Consultation Results

Home Education - registration and monitoring proposals
can be found here.

Right to Reply

A Response to Graham Badman‟s Report to the Secretary of State on the Review of Elective Home Education in England and reaction to the CSF Select Committee hearing on Monday 12 October 2009

Open PDF File here.

Teach your own - John Holt

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Academic Work Religion & Spiritual children's for

Rudolf Steiner & Waldorf Education

Read Steiner's books on education (PDF format) or listen to his lectures (just click on the book covers).


[from: Waldorf Homeschoolers]

Maire Mullarney

Maire Mullarney, mother, home educator, nurse, founder member of the Green Party, journalist and author, has died. Marie Mullarney taught her 11 children at home. She didn't have any teaching experience when she started. One of her books was very influential in home education. What follows is from its introduction:

"If those inside cannot repair the system it is up to those outside to move. Anything school can do, you can do better is my contribution. After some eighteen quiet years of childwatching I had come to realize that school was a time-wasting and inefficient attempt to enable one generation to share knowledge with the next. It had not dawned on me that sharing knowledge was only a minor purpose of the system..."

Charlotte Mason

Fancy some online reading? What about...

Home education series (volume 1) by Charlotte Mason?
You can download it here. And you'll find volume 3 here.


"Let children alone... the education of habit is successful in so far as it enables the mother to let her children alone, not teasing them with perpetual commands and directions - a running fire of Do and Don’t ; but letting them go their own way and grow, having first secured that they will go the right way and grow to fruitful purpose."


Also worth checking:
Charlotte Mason's
20 Principles

Society's grip

"Why does society need to ‘have a grip’ on education of my children? Society does not “have a grip” on whether or not I feed or clothe my children. Why does it need to “have a grip” on their education?"

From a response to A Class Apart - read it here.

Home Education - News

Financial Times: A Class Apart, by Rob Blackhurst

"It’s 11 o’clock on Tuesday morning. Throughout Britain, school bells are ringing and corridors are pressed with shrieking teenagers on their way from geography to double science. Excuses are being formulated for late homework; gossip is being shared. But elsewhere, an alternative vision of contemporary British education can be seen. Across kitchen tables and on suburban sofas, in museums and parks, a growing tribe of home-schooled children is learning without whiteboards, timetables or uniforms."

Read it here.

Home Education - News

Alan Smithers: Home education's time may have come

"Home education's time, therefore, may have come. It is specifically listed as an accepted method of full-time education up to age 18 and it is exempted from the requirement to be following a curriculum leading to a recognised qualification. As well as the growing numbers claimed by home education enthusiasts, its ranks could thus be swelled by those wishing to escape the government's impositions on 16 to 18 year-olds."

Long term breastfeeding

Home educating mum raises awareness of the advantages of long term breastfeeding. Read it here and here.

Don't think I've ever mentioned it, but DJ was 4 when he stopped breastfeeding. Here, the Dalai Lama talks about the link between breastfeeding and the development of altruism & affection. He tells how his own dad, at 10 or 11, was still asking for mummy milk.

Todays link: Breastfeeding Community

Elective home education

"Headteacher David Dixon takes a close look at the philosophy behind elective home education, enshrined in a recent consultation document on guidelines to cover this parental option."

Read it here.

Living curriculum

... for home educators: "To those of us who educate our children through the state or private sector, home education is a bit of a mystery, an option we wouldn't contemplate because we think it is too time-consuming or that we're not qualified enough to pass on knowledge to our children.

Yet, although parents admit it is a huge commitment in terms of both time and effort, they don't have to be super-educated or have teaching qualifications. What they do need to accept is the responsibility for keeping their children intellectually stimulated and culturally curious."

Read more...

Surge in Bullying

News from Scotland:
Surge in bullying behind increase in home education

"INCREASING numbers of pupils are being withdrawn from state schools to be educated at home with large numbers blaming a bullying "avalanche", according to new figures."

Read more...

While we were away

Home education: a class apart
"They are sparky, enthusiastic and imaginative, yet have never seen the inside of school. Meet the 'home-eds'."

They have no right to check
"Parents are at all times responsible for their child’s education, a duty which they can choose to discharge by sending the child to school or otherwise. There is no question of being “allowed” by the local authority to make a free choice between equally valid and legal options for the education of one’s child."

Job Juggling and the Home Educating Family
"As lifestyle challenges go, combining earning a living whilst at the same time home educating your children, has to be one of the toughest."

From Extreme to Mainstream

This paper establishes that "home schooling is a thriving educational movement both in Canada and the United States, [and] that the academic and socialization outcomes for the average home schooled child are superior to those experienced by the average public school student."