THE CHALLENGES OF HOME SCHOOLING - COVID SERIES

By Jay S Khan

Anna Dusseau, a teacher and home educator, mentioned in a recent article published in the Guardian online, that she felt her son and daughter were being ‘processed’ in school.  She is currently preparing to publish a book of advice outlining her own approach to home schooling her children, which includes 100 different learning activities that parents can try. Dusseau suggests that more families, including over 50,000 children, are rejecting institutional schooling for home education due to the “forced learning” in schools, the coercion of the national curriculum and the testing and results-driven English schooling system.

Whilst I don’t necessarily agree with all Dusseau’s findings, Dr Richard House has also suggested that current research gives further evidence that home-educated children achieve substantially better outcomes than the mainstream. Even more importantly, as Dusseau says, children are more able to discover “who they really are, and what they want to do in life”, as opposed to them having to develop a “false self” just to survive at the hands of a schooling system that is stultified by the soulless audit culture. Again I don’t necessarily agree with all the points as there is something to be said about children going to school and learning about the outside environment, particularly in terms of travelling, environmental structure and competition, and recognising the differences they have with their peers.

Many of you, I suspect, have taken to ‘Home Schooling’ like a duck to water whilst the rest of us dread our kids asking ‘Mum, Dad can you help me with my homework?’.  The panic starts and the sweat beads start to trickle down the side of your face whilst you try to retain some sort of composure.  Over the last few months, I have a much greater appreciation of those parents who home school as a way of life.  There are many aspects that need to be considered, such as structure, content, and discipline to name just a few.  This is in addition to getting your head around the school system of marking, grading, and examination boards.  There is a plethora of paperwork and red tape to endure and I tip my hat to those that have mastered it.

For many of us, attempting to put tried and tested structures in place, in addition to what we think is a good idea at the time, make us realise that not every home-schooling plan will be suitable for everyone and this will be dependent upon many factors such as the age of the children, home setting and availability of resources.

I must say that calling my attempts to tutor my kids ‘Home schooling’ is somewhat stretching it. Nevertheless, what I found in my own experience over the last few months is to give the children the freedom to express themselves, this will naturally be dependent on what key stage your children are at.  I have 4 children, twin 14-year-olds, boy and girl, a 9 year old boy and a 7 year old girl, and luckily for me none of them were at any significant key stages, allowing me to be able to have some sort of creative licence and experiment through trial and error.  With the twins it was relatively easy, even though they are at that awkward age with hormonal changes taking effect, as they were being set online work by their school on a regular basis, so it was more about monitoring that they were getting on with their work.  Although in certain subjects providing guidance was useful, what I found with them is that generally they were aware what they had to do and talking it through with them gave them the confidence to discover the answers for themselves. 

With the 2 younger ones, however, it was significantly different. Although the school provided some handouts for them to complete, I somewhat struggled to understand the work provided.  I therefore decided to create a weekly timetable, with the core subjects they were being taught in schools combined with additional fun activities which I put up on the fridge.  This included a ‘Choose your own activity’ which the kids really enjoyed and looked forward to as it allowed them to discuss with me and each other what they wanted to do. The home school day lasted 4 hours with breaks and lunch time.  I downloaded a lot of the materials from the internet and gave them folders for all their subjects. They were excited and took ownership immediately.  In the beginning I tried to implement a disciplined approach, routinely checking their work and losing my cool on occasions when they got things wrong, but I found that counterproductive.  I therefore changed my strategy to a ‘Have-a-go’ approach and allowed them to do the work themselves and told them not to worry about getting things wrong and that I will go through the work with them once they completed it.  This approach worked wonders for both of us, as they just got on with it and I was no longer losing my own discipline.  Although my approach is not ‘Home Schooling’ in its element or traditional sense, I knew it would be temporary and, as I stated earlier, I admire those that do it full time as it requires a lot of work, patience, and effort.