I educated my daughter at home, not because she could not attend school, but because she was badly bullied and I was not happy with the level of support from the Head Teacher. This is our story about why we came to the decision to Home Educate.
My daughter and I had just moved to a new town, after a particularly hard time for our family, and were hoping to make a fresh start. At first she settled into the school with no difficulty and quickly made friends, she had always been a popular child at her other schools.
Then it started ... nothing serious at first ... but bad enough to cause her some upset. The reasons given for the bullying ranged from not wearing the "right" sports wear to complete nonsense that she was more advantaged than the local children ... a statement that as a single parent I found almost laughable at the time.
I was visiting the school on a twice weekly basis, but never felt that the situation was being handled very well. The bullying was getting worse and was starting to occur after school, I watched my daughter reduce from a confident, happy child to a shy, nervous wreck ... it was heartbreaking.
After months of continued abuse, with punishments that only increased the harassment out of school, she was on the brink of a breakdown, and our doctor signed her off school due to stress related illness. It was he that first suggested Home Education.
My normally bright, happy and friendly child had become severely depressed and had even admitted suicidal feelings to a counsellor from Kidscape. Up to this point, I had hoped that the situation at the school would have been resolved, this was two weeks before the summer holidays .... then the unthinkable happened.
I had tried to keep her life fairly normal, and encouraged her to keep in contact with the friends she had made at the school. This had been hard as she had become so withdrawn and her confidence in her own abilities had suffered, that she rarely left her bedroom. Then the final straw came that helped us venture into the world of Home Education.
She was walking home from a friends house, not more than a hundred yards from home, when the two bullies attacked her in the street. The girls pushed her to the ground and repeatedly kicked her, fortunately she managed to scramble to her feet and run home.
It was while waiting for the police to arrive, that I vowed she would never return to that school again. They had completely let her down, I felt that they had never really taken the situation seriously. Perhaps if they had, things may not have turned out of control after school.
I had already contacted a couple of organisations offering advice and information on HE and talked about the possibility with my family and daughter. So after what had been a nightmare couple of months, we made the decision.
I withdrew her from the school system in July 1999 and never looked back. Today, (July 2006) She is nearly 17 years old, has just finished her first year at college, and is a far cry from the child that first started Home Education.
Watching the transformation back into a happy, even more confident child was wonderful. Initially, we had thought that maybe she would return to school at some point, but we enjoyed the experience so much, we decided that Home Education was the best choice for us.
On the following pages I've put some information about Home Education in the UK, Links and addresses to organisations that can help and a list of links to websites that we have visited for information for topic study.
I hope you find it useful, and would welcome any feedback through signing the guestbook, however, please note that I am no longer in a position to respond to queries about HE or indeed Media requests for interviews.. If you find any dead links, please let me know then I can update the list.
Thanks Wendy-Jayne (this site last updated 12th February 2008) |
