Musical gig.......and THE Consultation · Wednesday July 25, 2007 by Ann
The girls have gone off to Manchester, where Lucy and the band she sings with have a gig tonight.
This is the second time the band has played at this place and she is really looking forward to it. The band is made up of three home educated and formally home educated lads, who Lucy joined just a few months ago. They are very talented musically and each play a number of instruments and they write their own songs. I am feeling a little funny as this is the first time I have ever missed an occasion where Lucy has been performing. Unfortunately this time the date has coincided with me having to work-still with her sister and friends there, Lucy will enjoy herself anyway.
This morning I have been looking at the Government’s consultation on home education guidelines. I know that many other home education blogs have been talking about this, but thought it was worth mentioning here, for everyone to make up their mind as to whether they want to make a personal response.
The Government have consulted on home education before-in 2005, but on that occasion would only allow responses from organisations and so there were many responses from LEA’s asking for more regulation of home education and pro home education responses from just three or four organisations.
This time however individuals and organisations can respond. Considering there are thought to be up to 40,000 home educators in this country the number of people responding so far totals only 370-and this probably includes all 150 or so local Authorities!!
More details on what to say, how to respond and example responses are to be found on Freedom for Children to Grow
The response to a FOI request from a veteran home educator to the DFES about correspondence on the subject of home education clearly show what the Government had in mind for us -this comment is representative of the content;
“I am working on a consultation, which will propose introducing compulsory registration and monitoring for home education (as well as clearer standards which home educators will have to meet)”.
The full results of the FOI requests are available to read on the AHEd wiki pages and are IMHO scary reading!
So the Government clearly intended that we should be registered, monitored and made to attain the standards they dictate.
For some reason they have held back from doing so at this time-BUT THAT MAY CHANGE, depending on the responses they get-and LA’S ARE DEMANDING THAT CHANGE!
If standards are bought in-how will we be made to fit?
Whilst one can only guess at what they mean by standards, I can imagine that my youngest child not starting to read until the age of 13, would not meet them!
What consideration of her very severe dyslexia, which the school had totally failed to recognise or the fact that she left school after just under 5 years of their standards and was completely unable to read or spell a single word, would be taken is not known and I don’t want to chance it.
Through autonomous home education that child’s education has run ahead, whilst waiting for reading and spelling to catch up-which it has done, now aged 14 she can do both well. She is bright, confident, well educated, happy and a completely different person from the scared child who had no self belief and who thought herself stupid and ugly and worthless. That is what LA standards did for Lucy.
With this kind of Government/LA interference would the outcomes we have achieved have been the same? I fear that many LA Inspectors are trained and experienced in schooling models and would not/do not understand autonomous home based education, practised by many families that we know personally. This type of education will simply not lend itself to any type of imposed monitoring and measurements of progress and standards.
I also noticed that one of the suggested regulations somewhere revealed with the FOI requests was ‘that children must be given opportunity to socialise with his or her peer group’. Now I know of families, with children who have special needs-some with an Asperger type diagnosis and some with health related conditions like CFS, for whom big meetings or other situations where they have the opportunity to socialise with peers would not suit their child.-and I think they need to ask, do you wish for some outside body to dictate when and where and how often your child be made to socialise?
I also am really concerned as to how my children would have reacted if they had been made to see an outside professional who was there to assess their progress, particularly in the early days when they first were deregistered from school and we were struggling to help them regain their self belief and self confidence.
Please think again if you have decided that these consultations do not affect you. They are not just for people who have chosen to HE they are also for people like my family, who were forced into this-even though it has now become a lifestyle choice. Every home educating family is doing this because for one reason or another the ‘standards’ set in the schooling systems do not fit with our families, for whatever reason!
If you do nothing else please fill in the box at the end and say this!
Please be clear, this present consultation on guidelines may only be the first step-the Government, in response to the LA insistence may yet say that this consultation led them to believe there IS a case for closer monitoring/regulation etc.
Many responses from the LA’s are in already-and we have evidence that the woman who is collating them is reading every single one as they come in- and we wonder how much she is influenced by them as she seems to have no real experience of home education or family life herself.
It is now up to everyone of us to respond-the consultation ends on 31st July.
Your children can respond-they are stakeholders and so can supportive family members-my mom has responded!
Don’t be put off by the form, fill in what you can but you can just tick the ‘not sure’ response if necessary but here is a additional comments box at the end and this is where you get a chance to say, why home education free from regulation and monitoring is vital for you and your family.
There are suggested responses for you to look at-but your personal words and stories-BY THE HUNDREDS-is what will make the difference here. We MUST counter and out number the response coming in from the LA’s-or we may have seemed to have won one battle but we will loose the war.
Numbered together we can make a difference -but we must each respond to make it effective.
Back again-and catching up. · Tuesday July 24, 2007 by Ann
I’m back again, I have blogged here for a month before, if you are new to the blog you can see my previous entries starting here
Since last I was here we have been very busy.
Lucy went to a week’s residential stay with the choir she sings with at Easter. They were singing all week and had a fabulous time and then played a couple of gigs on the way home. Whilst staying at Dunfield House the choir recorded a CD, details can be found on Stream of Sound
and the choir can be heard on their myspace
In May, Lucy and I went to a local home ed group holiday near to Monmouth, where we shared Biblins Youth Centre with about 34 other home educators-and some brave souls who camped there! It rained all week, but still we managed to do a fair old amount of canoeing and kayaking. Some adults laid a flour trail and we had a treasure hunt and there was also lots of walks, cycling and playing in the woods.
Despite the dreadful weather we had a wonderful time.
I think I will be saying that for every camp we went to!
In June we went to Peak Camp which is held in a very beautiful spot at Beresford Dale near to a village called Hartington We spent a week there with a crowd of home educating friends and had a good time. The weather was fabulous at the beginning of the week, with everyone passing the suntan cream but by midweek everything had changed to the weather we are beginning to expect for this summer.
We just about had time to wash all the mud off before we set of for HesFes 2007 part 1 As a family we love HesFes and this time, our whole family came, our three children plus my three stepchildren and my step grandchildren. We loved it from beginning to end-there is something for all ages every day.
And of course we enjoyed the music-but one of my highlights of the week was the children’s cabaret. Children get to put themselves down to perform if they want to. You end up with a wide cross section of people performing-from three year olds singing ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’, serious violin players, teenagers performing funny sketches and all sorts. It is fabulous!
Youngest daughter finally sang at the cabaret after four years of just watching-and got an enormous amount of support from the lovely audience. She did the same the following year and then last year the organisers gave her her own solo slot one of the evenings. The support she got from the crowd was fantastic and after that she started to appear in festivals elsewhere.
This year ‘Lucy’ sang again, but this time she had a solo spot and one with the band she sings with-and then they were asked to perform on Radio HesFes on the last night, which was broadcast live on the internet. Opportunities and support like this give confidence and change lives-it is now pretty certain that Lucy will make her living as a singer in some form or other.
And then the girls and I have just returned from the EO gathering here
A lovely campsite, where we pitched the tents in sheltered clearings in the woods-sheltered but muddy-and we were there all week last week so it got wetter and muddier as the week went by! Still it didn’t seem to dampen the girls enthusiasm though!
Apart from all of the trips away time has flown by at home. Alice quit FE college after they completely failed to provide her with the extra help for her specific learning difficulties- we were very disappointed with the level of support actually provided.
It seems that the college are well able to cope with David’s level of dyslexia, but seem to fail completely with anything more complex.
Still it has been lovely to have Alice at home again, with Lucy, dh and I. She has enjoyed the freedom to learn in your own way, that home education offers, again-as well as the freedom to come to camps!
Alice is reassessing her needs for the future and the choices available. Once again she is looking closely at the Open University, which is what Lucy will be using. They are both quite excited on looking up the choices of courses available.
David has completed his A levels at FE college now and we await the results in August. He has continued with his part time job throughout and intends now to get a full time job, move into a flat nearby with a friend, live a little and then consider going to university, when he has decided what course he would really like to study.
So it has been a very busy time -I have enjoyed all of the camps and gatherings, but they didn’t seem very relaxing!
Last Day · Monday July 23, 2007 by june
This is my last day of doing the blog. I believe Ann is taking over next. If I have another go at blogging my month sometime I hope that I have more time to put aside just to spend time on posting, it all seems to have been very rushed on my part.
We have now officially finished Home Education for the summer. We don’t really “stop” for the summer, but because Tom goes to school we are all very aware of term and holiday times. We may be in the Summer Holidays now, but Liz still made muffins today (raspberry and white chocolate), she is getting good at baking on her own. She also practised her flute, and updated her blog. I hardly saw James today as he has spent the day with his mates, but we still found time to work on the new tunes he needs to learn before he went out. Tom chilled, it always takes him a few days to settle into school holidays.
Last Saturday, Liz went on her first ever organised coach trip without me. It was very wet but it seems to have been a success, which is good because she goes on her second one this coming Saturday. At least they are planning to be inside this time.
The decluttering has come to a standstill, this is one of my main jobs over the next few weeks. I did throw away quite a few bin bags of rubbish, and bag up about four bags for the charity shop (although unfortunately they haven’t quite made it out of the door yet). There is still an awful lot more to do. Ideally we are looking to move house. I don’t feel like I have a lot of control over this – several different things will need to fall into place to make it happen – so de-cluttering is one thing I can do. To be prepared.
I’m now getting myself ready for a new time in our life. James is going to college – I still have forms to fill in :-( He is really looking forward to it, and it’s great to see life moving forward for him. I’ve been spending time thinking about next year’s Home Education for Liz. She is so different from James. With James we did lots of science (which isn’t really my “thing”) and quite a bit of history, but with Liz she is much more into Art, Music, Languages, and has been very resistant about history up until now (too gory, and people die). She isn’t struggling with Literacy in the same way James has, we just need to work on her spelling some more. So it is all going to be very different, and I’m looking forward to that. I’m hoping we can have some fun.
I'm still here! · Thursday July 19, 2007 by june
At least until next week.
I’m sorry that I haven’t managed to post very often. Since the children’s hard drive died everyone has been using my computer, and I have been having to fight for computer time.
We have managed to put the children’s hard drive into this computer, so hopefully I can organise everyone to back up their files and then get around to fixing their computer. I’m not sure it is actually the hard drive, and I’m hoping that we might get away with re-installing Windows – it’s worth a try, before we spend money on a new hard drive.
James is in a really relaxed mood at the moment, he has been spending most of his days playing music, doing craft activities, and listening to story tapes. He goes to St John’s Cadets, and is away today, on duty with them at a big local event.
Unfortunately Liz has had a really nasty summer cold and cough. Last week was mainly dealing with her feeling so ill. She is much better now, but still coughing a little.
We spent last weekend at a folk festival. The Folk group that the children attend took part – they all got to play, and Liz did some clog dancing. Lots of good music – and an enjoyable weekend – but it all seemed to be over far too quickly, and life moved on.
We managed to go to the Home Ed group on Monday, which went well. Tuesday, I had to go shopping to organise some things for Tom who had a day doing canoing and team building skills on Wednesday. Wednesday was a bit of a write off at home – but as long as those kinds of days are few and far between I don’t worry too much. We did play some music, as we are busy learning lots of new tunes at the moment, and baked some blueberry and banana muffins.
That brings us to today. There is just Liz and me here today – we’ll have to get used to it being like this from September. We went to town to buy fruit and veg from a cheap stall, but town was really busy and most of the good stuff had already gone. On our way home we bought some food for a picnic – much more than we needed for just the two of us. Then we made up the picnic and went down to the beach to eat it – the weather was very hot by then. Liz played in the water, which was by far the best place to be in that heat. Now I need to organise myself to take her to her flute lesson.
Oops, sorry I forgot... · Monday July 9, 2007 by june
...to update.
We are definitely in Unschooling mode, much more than usual – even for summer.
James has been pottering around doing art kits, playing music, playing a CSI game on the computer, reading his book, sorting through his stuff… although I’ve managed to pin him down about once a day to do Toe-by-Toe (soooo near the end now) and some Physics. His friends are all finished with their GCSEs now, so he has also spent time with them.
I’ve given up on trying to get Liz to focus, and we have been having fun doing lots of baking. She has been writing emails, playing music, reading, playing Castle Wars on the PC, and Zelda on the GameCube… There will only be Liz and me in September, so I’m not too bothered about being really relaxed about Home Ed right now.
We went up town on Thursday to buy fruit and veg – and got soaked. Other than that I have been busy with decluttering the house, and tidying and cleaning (we had guests over this weekend). The house looks really nice this morning, but I know it won’t stay that way. There are still lots of boxes and bin bags full of stuff to sort through, and most of it is on it’s way out of the house. Why do we accumulate so much stuff???
Oh… and the children’s hard disk has died, so I need to do my best to retrieve the data. That’s my job for today. We should be going to the Home Ed group but Liz and I are suffering from a summer cold and I think we will give it a miss. Specially since I will be running the kids around to their music lessons in the evening. There’s also the washing up to do. We had eight people for dinner yesterday and I only noticed this morning that no one did the washing up.
So I’m thinking that Liz and I might make some (cornish type) pasties this morning (out of yesterdays leftovers) and take them down the beach for a picnic lunch. If the weather stays this nice. Other than that I know James has a wicker basket kit waiting here – big enough for both of them to make something.
hum drum · Tuesday July 3, 2007 by june
Life and Home Ed are still muddling along nicely, but in a nothing really to talk about way.
Liz’s Saturday morning orchestra has finished for the term so on Saturday we all had a good sleep in, the first one I’ve had for a really long time, and a lazy day. Sunday saw us visiting Grandma’s house, she has some family friends visiting, so we all had a good day socialising. Half way through the afternoon some other family friends turned up, but unfortunately we were in the middle of tea and they wouldn’t stay. I hadn’t seen them for nearly twenty years so I was very disappointed, we are now planning a visit to take Grandma to visit them one day over the summer. It’s always an interesting journey, with lots to see. This time there were herons and deer to spot, and a vintage fire engine (last week we were following three vintage racing cars). On the way home the road was flooded in places – which added some entertainment to the journey.
Yesterday we did bits during the morning… music and art work mainly, then went to the Home Ed group in the afternoon. It was another interesting journey, we came a cross a large military helicopter (apache?) hovering above the road. So we drove up a hill towards it hovering at the top, then drove under it – a very strange experience. We then had a good discussion about a foreign lorry driver who (a) didn’t know where he was going, and (b) thought it was OK to stop at each roundabout exit while he decided whether or not to take it. The group was good, although the children’s usual friends weren’t around. Liz was quite lost at first, but then joined in anyway.
We returned from that journey (it is a 60 mile round trip) to eat a quick tea, before heading out 10 miles in the other direction to take Liz and Tom to their music lessons.
Liz's big day · Friday June 29, 2007 by june
This was the highlight to Liz’s week. The whole family went along to watch/listen, and we had a good evening.
Liz thoroughly enjoyed herself.
Friday already! · Friday June 29, 2007 by june
Where did the week go.
It’s been a bit of a muddling-through week. Things have happened, everyone has been well occupied, and the weather has been pretty awful.
That sums it up really.
James has found yet another unopened art set in his room and has been busy with that, while listening to Star Wars I on tape. He is definitely in Summer wind down mode. There is also this feeling that he is growing up – going to college – and he is sorting out his room (throwing things away that should have gone years ago) and finishing off things (like these art kits) that he isn’t going to have time for in his “new” life. He is being very organised and self-motivated, and that is great. We are still fitting in some Physics, Toe-by-Toe and Reading.
Today is his last day of compulsory education!
Liz has been finding it hard to settle to anything, this has been going on for a couple of weeks now, probably just something she has to work through. She has been writing, emailing, playing music, reading… all the usual everyday activities, but it hasn’t been easy to get her interested in anything new. She is reading her book at the moment, and I think we’ll play some games (maybe scrabble) and do some puzzles next.
I’m busy de-cluttering the house. It is quite overwhelming and I’ll try to write a post about it later.
Quick update... · Monday June 25, 2007 by june
Well… James finished his painting, with excellent results. He also finished his writing. This was a very good story (and well told) but he still has a problem working out where to put commas, and with his spelling. The spelling, however, is much better than anything he would have done a year ago – the problems are mainly with words that have two spellings, (eg. “there” and “their”). Today he did a GCSE maths paper, Toe by Toe, played music, edited his writing, read his book, did some electronics, and looked at his bowl ( but didn’t actually start working on it again).
Liz has finally got moving with her story. She had to research everything first, which I guess is a good learning experience in itself, but it did slow things down quite a lot. She has been doing more work on her clay bowls and playing with a magnet kit, reading her book, and playing music.
We had a strange day today, it didn’t start well at all (I’m not going to go into details) and I had a very stressful morning. As a result I decided that we wouldn’t go to the Home Ed group. So I’m not very popular :-( I hate it when I have to make a decision like this. As it turns out my iffy stomach in the morning, has turned into severe lower back pain, and I don’t quite know how I would have managed to drive all that way home feeling like this. I now have to do the music lesson run this evening – and that is worrying me – but at least it isn’t as far as the Home Ed group, and I’ll just be sitting in the car when I’m there. I’ll take a hot water bottle for my back and hope it turns out OK.
The weekend was busy, as usual. All three went to the folk group on Friday night, Liz had orchestra on Saturday morning, James spent Saturday with his friends. We all watched Dr Who in the evening. Sunday was wet. We went to Grandma’s house and watched the video of “Holes” – absolutely brilliant film, and one of our favourites.
Planning · Friday June 22, 2007 by june
I’ve been giving some thought to planning this morning.
Ever since I began Home Educating, I’ve been aware that as well as a daily plan we work on a seasonal plan.
In the Autumn I’ve always tried to get out of the house. The weather is usually nice enough and the countryside is probably at it’s best at that time of year – lots of interesting things to see. Yet there is also an urge to get moving, to get started with Home Ed, probably because of the whole “back-to-school” feeling. So we tend to plan lots of Home Ed activities, and fill the days with those, meaning that we have to shoe-horn in the trips out of the house. Autumn is a time when we tend to be quite ambitious – starting big projects and working on lots of creative activities.
There aren’t many indoor places to go around here on colder days, so our Winter schedule is very much home based, with maybe the odd trip out to the library, swimming baths, and Home Ed group. We tend to use a quite structured Home Education approach during these months, and our days are full of the more traditional educational activities.
In the Spring we try to take advantage of the good days when we can. When the children were younger – specially when we had toddlers too, we would try to fit in as many nature walks as possible. The wood, the beach, walking up a hill, feeding baby ducks… The children had nature notebooks, and spring was the time when most of the work was done in them. The children have grown out of this stage now. Spring is similar to Autumn, in that there is the need to get out and do things, but still work to do at home. There is also the feeling that educationally we need to lighten up and do some more fun things.
Then on to summer. Summer has it’s own rhythm, specially after half term (i.e. now). This is when we all do our own thing much more. We are much more relaxed. Days out are planned, walks are taken, the days become much more about ‘living’ than about ‘education’. We try to get to the Home Ed group more often, because it is more pleasant during the summer months when the children can play outside. During the Home Ed day the children plan their own time and activities… Education becomes much more informal.
