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In a class of their own
Monday 23rd March 2009, 10:00PM GMT.
More than 200 Shropshire families are now schooling their children at home. Are they making the right decision? Ben Bentley visits a county family which has opted out of traditional classroom education.
The Battle of Balaclava is in full swing in the corner, on the desk next to a small bookcase and a poster on the wall showing the anatomy of the human body.
“This is my classroom,” says 12-year-old Tanya Wright proudly.
She’s right. It is a classroom, but not as we know it. It’s actually a converted bedroom on the second floor of her family home in Sutton Hill, Telford.
You could say that Tanya is in a class of her own after her mum Gail Wright decided she would teach her daughter at home – a growing trend these days as, for various reasons, more parents and guardians opt to educate their children themselves.
A total of 233 children across Shropshire are currently being taught at home – 147 across the county council area and 86 in the Telford & Wrekin borough.
Gail took Tanya out of school 18 months ago following a spate of bullying. At the time she was failing to learn much and could not even spell the word Telford.
“She was talking to one of her friends on MSN and she shouted out to me ‘How do you spell Telford?’ And she couldn’t spell the word ‘try’ either. A girl of her age should have been able to spell that.”
It was time to give home tuition a go. Gail explains: “A teaching support officer from the local authority came to discuss which path to take, and told us there’s no curriculum for home tuition. But they come out every four to six months to check Tanya’s work and to make sure she’s doing work. We get a report back from her that other children do – her last one said was doing satisfactorily.”
Yet Gail admits that home education is no easy option. There were over-familiarity issues between teacher and pupil for starters.
She explains: “It was hard because Tanya used to take the Mickey because it was mum, but after a while she started to knuckle down and for the first time even began to enjoy her lessons.”
Tanya says: “My favourite subject is history — the Battle of Balaclava, and we’re doing the Victorians. I also like cookery and science.”
She takes out her science folder containing recently completed work. There’s a section entitled ‘Having Babies’ and it’s immediately apparent that mum and daughter have covered the biological minefield of sex education in some depth.
For Gail, one of the hardest tasks initially was in actually finding work for her daughter to do. Now she uses an educational website called BBC Bitesize, and local libraries for books and resources.
Gail’s cousin, Fiona Wright, also helps with Tanya’s schooling and have timetabled a school day which runs between 9.30am to 2.30pm and which is programmed with pre-planned lessons.
“We try to keep a structure to it,” says Gail. “Tanya has a very short attention span but the schedule helps. Home tuition also means we can try different subjects.
“We are helping to teach Tanya sewing which I think is useful because that’s the sort of thing they taught me at school.
“Schools are all aimed at exams but I think they need to look at it and get back to some of the old ways.”
With English, Gail encourages Tanya to read texts such as Shakespeare and both will sit down and discuss what the author was talking about, rather than undertake continual testing.
The law on home schooling is plain: education is compulsory; schooling is not.
Many reasons are given in favour of home tuition. A child may not have been accepted into into a school preferred by the parent or guardian, or social issues such as bullying may prevail. Some parents feel their children will become institutionalised by rigid schooling.
According to advice website Education Otherwise, the majority of home educators today are not qualified teachers but soon discover they can do it with sufficient guidance. According to the law, home tutors need not follow a curriculum, work for a whole school day or adopt school-at-home type conditions.
At her home-cum-school, Tanya admits it can be lonely sometimes, not having the social interaction you get in conventional schools, but has friends just like anyone else.
Teaching Tanya has been hugely rewarding, not just for daughter but for mum too.
“The satisfaction I get is knowing that she is safe and learning things,” says Gail. “Before she was not learning anything. I can see the progress.”
And she believes anyone can teach their children at home given the proper support.
“I’m not super clever, but if you know what you are doing you can do it. I say, anyone who has got the know-how, go for it. It gives you peace of mind that the child is away from being bullied and it gives them one-to-one tuition. Tanya is coming on better now than she was at school.”
During a break from studying, Tanya herself says: “I’m happier than when I was at school, and a lot more confident . . . and I’m learning, too.”
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Most parents have to go to work and wouldn’t have time to teach the kids.
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Well done Gail & Tanya. We too home educate and its great to hear good stories in the press.
With regard to Bobs comments. My husband works and I teach the children – that is my job, and if it means we dont have a holiday every year or a new car so be it.
Home ed is great and in some cases is the best option for the child which after all is what comes first.
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I would be interested to see figures showing how successful home ed is. Are these children going on to become useful contributors to society and the workplace, or are they the ‘home educators’ of the future supported by everyone else ?
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David, I wish I had been home educated. Schooling in Shropshire/Telford and Wrekin has always been below standard.
I remember the shock I had when many of my classmates in Dawley Newtown were absent from school on day. Apparently they had been pulled from the school to help with the harvest.
Of course, that no longer happens, but pupils still do not get the education they need or deserve.
Memember of my family home school. They seem streets ahead of their friends who do attend local schools.
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Primary school education has made great strides in recent years, due to large scale investment. Most of Telfrod and Wrekin’s primary schools do pretty well, some are outstanding.
I’m very wary of people who educate their kids at home – it might be that their kids end up with a similar level of educational attainment, but I believe the social isolation inevitable in such an approach is simply not worth the risk.
Parents also have different motives for educating their kids at home. There’s an increasing trend, coming from the US, to educate kids at home for reasons of religious indoctrination.
I believe this sort of control should be looked at more carefully in the legal framework – I’m all for kids receiving an education about what people believe and their reasons for doing so, but religious indoctrination is a form of child abuse, and any attempt to push it upon children, whether within school or without, should be outlawed.
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David, In North America homeschooling is commonplace. Students who are home schooled are more likely to enter university than their public school, or even private school counterparts. They are usually 2 to 3 years ahead of grade level and enter university or college at an earlier age. Judging by the examples of English punctuation and grammar on various forums of this newspaper it might be a very good idea to home school kids.
Public school educators take our money, take our kids … what exactly do they do in return?
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It is refreshing to read an accurate article about Home Education. So often newspapers produce articles which are badly researched and sometimes even prejudiced against Home Education.
As for issues about ‘socialisation’. It is a common myth that children who are Home Educated are kept away from society. It tends to be the opposite. The children are usually free to mingle with all members of society, of all ages and walks of life, rather than just the 30 or so children in a class at school. There are many Home Edcuation groups that meet on a regular basis and of course, Rainbows, Brownies, Shropshire Wildlife memberships, sports groups, drama groups, I could mention so many more.
The other myth that I often hear or read is that parents remove their children from school for religious indoctrination. I know a lot of Home Educating families, the majority that I know of are secular. Indoctrination into any way of life/religion/belief system can happen anywhere.
The majority of Home Educated children tend to be more motivated to learn and achieve. As they tend to be in control of their own learning and feel they have a choice, they are stakeholders in their own futures rather than just a participant in someone else’s agenda.
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I find the comments regarding level of education interesting.
My children have just returned to school having had 18 months of home education due to inadequacy both wrt education provision and personal support.
My children are AHEAD of their peers having been supported but not overly-structured in the last year or sos education WITHOUT the aid of a curriculum….
SO PLEASE try to be informed when it comes down to your commentaries and judgements of parents who seek to provide what the local government is not for their children.
I know of a good few home educated children who have no only surpassed problems caused by the survival of the fittest system within run-down schools to go to university and establish apprentiseships based on their own enthusiasms.
Often beyond the curriculum of in-school subjects.
ALL parents home educate, if you teach your child to use the toilet, to eat with a knife and fork and to speak with manners you are home educating.
too many parents abdicate responsibility… I applaud home educators.
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The most important lessons at school are on the playground.
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I would still like to see actual figures as to how succesful home ed is.
I fully understand that there will be some parents with the ability to give their offspring an education equal to, or even better than, that offered by professional teachers, but I cannot believe the majority of parents fall into this bracket.
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Once again somebody has come out with the classic none home schooler comment ‘what about social isolation?’. My daughter is three years old and has attended the local home ed group since she was three months old, that combined with other groups we go to and a healthy selection of children who do attend school means she gets to socialize with around 60 children of all different ages. Sometimes its one-to-one or small groups other times it is in large groups for long periods of time when play and social interaction are able to develop. There is a large selection of children from her own age group for the potential of best friend or two as she gets older. Its clear to me by watching the older children who attend the groups that there is no problem with social isolation more the opposite – there are so many social opportunities available that parents have to pick and choose in order to fit in all the other things that go on when you home school. All this and my daughter has not even reached official school age yet, she already stands out next to her contemporary friends who have attended nursery schools in her abilities socially.
I would be more worried about social development if for some reason in the future I was forced to send her to school
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Well Keyboard warrior, those playground lessons include lessons in anti social behaviour, bullying and violence (or the threat of it)and the effect it has on the victims first hand!. Ask my daughter who was made so ill by those ‘playground’ lessons that I had to remove her from school or risk her becoming another teenage suicide statistic. Since being home educated she has made it to uni for a joint honours degree in Japanese language and business studies. She is the happy social creature she always used be before school damaged her. OH and for those who were asking, research has long since proved that home educated children frequently out perform their school going peers. Maybe because they get an education suited to THEIR needs and not government or society needs, or maybe because they are being educated in a safe place free abuse and fear!
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No Keyboard Warrior. The most important lessons in life are learnt in the real world.
It’s a shame that the article didn’t talk more about Tanyas social life (not that it’s really any of our business), I’m pretty sure if the Wrights are one of over 200 families then she is unlikely to be living completely isolated from her peers.
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I’m not too keen on home schooling, I can’t help but feel that children miss out on other vital points you don’t get at home and can only be provided by attending school.
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Whilst highly intelligent parents are looking to the very best schooling for their offspring, understanding how important it is, at the other end of the spectrum we have uneducated parents allowing their children to bunk off school, ignorant of what damage that does to their future prospects.
Only the other night there was a news article where a truancy officer was checking on children in a shopping centre during school time, and plenty of these were with their parents!
If highly intelligent parents are home schooling their offspring, then I am sure they are doing a great job. The fact that most highly intelligent parents work full time, means this is probably not generally the case.
If unintelligent parents are home schooling, this has to be a cause for concern. Unintelligent parents are far more likely to be unemployed and therefore able to home school, but is this really education or really just ‘legalised truancy’?
The problem of course is that unintelligent people don’t have the intelligence to understand how unintelligent they are, and will therefore argue vociferously that their ‘educating’ is in some way better than that provided by professionals.
Constant monitoring and testing would be the only way to ensure home educated children were in fact getting a sound schooling, but of course it is not in the interests of education authorities to pursue this, as many of these children are far more demanding of educational resources than those that do attend school. Surely the many comments above regarding ‘bullying’ are testament to this. Children who struggle to fit in with other children tend to have greater needs in other areas too.
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John. It’s ok if you are not too keen on Home Schooling, you can continue to send your children (if you have any) to school. School is ok for some children, but not for others.
Just out of interest, what ‘vital points’ do you think can only be provided by attending school?
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David.
“Highly intelligent” or “unintellgent”? “Uneducated”? “Most highly intelligent parents work full time”? How about the average intelligent? At what level do you consider someone to be ‘Educated’? How many qualifications does someone have to take before you consider someone to be ‘Educated’?
Most parents are intelligent enough to know that it is better for their children to have a parent at home with them, especially in the formative years. I’m lucky, I am able to stay at home with my children.
I gave up a full time job to stay at home with my children, according to your comment I should be in full time paid work. I am in a full time job, looking after children is a full time job. I just don’t get paid for it. I do it for love and in the best interest of my children.
Truancy and “bunking off” from school have nothing to do with Home Education. However, if you are suggesting that parents de-register their children from school, merely to prevent themselves from being prosecuted, that is another issue. I too saw a report about truancy and read several articles about how prosecuting parents for their children’s truancy does not work and truancy rates have increased. All the prosecutions and prison terms have only made the situation worse for the families involved.
As for Truancy, the question really should be why do so many children become truant? If schools were such good, nurturing places, giving an excellent education tailored to the individual, why would anyone want to miss going?
You mention monitoring and testing.
The Local Authority have members of staff who are responsible for visiting Home Educating families, but it is not compulsory.
Why should the children be tested all the time? There are a lot of teachers who work in schools and parents of schooled children, who are trying to get rid of the constant testing as it is damaging to the children’s education. Too many children in schools are missing out on a decent education because they are being taught only to pass the tests.
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Edna
The article discusses a child aged 12. That is secondary education. It isn’t discussing education in the ‘formative’ years and neither was I.
I certainly made no comment that could be in any way twisted to read that someone in your situation should be in full time paid work. Trying to put words into peoples’ mouths on a forum where all previous comments are listed for viewers to refer back to is not a good idea.
As for your comment on why children play truant, it is most interesting to see that you blame the schools and not the parents.
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