Should you do it yourself ?
Opting out of the system is no longer the preserve of anti-establishment hippies, says Cristina Odone
When a fellow mother at the school gate asked me whether I would consider home-schooling my daughter, it was the first time the thought had crossed my mind. Me, home-school my sixyear-old? Wasn’t home-schooling for religious fanatics who wanted to keep the 21st century at bay? Perhaps, but with some parents still on waiting lists for school places, taking up the education mantle themselves is not such an inconceivable reality.
It fell on us when we moved home, and calls to the local education authority confirmed that the closest primary school with a Year 1 place was more than an hour away by Tube. So we bought textbooks on the internet and packed delicious lunches as my mother, who lived 20 minutes away, had volunteered to teach my beloved progeny. Soon we were congratulating her (and ourselves) on Izzy’s reading and maths: she knew Bolivia’s capital and the wickedness of King John. I felt as if we had stepped back into an 18th-century idyll: a child learning in her home, with a tutor wholly dedicated to her progress – and her parents’ satisfaction.
Three months later, I found a place at a state primary. Reluctantly, Granny gave way to Miss Smith, and Izzy slipped back into the system.
Our short-lived experiment is today an increasingly popular trend. Stress about exams and revision (seven hours a night, according to recent guidance) is surfacing at a time of greater awareness of children’s mental health: one in 10 children is experiencing some kind of mental health problem, while almost a quarter of teenage girls exhibit depressive symptoms.
Worried parents are taking the matter into their own hands – and their children out of mainstream schools. According to the Oxford Home School Trust, between 2006 and 2016, the number of homeeducated children rose from 8,361 to 38,573. The figure is now expected to be nearly 50,000.
“Schools are obsessed with testing and obsessed with university.
The result is such a pressurised environment, it robs children of their childhood,” says Briony Mackie, who has spent a decade home-educating her four children with “reading and more reading; visits to museums and galleries. I used to say to myself, ‘I am living the dream’: they were so happy and kept telling me how much they enjoyed learning at home. They all say that when they grow up they are going to home-school their children too.”
Briony scoffs at the notion of all home-schoolers as hippy-dippy antiestablishment parents. The new wave, she insists, is unashamedly middleclass: “I am in no way a rebel. I am married to a banker, and have pretty conservative views on everything. But when it comes to schooling my children, I don’t believe in a one-sizefits-all system.”
Olivia Lowe agrees that “the most important principle of home-schooling is ‘bespoke’”. The London motherof-three home-schooled her son Sam between the ages of 12 and 15. “When you see that your child is anxious and stressed, you have to recognise that the system is failing him. Our day was not regulated by the clock or by tests, but by activities that developed his skills. ”
Home tutoring has grown into a £100 billion industry. Emma Storey, managing director of Bespoke Tuition, has seen a “300 per cent rise in the last two years. It’s suddenly become an accepted alternative: parents see the increasing pressures on their children and decide to opt out.”
Storey’s firm, which charges £1,100 a week for residential tuition, plus food and accommodation, carefully selects tutors to match expectations. It offers mindfulness lessons to pupils suffering from stress, but also all the core curriculum subjects, plus coding, Mandarin and problem-solving. “Our clients want their children to be prepared for an unpredictable future,” she explains.
Most home-schooling parents, though, do not outsource their child’s education. Janet Anderson, who lives in Marlborough, Wiltshire, shared the role of teacher with her husband: “Even though my son was at a very expensive and well-regarded prep school, he was often bored by the slow pace of class,” she explains, so she and her husband “took responsibility for different subjects. Rob taught physics, chemistry, maths, Latin, French, German. I taught English, history, ancient Greek, biology. We used the internet, but not much.”
In the internet age, children can connect in a million ways. No one need feel isolated, a hothouse flower who wilts as soon as they emerge into the real world, when social interaction is only a tap, click or swipe away.
At least one Oxford professor agrees: Diane Purkiss, professor of English literature at Keble College, has taught students who were home-schooled and found them to be “very impressive”. “They tend to be autodidacts and very independent-minded, and they also tend to be emotionally resilient.”
I wonder how Izzy would be faring if we’d stuck with home-schooling. But like many parents, I am wary of the responsibility; of the huge effort required to turn the world into my daughter’s classroom. Even then, the bespoke environment, the experience can only be as good as the teachers delivering it.