One reason I was prepared to give school a chance was that she seemed unusually quiet – to the point where I thought she was selectively mute – and I thought she had become too isolated while we were travelling. (She was a twin too, but a surviving twin) Another was that she was resistant if I corrected something in her speech (are the two things related?). I thought perhaps a sense of competition might open up her willingness to learn more.

She is just ending her first year at school. There were some negatives: her teacher had a lot of time off sick, particularly in the first term, and it took me a long time to learn how to respect her, though the teaching assistant was excellent. I thought her teacher told the children off for some inappropriate things – she made a point of lecturing my five-year-old on how it was the law to send your child to school after I took her out on holiday for two consecutive Fridays. I thought she should have said those things to me, and not to a five-year-old who had not elected to take time off school. (“Was she talking just to you, or the whole class?” “Just to me.”) A classmate with special needs has been pressurised to achieve, and my child had the worrying perception that the special needs child was ‘always naughty’. The school took a phonics approach to learning to read, then set weekly spelling tests where the words did not follow the basic rules of phonics, such as ‘to’, ‘me’, ‘he’ and ‘I’. She found this very confusing and week in, week out, she got these spellings wrong, which damaged her confidence. She couldn’t just look at these words a few times and memorise how to spell them. However, I persevered with getting her to read them long after the tests were over, using a look and say approach, I suppose. I now realise they were important building blocks in the journey to learning how to read and she has been reading well during the last term.

Overall, I think the experience probably has more positives than negatives. She seems to have enjoyed the company of the other children, and even the routine of school. Recently she has taken more care when tackling words that she finds difficult to say, and I’m sure it is only peer pressure that has made her inclined to think about how she pronounces things. The worst aspect is that you are handing over your child to someone who has a different perspective and does not share your ideals. Her teacher would sometimes give out biscuits or fruit, but (according to my child) not give them to children who had been ‘naughty’. I find the idea of using food to punish or reward children’s behaviour as horrific and unethical, but everyone will have a different viewpoint on this.

The main point to remember is that your child(ren)’s education is far too important to trust a school to do it properly, so you must be prepared to enhance, in a fun way, what your child has been learning at school. I was pleased that her attention seemed to be fully engaged in her first year at school, as this is such a difficult thing for a school to get right.

They look very cute in their uniforms. Glad to hear all is well.

Maybe Jake should look at a few home educating blogs ;0)

Jake.

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Hi!

Thanks for the reply, I hope my comment didn’t come across as silly or nasty or anything like that, it’s certainly not what I was trying to do. Instead, it is always good to get real thoughts down in a constructive way and I thought that an opposite view always makes good reading if done ok. So I first apologise if I came across too negative about things!

I wasn’t aware that you were a trained primary school teacher, which
is a lot different from being a ‘normal’ person so to speak. Of
course, there are good and bad teachers, ones that are hopeless and just going through the motions in order to get their degree – but also ones that fully understand not only what to teach (which let’s face it is mainly dictated to us) but how to teach, and more importantly how to understand if the child is or is not learning.

As an example, a know of a child who’s parents have taught them to count from 1 to 100, which sounds amazing when I think my two boys
can only count from 1 to 10 and are the same age. However, counting
from 1 to 100 is fine but only id you understand how and why. So, at number 50, what comes next? Easy, you know it is 51 because you know
the sequence. But, ask the question why? Why is 51 above 50? What
is 50? So, the repeating of the sequence 1 to 100 is fine, but the
teacher will know how to put forward the knowledge behind that, so that when building on this you can move onto 50+1, 50+2 – and if the child understands what’s going on they can use that knowledge to
extend their own understanding. ie, they understand the rules and
do not simple know how to memorize. So, my friends are very happy
that their child can repeat the numbers 1 to 100, but unfortunatly
the child does not show any understanding of what they are doing.
All this, I am sure, is such stuff that you were maybe not taught how to teach, but instead “picked up” during the practical teaching practices.

I hope some of that makes sense, lol!! My wording is not always good as it is while in my head and some of it makes a little bit of sense about what I am trying to say.

The other side is a social look on things, and I don’t mean the old argument of “they won’t mix with other children” as I don’t see that as a big arguement for or against – but I do understand it is
normally people’s first arguement against! What I do mean instead
is the ability for the child to break away from their parent’s view
on the world. I would love my boys to have the same thoughts and
interests as me, but then they would not be individuals as much as
they may be. If I think one way about the world then I would want
to promote this to my children, but I would also like them to have the opportunity to understand why and the other views too. I would then, like them to have outside influence from my own ideals and
things. I would like them to have not only their parents as their
figure in life, but their teachers too, have a mixture of ideals coming to them and giving them a view from all sides.

Saying all this, our boys are on their 4th day at school too and while we are more than happy with one of the teachers we are not with the other and feel that our son may be lost in an un-organised class where he and his special needs (he has dyspraxia) will be lost and not enough individual attention given – whereas we have spent the
last 4 years really working with him to get him to where he is now.
But, saying all that, he loves his disorganised teacher and his class, and the other one loves his teacher and class, and they are having some good adventures on their own, away from each other (they are twins) and away from us. They have stuff to tell us etc…

Right, I think I’ve rambled on long enough!! lol Nothing is
ideal – maybe the nearest may be teaching of children in small local groups where parents are involved but not 100% or the time with their
children. Maybe something like a small home ed group for the
community, as long as that community is diverse.

Anyway, that’s enough from me. Keep blogging as I love hearing how
you are going on even though I don’t know you or your ‘past life’, I simply found your site on the internet and a lot of what you write is
really living out a lot of my dreams! I hope school, however it may
be, keeps going well

Jake.

I don’t personally know many home educating families but the extensive research I conducted has lead me to believe that most HE families are doing a grand job of educating their kids – ok it might not be at the same pace or structure that the National Curriculum dictates to teachers but instead it is more likely to be very personal to the children within that family (eg. my daughter loves art and my son loves reading so we would probably do a lot more of both of these if they were at home full time) and also very much ‘holistic’ and ‘real life’ (eg. lets go and buy enough meat for the family’s meal tonight, choosing something to make, talking about which kind of shops to visit, selecting the right ingredients and in the right quanities, getting cash from our bank account from the bank machine, paying for the food with real money, talking to the butcher and an elderly lady about things, washing hands and making the meal).

I understand that there is a theory amongst HE supporters that the number of actual taught hours a primary school kid receives in a class of 20-30 is minimal. They may be present at school but much of the time is spent lining up, putting chairs under, playing in the playground.

The other thing that people who decide to Home Educate would perhaps point out is that the decision to take children out of school is very rarely taken lightly – many many families are prompted to do so after repeateded miserable episodes with their child being bullied or not thriving for whatever reason & within a matter of weeks of being at home the child that had become withdrawn and suffered nightly terrors had returned to their former robust self.

I can’t actually think of many of the things I was taught in primary school that I couldn’t teach my small kids especially with the huge range of materials, books and websites now on the market.

Ten years ago I went to university and spent four years being ‘trained to be a primary school teacher’. Hmmmm I don’t recall anyone ever saying ‘Right this is how you teach this and then you would progress to this’ we had annual teaching practices where we were a classroom assistant in an actual school, we wrote endless essays on multiculturalism, history of education and discipline theories but everything we were taught during the degree was regarding large sized classroom management rather than the individual learning. Also worth noting (although I may live to regret typing this) that an enormous percentage of my fellow students were simply teenagers who had failed to get the grades for their wished for undergraduate degree course & had fallen into becoming a qualified teacher as it accepted such low A-level grades.

Having ranted all of the above though… I have to say that 4 days into their schooling I’m super pleased with E&M’s progress at school. They are lucky enough to be in a weeny class with two very dedicated teachers, they have both come home with a new book to read/look at each night and some bespoke word cards so I’m convinced the teachers are acturately assessing each of the kids’ levels of ability rather than just dishing out the same to each child. They are eating things I wouldn’t bother cooking for them at home because they once told me they didn’t like it AND they are having fun with little playmates at lunchtime ‘playing rough’ in the field or making little houses in the school’s willlow den.

I really enjoy picking them up from school as I have missed them during the day but spent quality time contributing to the family business by taking charge of the office management and the house is as nice as we left it in the morning.

As I said in the original blog post I do reserve the right to do a u-turn at any point in the future.

Thanks again for your comment

Teaching is an important job, not only learning and understanding learning, but also understanding development of children outside of typical educational topics. Not just social but physical too.

I have not flown an aeroplane but would be willing to try (hey, I play on MS Flight Sim and I know the functions) – would you be prepared to fly with me?