what I saw. Large amounts of unengaged time being snarled at, lots of standing in line, forcible evictions for fidgeting, a sour faced teacher shouting at children for “mistakes,” shouting at a child she’d just said did not understand English, unclear instructions. I could understand entirely why my son hated it. At a meeting I said, “I think he’s bored”. His teacher said, “He’s going to spend the next 12 years in school, he’ll have to get used to being bored.” At this point I removed him.

We stayed in touch with the school, with a view to reintroducing him part-time to the other reception class with a marvellous, positive teacher who we know. The head was actually quite accommodating, listened to our concerns and moved his teacher to the nursery where she would not be alone with the children.

So after a short spell part-time in the other reception class where the teacher said, “I’m not going to make him do any work. I’m just going to let him play and re-establish friendships.” He turned 5.

We tried year 1 for one and a half terms. Initially things went well, though I was involved in a campaign to remove the mobile phone mast that had appeared on the school during the summer, which led to tensions with the head. His new teacher was the school's special needs coordinator and at a meeting she removed him from special needs saying that none of his behaviour was different from other children who weren’t on special needs. Two weeks later the head said she wanted a meeting to discuss exclusion. In discussions the head said she was unwilling to put him back onto special needs as he wasn’t high enough priority to get an assessment. At one point, when my son was alone with her in the office she said to him that he didn’t have to go to school and if he didn’t show up the next day no-one would be surprised. When he told his teacher she said it was the law that you had to go to school. He came home very confused.

At one meeting I said I wasn’t prepared to punish him at home for things that happened at school, but would discuss things with him. The response was “Well, if parental values are incompatible with school, there’s nothing that we can do about it.”

One Wednesday, an outing was planned to the local Mosque. That morning I handed over my contribution to the bus-fare. When I picked him up he hadn’t been allowed to go because they were worried he might misbehave (and cause a diplomatic incident?) The following week in “religious education” the children were asked to write about their trip to the Mosque. My son screamed in frustration and would not stop screaming. He was excluded for 2 days. He never went back.

That was three and a half years ago and the huge relief of not having to deal with school was overwhelming. I’d made the mistake of believing that I was dealing with reasonable people, that my son would find his own way of coping. They weren’t and he didn’t. Over time, he relaxed, I relaxed and it's only when I look back that I remember how frequently he was ill in school. I used to measure him every month to see how much he’d grown; he only grew when he was out of school. I have his last school photo: a pale sunken child with dead eyes. Just turned 5 and barely alive. A year later, out of school and alive again, the photo next to it looks like a different child, an amazing glowing alive being. If I ever question the decision I look at the two photos and I’m glad I have the boy in the second photo. Yes it's hard work. Yes there are days when I’m climbing up the wall. Money is at times a problem. Winters can seem very long. But I know being at home is the best thing for my child and that school was destroying him and me in many, many ways.