Choosing School
People have always asked us ‘how long do you think you’ll carry on for?’ I suppose there is the expectation that at some point we would have caved in and used secondary school, or something along those lines – when education got too hard for us mere mortal parents, or something. I never had any qualms about being prepared to home educate for ever, and neither did Steve. We were (and still would be, if things changed again!) completely committed to seeing it through and making it work for our family. I didn’t ever see it getting too hard, I just saw it as different challenges – to keep one step ahead, or to work to provide the right opportunities, or whatever. I still see it as the ideal way, in fact. I am sincerely hoping that at some point in the future we might change again.
If you’ve read the first in this series of posts, you’ll know that running our business was a factor in our initial decision to home educate the children, to make the best use of our time. It’s been a factor again this time. At the end of last year, having been looking for a while, we found premises for a mechanics workshop which were perfectly suited to our needs, and affordable. Having a workshop has always been part of the master plan, so when the opportunity presented itself, we had to go for it. Steve has only signed the lease this week (which is why I couldn’t blog about it before now), but it’s all systems go there and we are opening next week! Very exciting but obviously it’s been pretty stressful as well. As I write, Steve and his Dad are meeting the signwriters about putting this up on the wall:
The implication of running another business without a great deal of extra capital to invest (well, any, in fact!) is that one of the things that will be invaluable is man hours, ie our time. To be honest, towards the end of last year I was already feeling fairly bad about the amount of time that the children had spent either in the office, or in the car running errands with one or other of us, and we had already (even before the workshop) discussed the possibility of using school.
I think I always knew that there would be a crunch point at the time that Josiah could start school, and here we are. The combination of feeling as though we could manage our time better if we had some childcare in place, and feeling bad about how their time was being compromised by the demands of the business(es) led us to suggest the idea to the children. The evening that we were talking about it, Steve just went upstairs and asked the girls what they would think, and they both said yes very excitedly.
The process was really quick after that. I think if they hadn’t been so positive, we might have taken longer over it and tried to start the new workshop with them still at home, but they just jumped at the idea so much that we decided to give it a go. In the first full week of the January term Steve and I went to see the head at our local primary. By this point, the local school was the only one we were really considering as we can’t afford to pay private fees, and we wanted to be able to walk to school – it’s 5 minutes round the corner! It is a largish ‘outskirts of the city’ C of E Primary school.
When we first visited, I felt so negative, it was all so institutionalised and much of what was held up as wonderful practice was actually stuff that I have come to despise – but hey, it’s crowd management, so to some extent it has to be done like that. The head and most of the staff that we met couldn’t seem to get their heads round the fact that we were only thinking about the idea and not definitely wanting the places, which seemed weird to me, but I guess they don’t have strange people like us in the school every day! Anyway, we arranged a taster day for the children as we felt that would be the best way to help them see, as much as they could, what it would be like.
We considered sending the girls and not Josiah, as he is still so young (and yet too clever by half for a reception class!), but he wanted to do the taster day as well, so he did. They all had a ball, and loved every minute of it. Joe was a bit cautious at first, but he always is, in a new situation. They pushed us to choose fairly quickly whether we wanted the places (we found out later that it was because budgets had to be submitted the next day!), which in some ways was hard and in other ways it meant that the decision was made quickly without any faffing around, and I think that was good.
So, we had a day off to go and buy uniform, and then they started the very next day, giving them a two-day week before the weekend. We’re now at the end of their first full week, and so far it has been incredibly positive. They have all got on really well, and settled down amazingly fast, and I’m very proud of them. They’ve all been absolutely exhausted, bedtimes have been very early (their choice!), but they’ve been happy. I think I’ve found it harder than they have! It’s a big change for everyone, but once we’ve settled into it I am quite sure it will be a really good phase in our lives.
My secret (or not so secret, now that I’ve put it on the internet!) hope is that at some point in the future (perhaps at the end of Primary school, perhaps earlier, maybe different for each child?) they and we will choose home education again. I was looking forward to the really interesting stuff! If I’m honest I’d love them to be out of school and have the freedom to study what they want to, when they want to, during their Secondary (for want of a better word!) years. Not to mention the fact that I’d like to steer them clear of the peer pressure at that age, I think that puberty can be hard enough without throwing school into the equation! But there we go, that’s my personal view at the moment, and everything can and probably will change before we get to it.
We feel really really blessed to have been able to have the past three years of home education. It has allowed us to build really strong family relationships, and we’ve had so much fun along the way. It feels like a really firm foundation to be working from, which is reassuring to me, as I’m still struggling personally with all the changes. However, this move is just the next step in our family’s journey and I know that it’s down to us to make the most of it, seize the day, and enjoy living life differently.