Finding Out About Home Education |
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Families on the Education Otherwise general email list posted about how they found out about home education. Their experiences are repeated below with any identifying, personal information removed to protect their privacy. For information, sometimes acronyms are used in these extracts. LOL = lots of laughs; DS = Dear Son; DD = Dear Daughter; DH = Dear Husband Permission was gained from the list members to use their posts. |
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| J | I was fortunate that a friend who was concerned about my daughter when she was at school,(she acted as a stand in dinner lady) told me about Education Otherwise which got the ball rolling. Had I not had that conversation M would probably still be in the system, and I cannot even contemplate how low her self-esteem would be by now; so I am forever grateful to that particular person. |
| AB | I found out about Education Otherwise from a social worker who has been assessing dd (14) for longer term psychotherapy, and simultaneously from a friend who has a deep interest in education and childrens' welfare. Then I looked at the EO and FREd websites, got a copy of Free Range Education from my local library, and the rest is history as they say lol. |
| JBW | We moved to a new area and found there weren't any school places for my eldest daughter. I was doing some research online to find out how to make them give her a place within the area, and was moaning about it all on a newsgroup. K happened to see my post and told me that I didn't have to send her to school at all. I had no idea this was legal before she told me. We decided to HE for 9 months until the new local school opened, which didn't actually happen for 21 months as they got behind schedule...but after a few months we were hooked anyhow, and didn't want a school place anymore. Middle daughter then came up to the age where she would have started school, but didn't either. Youngest daughter is 3 in May, and won't be going to school either. |
| N | I found out about HE from my mother's foster sister's daughter, (ok cousin). She lives in USA, and we e-mail each other, I was telling her about the problems I was having with DS and she told me about HE, and yahoo groups, and websites etc. |
| AG | I found out because a group of Plymouth Brethren send their children to the same primary school, but then HE them instead of secondary school. I also remember the local paper having a feature on HE some years ago, my reaction was they must be mad, I couldn't do that, little did I know! |
| EJ | For me it was friend who'd HE'd in Holland for a year when her husband was there. When we learnt that our little village school would be closing she said to me (in passing) 'if my younger 2 were the same ages as yours then I'd seriously consider educating them at home'. Although I'd been HE'd for 18 months abroad it had never occurred to me it was an option here - don't think my friend thought I'd take it seriously either but from little acorns.... I then met a friend of a friend and talked about it with her. When my DS hit his 5th birthday and was still at home I thought 'guess this is it then.', kind of got into it by default :-) |
| TC | I found out about home educating by catching the end of the program about a group of people HEing on the Isle of Wight. I then immediately checked out the web to find more details. I sort of knew you could do it but thought you had to follow the national curriculum in all areas. |
| KM | I read 'How children learn' by John Holt. This was a real eye-opener for me. Written forty years ago it is as relevant today if not more so. It chimed perfectly with my unformed and fuzzy thoughts on DS and his behaviour and feelings. I then went on to read anything else I could get my hands on! Unfortunately I don't HE. Dearly wish I could. Partner not fully convinced despite agreeing on the theory, and I'm not legal guardian. |
| KW | I found out about home-ed from an article in a Sunday supplement and de-regged my son 5 days later, whilst still waiting for a membership pack from EO who were mentioned in the article. |
| LN | We found out through a friend who is a school governor. She gave me details of Education Otherwise and their website etc, and away we went. I joined the mailing list and learnt so much from it that we deregged DS within a couple of weeks. |
| JA | I found out from an article in the 'Readers Digest' magazine and then more detailed information from someone who was home educating their son who had similar problems to some of the ones our son had. |
| CB | I found out via Aspergers UK, another Yahoo group. It was after my two sons were diagnosed and some of the other parents on that group were home educating their children. |
| SS | I've always known HE was legal, but I don't know how. Perhaps it came about many yrs ago when there were one or two high profile families in the press. That would be very many years ago as I've known since our elder 2 were school age and the eldest is now 29 years old. When I reached desperation point with the youngest I rang directory enquiries and asked for a number for EO and here we are! |
| AB | I found out about home education because my sister does it, but I thought she was largely able to do it because the LEA did not know about them because they have moved several times and used to live in an Amish community which had its own school, so the authorities thought they were still there. But when we phoned my brother-in-law he said that they were known to the LEA now because of people coming to see their youngest daughter, who is disabled. My brother-in-law gave us the phone number of Education Otherwise and my partner spoke to a local contact who told us about the de-registration letter and said we could get it from the EO website. |
| MO | Well, in answer to this, I saw a programme about a group of Home-Edders (I think they were on the Isle on Man...or Wight...or Lewis...<shrugs>, anyway, I was raving about it to a friend whose daughter went to the same nursery as DD. This was in the months before we had a PC, and this friend very kindly (without telling me!) researched it and printed off all the bumph from the EO website. Hubby and I read it all and based our de-regging on that. And the rest is history... |
| JB | Erm....home educating relatives, research on internet, joined EO... like falling off a log! |
| J | Out of sheer desperation on the internet! |
| B | I contacted EO and found out thru them ;) Damn good people there u know! |
| LW | ...same here; I thought there has to be some other way of educating so I typed in alternative school on the PC and up came EO.....hoorah!! |
| J | I found out about HE through joining a local La Leche League group and becoming friends with a mom who was home educating her 4 kids. It was a complete revelation and I was eager to find out all about it. She gave me a copy of 'School is not compulsory' and here I am a couple of years later! |
| N | I don't know quite how I found out about the initial idea of home education, I think it may have been on a documentary. Not that I am officially a home educator yet...note the yet. |
| A | Interestingly I did find out from a leaflet drop! I was doing a degree in Psychology and education at Oxford poly and one day there was a leaflet in my pigeon hole about the next EO conference. So I went to Leicester for the day and was sold! |
| JT | I first read about HE in 'Junior' magazine about 3 1/2 yrs ago and thought "would love to do, but can't possibly!" (obviously not a very good article then!) About a year later I watched the Witness programme and thought "Yes I can"...my eldest DD was de-regged within 2 weeks, my youngest DD will not go to school. I have been home educating for nearly a year now. After watching the Witness programme I went straight onto the CH4 website and then from there to the EO website amongst others. |
| BJ | I think the knowledge of HE sort of crept up on me. A few people from other groups had suggested it but I didn't even consider home education until I got THE letter from the County Council saying they could NOT offer DS any of my 3 school preferences. They even had the audacity to end the letter (after offering the worst school imaginable) saying they wished DS well in his education! I think I went back to the people I knew had suggested it in the past and asked where to go from there; I joined EO and MuddlePuddle as a result, although there were quite a few other lists suggested also. |
| J | I found out about home education when reading a list on attachment parenting in America. It didn't take me long to find out that home education existed here too! When my son was 3 I rang the LEA in Gloucester and asked about it and they sent out a nice HE pack including leaflets for EO and HEAS! |
| KS | I found out about home education from the articles in Natural Parent magazine. I didn't read them at first because my son was only a baby but when I did I knew immediately that it was the right thing for both of us. |
| LH | I always knew that HE was legal but was unable to do so when DS and DD were starting school. I decided to do a search and the first site I came across was Sue in Cyprus, which told me all I wanted/needed to know and led to EO and FRED. By then I had made up my mind, presented DH with a long list and made him sit down and look at it all. He agreed with me, we told DD, I think the entire street her the screams of joy, and we haven't looked back since. |
| M | I found out through a homebirth list on Yahoo, quite a few people there were home educating and DS was having problems at nursery so it went from there - dread to think if I would have ever found out if we hadn't had the computer though. |
| DT | I found out in Natural Parent magazine too. My first surprise was finding Natural Parent magazine when DS was a baby. I didn't know there was a 'name' for what we were doing! |
| C | We found out from a newspaper article, which gave website addresses for follow up information. |
| CM | I first found out about home education when I read a book (can't remember the name) about a family in Bath. |
| B | I started finding out about home education by typing in 'home education' on a search engine and found the HE:UK list which I joined I still have the first e-mails I sent asking if it was going to be too difficult! I think I'd always known it was legal but didn't know the in's and out's and the de-registering bit. |
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