As a single parent I can honestly say that Home Education has been both the best and the most challenging thing I have ever done in my life. In common with many single parents, I didn’t get any financial support from the father of my child, nor did I have a supportive family, so the decision was not just a brave one but some would say a crazy one! However I’d have needed a lot more courage and craziness to have put my artistically and musically gifted son through school where he was so unhappy. He is now 18 - a happy, whole-hearted artist and musician – I shudder to think what life would have been like and I not been both brave and mad.

 

We were living in a rented house and I was on Working Families Tax Credits when we decided to Home Educate, because I had had to give up most of my work to raise him. I was also an older mother. However I took the view that as it costs £5000 to put a child through state school, and I was ‘saving’ the government this money, they were actually making a small profit out of me. I also knew that Home Education would mean I’d be raising a member of society who was not going to be a drain on government resources. In spite of this rationalization, my confidence was very low. As any single parent knows, it’s hard having to do everything yourself – cook, clean, wipe noses, put up shelves, teach maths – and keep confidence high. So my Home Education journey, especially in the early years, was an exercise in trust. But trust is a muscle – the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. And the more we Home Educated, the more I trusted what was happening and the wondrous experience of what my son and I were learning. I have the most wonderful memories –both of us curled up on a sofa drinking hot chocolates and reading Tin Tin books (which was how he learned to read), sitting in a park together, painting (which was how he learned to use water colour)…. Memory can be a kind filter, and when I look back at those years the tears, the frustration, the counting-the-pennies, the family disapproval, are all dimmed. I just remember this beautiful, warm, happy sensitive child growing and becoming naturally who he was rather than becoming a coping version of what school would have made him become.

 

As an older single mother, with no pension, I realized I had to do something to earn a living, however, and to try to safeguard our financial futures. Home Education was not going to be sacrificed, so whatever I did it would have to be at home, or in a place where I could take my son. I laugh to remember my first attempt was to run a home-ironing service. I was always rubbish at ironing, but it seemed to be at least something I could do at home. I remember weighing my washing to see how much I could charge per pound! It was only when a friend reminded me that I had some qualifications (an English degree and a PGCE) that I remembered I could perhaps tutor. Single parenthood can sap your sense of who you are and what you achieved prior to becoming a parent. I needed to shake myself by the shoulders to remind myself that I once had skills I could perhaps sell.

 

I began very slowly, working for a teaching agency (my son would come with me when I taught other children, sometimes learning alongside). I also began teaching for the National Extension College – again this was work I could do at home and, in time, online. My big breakthrough came when I started to work for the Open University. This involved evening teaching (and a baby sitter for my son, who didn’t know what a baby sitter was!). Eventually he came with me to the evening classes and learned a fair bit sitting in the back of the class – I was teaching an ‘Introduction to the arts’ class and he would contribute his six penn’orth, much to the amusement of the other students.

 

I would like to think I had some strategy for all this – some carefully thought through plan – but I didn’t.  I put up with criticism from family and others – some of it very harsh – because in spite of all the difficulties we had to go through I knew that this child I was raising was happy, whole, loved and developing a strong sense of who he was. Values were important, too. We valued the simple things in life, we didn’t need much money to be happy and we had good friends in the Home Educating community.

 

Eventually my son was old enough to be left on his own while I went out to teach and although we still did things together, he could also be left alone to learn. When this window appeared I was able to develop my teaching even more and although it was immensely challenging, and took a big toll physically at the time, I don’t regret a bit of it.  I realized Home Education was about my learning, too. I learned that if children are trusted, they will show you what they need to learn and whatever is learned is more worth the knowing because it has been sought.  

 

And it is a blessing and an irony that because of what I have learned about Home Education I am now able to pass that on to other children. I remember 5 years ago asking in an online forum if anyone would be interested if I wrote some course materials for Home Educated children, to help them get IGCSEs. The response was a resounding ‘YES!’ In the last 5 years I have taught 1000 home educated children, and helped others because of what I have learned through my own experience. I am aware that everything I have learned on my Home Education journey – every single challenge, every single triumph – has enabled me to pass it on and help and celebrate with other families.

 

My son is now doing an Open University degree, his main focus being psychology. Most of his life, however, is spent making music and creating art, as these are his passions and he wants eventually to make them his career. I am still supporting him, not just financially, but in the way Home Educators support their children. I say ‘YES’ to his passionate love for music and art. It isn’t a plan B, it is a Plan A. Reach for the stars, never disbelieve your ability to accomplish something, don’t let the nay-sayers make you lose heart; learn from adversity, keep strong, keep the faith. These are lessons for life, not just school. I may have learned more from home education than has my son. I feel so very much the richer for it…