LONG MAY PRODUCTIVE VARIATIONS FLOURISH
When is a school not a school? Answer: when it is a home-education
centre.Last week, I visited one of these in Chard which serves Dorset
and Devon, as well as Somerset.
Home education is exactly what it says on the tin: parents teach their
children at home instead of sending them to school. As I have
discovered, through people coming to my surgeries and writing to me,
this is a rather more frequent phenomenon today than it used to be a
while back. Parents who, for one reason or another, are well equipped
to teach their children at home are doing just that.
Some of the parents are ex-teachers; others have qualifications in the
sciences or the arts. What they have in common is the feeling that
they can give their children a superior education by investing time
and effort on what is often a one-to-one basis.
In case this all sounds far-fetched, it is worth remembering that most
of the most distinguished people in British history were actually
tutored at home rather than going to school.
There are, of course, disadvantages. It is more difficult for the
children to make friends, and it is hard for those parents who are not
polymaths to teach every subject.
However, the home-education centre is a kind of club in which the
parents and children meet for a day or two a week, so that the parents
with particular skills can lead classes or give tuition in those
fields, swapping with parents who have other skills. It is also an
opportunity for the children to meet and make friends, and for the
parents to share notes, exchange text books and other equipment, and
generally support one another in their endeavours.
I entered the home education centre with some trepidation. Would it, I
wondered, be serious and scholarly, or would it be chaos? I need not
have worried. There was every sign both of serious scholarly endeavour
and of well-behaved, well-adjusted children. In one corner, a mother
with university degrees in three languages was teaching Latin. In
another, children were engaged in art work.
Talking to the organisers, I discovered that one of the problems is
that their children are often ready to take GCSEs at an earlier age
than most other children, but that they have difficulty meeting costs
of taking the exams. If this were the worst problem encountered in any
of our schools, life for teachers and ministers of education would be
a lot easier.
By now, I really ought to know how much goes on underneath the radar
of media coverage and political debate. But when one sees something
like this happening, there is still that slight thrill of discovering
that people are actually capable of doing really good things that are
completely outside the ordinary run. Long may such productive
variations flourish.