Unto the breach...

Hello!

Welcome to our blog, the focus of which is chiefly going to be the events set in motion around three months ago, when we made the monumental decision to home-educate our children. But our kids have been kicking around for some time, so why now? Why have we chosen to remove our two eldest from school so abruptly? Why has this particular decision inspired us to create a public record of our progress as a family? And, as so many will ask, WHAT ABOUT THEIR SOCIALIZATION? Well, to answer these, and many more questions, lets have a bit of background...

Our family:


Okay, so in order of age, we have:

Samuel, 9mths old. He's a dreadful sleeper and a dreadful eater, but the most delightfully happy and smiley little boy it could be anyone's pleasure to meet. He is also a wannabee pirate, but that's another story.

Alexander. 2years and 11mths. World's worst baby ever. World's best toddler ever. Life with Alex is never dull. He has his father's shyness, but his mum's love of theatrics. His mummy's temper, daddy's sensitivity. In many ways he has a total dichotomy of a personality, but he is such fun to have around. His passions at the moment are dinosaurs and cars, and can name several dinosaurs already and especially loves Brachiosaurs. And calling people 'stinky poo-poo heads'.

Isobel. Isobel. What can be said about Isobel? She was a perfect baby. Now she is 4yrs 11 months, but about 44yrs old in cynicism. She has a macabre sense of humour and has the mood swings of a 14yr old girl with a penchant for wiccan magic, Anne Rice books and the colour black. But she also loves fluffy things, ponies, pink and cuddles. She just pretends she doesn't. She has spent one term at school, and couldn't tell you one thing she learnt there. No criticism of the school there, just the way she is.

Callum. He is 6yrs 10mths and is fabulous. He is ridiculously tall, absurdly bright, caring, sensitive to others, a brilliant big brother and incredibly well-rounded young man. He has a very wise head on his shoulders, and is probably the biggest reason for our decision to home-school.
He is, as the cliché goes, 'into everything'. He finds the world, and the concepts, people and places in it fascinating. He is super-inquisitive, and delights in passing on his knowledge to others. He is a true inspiration, and doesn't ever get the credit he deserves because we are really rather busy, so here it is - Cal, you're a SUPERSTAR!

And then, there's us. Rich and Rach. Here we are:
(looking much younger than we are these days, lol)
We have our own interests and pursuits. I am taking my degree through the Open University after dropping out of 'proper' Uni after a year, hopefully to gain teaching qualifications and teach Primary age. Until then I will just do any job that will support my family financially, and allow me the freedom to spend time with my wife and children.
Rach is an inspiration to all, and could do whatever she put her mind to and be the best at it. At the moment she is at a crossroads, and has to decide if she wants to go into nursing to follow a career dream and train as a midwife, take a doula training course and essentially give pre- and post-natal support to clients, or to follow her number one true love and go to Uni to study Drama and English. I don't envy her choice one bit, but either way she naturally has my full support.

So that's us. We moved to the North West of England 3 years ago, closer to my family but sadly away from Rachel's. Callum went to the local nursery, followed by Isobel into the 2-3yrs group a year later. The nursery was fantastic, staff were approachable, committed and very very good at their jobs. The children still have very fond memories of their time there, which is why we will be sending Alex and Sam in the future.
Callum began at the local Primary School in 2005. To be honest, at the time it was something of a shock to the system. The school seemed well run, a competent headmaster and decent teachers. Callum settled quite well, was very fond of his teacher and was doing good work in class. As time went on he became one of the most popular pupils in the staffs' eyes, and I would regularly be approached by teachers and assistants, dinner ladies and playground attendants telling me how proud we should be, how he was a credit to us and that he was always polite, friendly, helpful and hard working. This was obviously wonderful to hear, but at the back of our minds was the fact that although we knew he was a good lad, we felt it was strange for these people who must have had dozens, hundreds of children pass through their lives, to be waxing lyrical about a boy who simply knew how to behave and treat people with respect.

Anyway, we carried on as normal, Callum enjoyed school to a point, although we rarely heard much about what he did there - most tales would be about what he did in the playground or what naughty thing a particular child had done. When we did push him for answers to what he did he rarely seemed to do anything different from week to week.
At home, we started to notice subtle changes in his behaviour. Arguments were more frequent, tantrums which we hadn't seen since he was 2 were becoming a regular occurance. By the time he ended Year 1 last June he seemed a completely different child to the one we had first sent to school. :-(

The summer saw a gradual change in his attitude and the sunny, joyous Callum was apparently back. Then the first term of Year 2 saw him become fretful again. Of particular concern was his attitude to tests. He would have weekly spelling tests, and he is by no means a poor speller. But every week he would panic and stress about it and come out with hugely inconsistent results. He would get 14 out of 15 one week, but then because he did so well he would put huge amounts of pressure on himself and end up with 3 out of 15 the next week. He would then become embarassed and clam up and be sulky and surly for the next few days. Occasionally he made himself sick with the worry of it all.
Also among his concerns was the attitude of the teachers and staff. We lost count of the number of times he would come home with tales of bad behaviour going unpunished, good behaviour being ignored. Each week a 'Shooting Star' would be awarded to the pupil who had contributed the most to a positive school life, and Callum so desperately wanted to win it, and was so proud when he did. But eventually he started to question why some were being awarded it when they were consistently rude, lazy or aggressive, so we had to enlighten him that in this day and age they had to be shared out among all the pupils so none of them felt left out. His aghast response was something along the lines of "But that's really stupid Dad. Jacob's really mean to everyone, how come he gets one? They shouldn't do that, it's not fair". When a six year old is questioning his own school's policies, it makes you think doesn't it?

At the same time, Isobel had started in Reception class. We don't really know how she got on, she had little to report and it appeared the teacher only had time for the parents of those children who were very demanding. Issy is the type of child that needs attention to flourish. She had this at nursery school and slowly became sociable and open. She has a tendancy towards being a very insular, quiet little girl, she isn't the type of girl to ask questions, and would accept being quiet and ignored if nobody cares to help draw her out of herself.

And it was around about this time we realised the fundamental problem with the school - a very high proportion of children who had no concept of how to behave, how to treat people with respect or how to learn. Unfortunately their parents were no better. And a group of teachers who had neither the ability nor the inclination to change that, because they were too busy trying to tick the boxes and fill their quotas.

The consequence of all this is that we became very intrigued by a dear friend of ours who has home-schooled her 8 year old and plans on doing the same with her daughter who is Sam's age.
Previously the concept had never even been discussed, and if they were I imagine the phrases 'organic-lentil-eating, tree-hugging, yoghurt-knitting hippies' were used. But now it all began to make sense, which was liberating, exciting, and terrifying. There was this whole world out there who had taken their children out of school for such a wide variety of reasons - philosophical, economical, geographical - and the more we read the more we felt like this was 'our world'. We never seemed to 'fit in' where we are now, having moved from an area with a wide multi-cultural demographic to a somewhat less tolerant and varied community. If we just say three little letters, you'll know what we mean - B.N.P..... We knew there was no point in moving the children to a different school in the area because they all had the same problems - ignorance and intolerance is seemingly added to the water supply.

Callum had an incident at school in December that was the straw that broke the camels back, when he was made to sit at the back of the classroom with the 'naughty kids' all afternoon for an accidental playground upset. Yes, they really did have an area where the naughty children were put, nice labelling there.... His teacher also called him a liar when he tried to defend himself. Anyone with an ounce of sense knows that Callum is not a liar. He is a great many things, don't think us deluded and that outr precious little angel can't do a thing wrong - he most certainly can. But he is not a liar.

And so after lots of reading, discussing and consulting with the kids, the decision was made relatively quickly and easily. We would take responsibility for the education of our children.

Help! :-)