The Rise of Homeschooling: A Mother's Perspective, Dispense di Inglese

Scarica The Rise of Homeschooling: A Mother's Perspective e più Dispense in PDF di Inglese solo su Docsity! WHY HOME SCHOOLING IS ON THE RISE by Sally Williams 3 Nov 2018 Exams, rules, timetables: do teachers know what’s best for children? Increasing numbers of British parents don’t think so. Every morning Ben Mumford starts his school day with maths. At the age of 10 he is already working at GCSE level, but he doesn’t always bother to get out of his pyjamas in time for the class. He reads more books than most of his friends, studies science on the beach, and recently built a go-kart in a technology lesson. Ben is happy and fulfilled. His mother Claire Mumford believes in home- schooling. “It’s not that I’m anti-establishment,” says Mumford, who has been home-schooling Ben and her other children, Sam, 11, and Amelia, eight, for the last year. “It’s just that schools haven’t got the time to nurture and teach children the way I think they should. School is very oppressive for young people. It’s not natural to be sat at a desk all day, with fluorescent lights, computer screens, barely able to see outside.” Her children get “time to relax and to be kids – to go to the woods, build dens and to learn what they’re excited about.” Mumford, 40, a community volunteer, was born on the Isle of Wight, where her father had taken early retirement as an army captain following an accident, and her mother was a former teacher. She moved back about eight years ago, when she separated from the children’s father, a chauffeur. She describes her style of home-education as “child-led”. The only formal lesson is maths, where the children work from books for half an hour every morning. “Then we see what we want to do that day,” she says. Lessons can take place in the library or the woods; rather than learning science, they “experience it” by growing plants or by digging water channels on the beach. Structured weekly activities include youth club; home-ed drama group; talks by the police, air ambulance or the coastguard organised by Rookley Home-Ed Meet, a group on the island made up of around 20 families; and football training with Southampton FC on the mainland. Amelia also does work experience in a hardware shop in her village, and has widened her social learning skills.She is also learning the Latin names of flowers. “The job has been amazing for her confidence,” says Mumford. Sam likes “designing stuff” such as underwater cities, produces a weekly local newspaper, and re-enacts battles with his toy soldiers. Ben is currently interested in footballers’ autobiographies, nutritional tips for athletes and teach- yourself guides on how to be a premier league player. Amelia studies fashion books and magazines, writes songs and paints pebbles. “The best thing is you get to be free and you don’t feel squashed up,” says Ben. “At school people have to sit inside at a table and you might not learn anything new,” adds Amelia. “At home you can choose your subjects and you can go outside and see your friends more.” The only downside for Sam is that he is “a bit cleverer than Mum”. True, says Mumford. “I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time.” The home-schooling movement emerged in the 1970s, when it was considered something only for a marginal part of the population. Today, it is probably the fastest-growing form of education in the UK. The number of home-schooled children has risen by about 40% over three years, according to recent research by the BBC. Around 48,000 children were being home-educated across the UK in 2016-2017, up from about 34,000 in 2014-15. But the real number is likely to be higher. Data is not collected centrally, and while local authorities keep a register of home-educated children, this only covers children who have been withdrawn from school. Children who are never put into school are currently not required to register. Many parents who opt to home-school their children say they are avoiding bullying, exam pressure and stress. Others have concerns about special educational needs, not getting a place at the school of their choice, or the school environment.“It used to be a philosophical ethos (phylosphical way of thinking) now it’s about children having some sort of difficulty at school,” says Edwina Theunissen, former trustee (legal administrator) of Education Otherwise, a home-education charity founded in 1977. Helen Lees, visiting research fellow at York St John University, and a specialist in alternative education, believes the increase suggests “something quite worrying about the state of the education system. I’m not sure having 30 children in a classroom all doing the same thing works any more. Not with the way the classroom is structured, and the way the curriculum is followed.” Changes in technology have made it easier to teach out of the classroom, and methods range from the traditional approach of textbooks, study schedules, grades and tests to “unschooling” or “autonomous education”, a philosophy conceived (thought) by the US educator John Holt in the 1970s. He believed don’t go on holiday, and just occasionally I could do with half an hour to myself,” she says. While she doesn’t lack support because of the island’s large home-educating community, spending so much time together can occasionally be too much. “Sometimes I have to go up to my room to calm down, so I am not shouting at them. I don’t like shouting. Unless something extreme happens, like someone gets injured, I am ‘do not disturb’ for a bit of time.” Critics argue that the “cocooning” desire of some home-schooling parents is fuelled by a romanticised vision of the past. “It is not just about seeking an escape from the problems of the ‘city’ (a metaphor for danger and heterogeneity diversety), it is a rejection of the entire idea of a city. There is criticism, too, from within the community. “The most popular educational method used by those who withdraw their children from school is autonomous education and involves nobody teaching children anything at all,” says Simon Webb, author of Elective Home Education In The UK. “Children’s interests often involve lying in bed until very late, then getting up and watching cartoons on television and eating nothing but sugary snacks. Children aren’t the best judge of what to learn or what lifestyle to adopt.” Families in the UK have long welcomed the relaxed laws governing home- education. While home-education is illegal in, for example, Germany, Croatia, Brazil and Turkey, the only requirement for a parent in England wishing to withdraw a child from school is to send a written request to the “proprietor” of the school (typically the headteacher); they must accept if you are taking your child out completely, but can refuse if you want to send your child to school some of the time. (The process of “de registering” is slightly different in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.) If a child has never been to school, you don’t need to tell anyone. Under section seven of the Education Act of 1996, parents have a duty to ensure their children are educated. And that’s about it. They are not required to teach the national curriculum, have any specific qualifications, register with a local authority, allow inspectors into their homes, or get approval for the sort of education provided at home. But the government is now seeking to tighten and clarify rules surrounding home-education. Proposals include a mandatory register of home-educated children, along with increased monitoring and support from local authorities. This is prompted in part by the steep rise in the number of children educated at home, and by concerns over child welfare in the wake of such high-profile cases as that of Jordan Burling, from Leeds, who died after severe neglect (not taking care of a child) in 2016. Jordan, 18, had not attended school since he was 12, when his mother announced he was to be home-schooled. He never took any exams or achieved any qualifications and was rarely seen outside the house. The growing number of illegal schools – unregistered establishments that operate outside the supervision of the Department for Education, local authorities or Ofsted inspection framework, and are often religious in character – is another worry. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the former chief inspector of schools, warned they posed a threat to “British values” and gave the impression that home-schooling was being used as a cover for terrorism. The home-schooling community has reacted angrily to the unprecedented focus on its activities, claiming government proposals “infringe parental rights” and fuel “unwarranted suspicion”. “The government doesn’t want to admit the reason that home-education numbers are rising is not to do with radicalisation,” says Chris McGovern, a retired headteacher and chairman of the Campaign for Real Education. “That is a concern, but it is a far greater problem in state schools than in home-schooling. It’s because schools are failing ever greater number of children”.