The hubs and I were discussing homeschooling the other day. It’s because he walked into the room when I was watching a video from Jamelia on why she decided to homeschool her daughters. We suddenly realized that neither of us knew much about homeschool in the UK. We don’t directly know anyone in the UK who is being homeschooled either. It’s not something I hear much about at all at home but I certainly hear a lot about homeschooling in the USA and I can think of many moms who are homeschooling their children of various ages all over the USA. Here’s a really informative post from one US mom on how she homeschools.
Baby E’s still a long way from starting school but it’s going to come quickly. I know it. I suddenly felt the responsibility to look into why people go the homeschooling route and what people think the benefits and disadvantages are. I looked up homeschooling in the UK and asked a few of my mom blogger friends. This is some of the information I found [italics used for emphasis]:
We are magpies, taking elements from different philosophies of learning, such as Montessori, Charlotte Mason, Steiner Waldorf and Reggio Emilia. Creativity, free thinking, classical education, independent learning, these are the things that really matter and we do all of them every day.
Leta
By 2018 and 2019, there was 27% rise in children being homeschooled. In Gloucestershire alone, the number of children being homeschooled has now almost doubled in the last five years!
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Views of some homeschooling moms
For us, handing the most important years of our childrenās growth, development and learning over to someone else was never an option. If you are having issues with the education system and considering taking your child out, it is possible, it is legal, and it is amazing.
…is anything more unnatural than being with 30 other people the same age as you while an adult tells you what to do? Does that happen in any other situation than education? Why can’t a 6 year old be friends with a 4 year old and a 10 year old, kids her own age and more, a number of adults, and a lady in her 80s? Surely a broader experience will be beneficial in so many ways, emotionally, socially, educationally.
…Self-starters, they know how to research, they have a thirst for learning, and they bring a completely different skill set to children who have followed instructions in school for 12-14 years.
Leta, who uses an ‘unschooling’ approach to homeschooling
From what I can see, one of the issues is that schools are not able to easily cater to a wide enough variety of students. By variety I mean in terms of how quickly different pupils pick things up for example. Children develop at different rates and I suppose sometimes making them stay in a formal school setting is forcing them to try to keep up with a rate of learning they may not naturally be able to maintain. On the other end of the scale, I’m wondering if there are also cases where a child learns much faster than the children in their class and so have been forced to switch to homeschooling to avoid being slowed down.
I’ve still got so many questions
For example, I’d love to know the age ranges of the majority of children being homeschooled in the UK. By the time we get back to the UK, I hope to know a lot more.
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Very interesting topic! I worked as a teacher and having 24 kids in the classroom is very difficult. There are always those kids who demand a great amount of attention and the calm ones go under. Although they need the teacher just as.
It’s really good to hear the perspective of a teacher. I can see how 24 is too large a class size.