The beauty of home education from an academic perspective, is the freedom to teach to the child not the age. Home-ed allows you to remove the pressure of academics, which in turn allows you to give your children a bit more freedom in and control of, their education; to give them space and time to discover what it is they like to do and discover what they’re good at.
Education in schools follows a linear path, focused on academics not the child – it has to. There is one teacher to 25+ pupils, and there are academic targets that teacher’s pupils must meet: There is little room for flexibility in either how a subject is taught or when in the school year it’s taught. Home education can offer a young learner flexibility in what, how and when they learn subjects, skills and topics.
If you choose home education for your children, it’s your job to provide access to the resources, teaching and learning opportunities they need to ensure their academic skill set is strong and their knowledge sound, in any core subjects they’ll need (at some point) to take exams in. You also probably want them to enjoy learning, to learn more than just core subjects and to develop skills that can propel them to independence.
It’s also your job, just like any other parent, to help your children explore who they are outside of academics and provide the time, resources, and teaching they need to explore their interests.
Home-ed allows you to take advantage of the extra time gained by not being in school, the flexibility of a homeschool curriculum and the fact you create the ‘school’ timetables to allow your home learners to learn spontaneously.. skipping chapters and swapping books, following interests, chasing up that day’s curiosity.
Not everyone learns at the same pace or at the same time. Home-learning, your child can develop without the (often arbitrary) goal posts of academics + age. You’re able to celebrate their strengths and home-learners need not fear ‘failure’ at skills or subjects they find more challenging. As parent-teacher/ education-facilitator you have the freedom to allocate as much lesson time as is needed to learn a specific task or skill or to skip it entirely – either to come back to at a later date or to replace it with something more worthwhile to the individual learner.
Given time to explore, freedom to learn, and tools to use, every child can succeed at what they’re good at: They just have to find what that is. Home education allows you to help them find it, even if that means academics take a lesser focus.
Our Homeschool Focus
In our homeschool, we have always chosen to prioritise the child over the academics. Numerous studies & the success of education systems in countries such as Finland where students start school at 7, have shown that there is no long-term benefit to forced academics at a young age. Likewise, older children who feel the mental health impact of stressful academic pressure conversely do worse post-school than those who achieve lower results yet enjoy learning. With this in mind, we choose to view education as a series of academic building blocks that do eventually align with peer-based academic targets but without the pressure to achieve specific test-focused goals along the way.
Academic Building Blocks
When planning an education pathway for our children, we think of learning as a series of building blocks. First we start with the basics – the academic equivalent of Duplo and move up slowly, at their pace, to Lego, gradually increasing the complexity of the sets they’re required to build.
0-7 – the building block years
Learning to read and write, basic numeracy, motor skill development, creative exploration and exploring the big world around them.
7-11 – the foundation years
Daily school; building on core academic skill sets – maths, reading and writing, introducing the concept of science as a subject, strengthening general knowledge by expanding their knowledge of the world. Languages.
11-14 – the discovery years
Using the academic tools they now have, these are the years to discover what interests them, where their academic strengths lie and to explore the world of knowledge as widely and extensively as possible.
14+ – the application years
When they take the building blocks of their education to date and shape them into tangible knowledge, demonstrable via qualifications, to allow them to follow their chosen path
Practical Homeschooling
In our homeschool, key stages 1-3 are taught together, skipping forward and back depending on each pupils’ strengths, weaknesses and interest in the subject or topic. We place the same emphasis on learning how to study as what they’re studying. The education plan for our homeschoolers is intended to line up academically with UK Key Stage 4 when they’re ready to start GCSE study courses. Knowledge from the curriculum they’re studying now will line up because it covers KS1-3 guidance, they’ll just have reached Year 9 via a more flexible, less linear path.
As a home educator, it’s my job to help our children develop a skill bank and base knowledge that will enable them to learn what they need to learn, as and when they need to, to teach them how to apply knowledge in a way that achieves their purpose and how to use their skills (inherent and taught) to plan the future they want to live.
In real life, for us that looked like:
0-7 – Books, books, books; play, play, play. Learning to read (as and when they expressed interest).
7-11 – Introducing curriculum to add more structured learning, setting core subjects as non-negotiable, timetabled lessons, and encouraging them to take responsibility for their own learning through interest-led, project-based studies. Books, books, books; play, play, play.
11-14 Our homeschoolers are currently 12 and 10, so we’re entering the discovery years, though we’ve been transitioning there for a while. They continue to study maths daily as a core subject, are expected to spend an agreed amount of time every day reading and writing (they’re bilingual so reading and writing is split across two languages) and they must spend time on (their chosen) language study, but outside this flexible homeschool contract, what they’re studying at any given time is very much led by them.
We take a Montessori-esque approach to guide them, ensure accessible resources include a variety of subjects – from history and art, to politics, medicine and drama – and help them set themselves academic goals and targets. Weekly folders are the key to staying on track while giving them autonomy over their time.
14+ – At the moment our plan is to continue home educating through IGCSEs. This means that just as they would in school, they’ll choose GCSE optional subjects. We plan to use a combination of past papers, textbooks and online, ready-made curriculum to teach them but we’re flexible and will reevaluate when they reach that education point. It may be that outside tutoring is the best option for one child while online school a better option for another – or they may even end up in actual brick-building school or a college for further education. All and any decisions regarding their education are made jointly with them.
It’s important for home educators to think long-term. Education doesn’t end when school does – not over the summer holidays, nor once they’ve graduated. A good education will leave them equipped with the tools and the eagerness to continue to learn, what they want, when they need to, and what they need to when they don’t necessarily want to.
As a parent you need to encourage and push (but not too hard); as a teacher you need to guide them and (academically) push harder than a parent should, and somehow you need to balance the two. It’s an intimidating job because the last thing you want to make a mess of is your child’s education – especially when you’re stepping outside of convention to do it. No matter how involved homeschoolers are in deciding what or how to study, the choice to take this educational pathway is yours but it ultimately affects them. Writing down and reminding myself of these academic building block categories helps settle the homeschool doubts: reminding me that as a teacher, I’m sure we’re setting the groundwork, equipping them with the basic knowledge and skill sets they need for academic success (however they define that and to what level they decide to aim for), and as a parent I can see that they’re happy, fulfilled and learning.