There are lots of reasons why families initially decide to home educate. For some it is a lifestyle choice made from the beginning, whilst others take the plunge later on for other reasons, often unforeseen. Here are some of the most common reasons for ditching the system and joining our ever-expanding home ed community…
Lifestyle choice
For some families, home education is their first choice. The decision is made early on and they home educate right from the beginning; their children simply don’t start school. Sometimes this is because they were home educated themselves and had a good experience so feel it is the right path for their own children too. Others feel it fits better with their own personal parenting philosophy, as these parents explain:
“It never crossed my mind to send him to school… we followed natural parenting philosophy, it didn’t feel right to suddenly change everything about his life at 4 years old.” ~ Bx
“I felt like at 4 yrs old J was far too young to go to school, I wanted him to have a childhood of freedom to play and play and play some more, I don’t feel like early years education is child centred or based on up to date research about how our children learn and thrive. I also wanted my boys to be together as children and sending J off to school whilst L was home with me didn’t feel right to us.” ~ Maria
“My husbands career plan involved travelling and we wanted to be together as a family.” ~ Katie Jo
“FREEDOM!!!!” ~ Samantha
SEND
Another common reason is that parents feel that the school is not meeting their child’s needs and/ or there is no suitable provision available. Often parents of SEND children feel that the school system tries to make their child fit into a mould that they are just not designed to fit into. This can result in all sorts of issues; it can affect behaviour, lead to bullying, cause damaged self-esteem and mean they start falling (often drastically) behind developmentally/ academically. These are just a few examples. Whilst some SEND parents make this decision early on, others resort to home ed only after multiple failed attempts to find adequate provision.
“Inclusion… lack of.” ~ Sam
Bullying or other school issues
Sad but true; bullying is another common reason that parents remove their child from school and opt to home educate them. Often they have tried to approach the school to tackle the problem but feel they are left with no choice but to pull their child out of that environment before further damage is done.
Of course there is often actually a combination of the above reasons!