Next Monday at 9:00am I will be having a visit from an "Elective Home Education Advisor". I have made a small list of questions I'll be asking him and I'm giving you guys the opportunity to ask him some too! I'll be recording the meeting whether by audio or video/audio, we'll see.

So any way I'm having this visit because we home educate our children. We have 3, ages 6, 2 and 5 months. I deem all of them to be learning! I deem that we are ALL learning, without exception!

Originally I was planning to tell him we were not interested, though I had done some reading and there are some veiled threats out there basically saying if we went down that route it would be an or else situation! Here is one such exert.

Once a parent has decided to home educate and the local authority has been notified, the local authority elective home education administrator will contact the parent to arrange for an elective home education adviser to visit the home of the parent. If the parent is unwilling to meet in their home, a neutral venue will be agreed. Nottinghamshire local authority seeks to work in partnership with parents and would prefer to meet with parent and child. In rare cases, the parent may choose to meet the local authority adviser by themselves or not at all. If parents exercise their right not to meet with a local authority adviser they can then provide evidence through samples of work, diaries, reports from parents or independent tutors or a description of their educational philosophy or in some other appropriate form. Although parents are under no duty to respond to such enquiries, it would be sensible for them to do so.

I phoned them up and asked them if there is any law saying I must comply with them. To which they said NO! But basically if I did not comply at all they would eventually make proceedings to force our children into school (I'm sorry I've forgotten the term he used now.)

Now, I was still tempted to tell him to do one but I kept my cool and the chap actually sounded okay and was in agreement with some points I made so I decided to see him on my own! Here are the questions I have for him so far.

1) What is an Education?

2) What is reasonable? (They use this term a lot!)

3) Who decides what is reasonable education?

4) At what age do we begin to learn?

5) At what age do we complete our learning?

6) Did you learn more at school or in the "real world"?

7) Do you learn more off your peers or elders?

8) Do you learn more from experience or instruction?

9) What qualifies you to evaluate my child's learning?

This is it so far, I would love you guys to add or modify anything here and I will pick the best ones to put forward to the "adviser" ATS Have fun and go all out!

I question i really want answered is why every Child is not treated as an individual with different skills and quality's taking into account the different and unique Upbringing they have had.
To treat everyone equal in education seems foolish to me, Education should be structured around ones individual personality, Skill set and ambitions.
Generic learning should be scrapped altogether, We are not computers to be programmed, we are people.

*Are you concerned about the social implications of having your children home schooled?
*Do you consider your home a proper and reasonable substitute for the real world?
*How will you differentiate between school time and family time?
*Do you have appropriate equipment to meet the calisthenic needs of your children?

You're not the only one prepared, remember that.

I would ask them for standards of learning - what they should know by what age, what skills etc they should acquire and if they have any materials that the parent can use to follow such guidelines.
Put the burden on them! If they cannot answer your questions I would take that as a free hand to educate your children as you see fit (which is how it should be anyway).
Here in the US there are many associations of parents who homeschool.
We did that with 2 of my sons for 2 years and when they went back to public schools they were bored silly as they were several years ahead of their classmates already.
Whatever you do make sure learning is fun so they will pursue knowledge for their entire lives.
You can give them no better legacy than that.

I would create a few lesson plans beforehand to show them your intent is truly serious (as I'm sure it is)
You just need to convince them of that fact.

Originally posted by Chadwickus
*Are you concerned about the social implications of having your children home schooled?
*Do you consider your home a proper and reasonable substitute for the real world?
*How will you differentiate between school time and family time?
*Do you have appropriate equipment to meet the calisthenic needs of your children?

You're not the only one prepared, remember that.

Good point and yes it will be useful to address these.

*My children are home educated, not schooled. I know it may seem pedantic but it is important for me to stress this point. But to answer, no, not at all. There are plenty of places to meet people outside of school and she will be joining dance class/drama class of her choice. After all, have you never made a friend outside of school?

*Home educating does not mean we are confined to the house! lol We learn in various places at various times. Also you use the word "reasonable". What is reasonable?

*Is there a difference? Do we not learn while having our family interactions? I don't deem there to be a time to learn, I believe we are learning all the time.

*What do you deem to be appropriate? Our children are very active as we do not watch any T.V (the occasional movie). We go to the park regularly where they have access to climbing frames among other equipment. The dance classes will also help a lot on this front.

Is that okay Mr Advisor?

Please don't home school your children, It's not fair on them. They need the social interaction that you can only get from school, when I graduated that was the one thing that everybody missed after leaving. I've met home schooled people and they regret it. They may say they like it now, but later on they'll realize what they missed. Any place you take them will not replace the social interaction they're missing, the social skills they'll learn, and the friends they would make.

Originally posted by TedHodgson
I question i really want answered is why every Child is not treated as an individual with different skills and quality's taking into account the different and unique Upbringing they have had.
To treat everyone equal in education seems foolish to me, Education should be structured around ones individual personality, Skill set and ambitions.
Generic learning should be scrapped altogether, We are not computers to be programmed, we are people.

edit on 8/5/12 by TedHodgson because: (no reason given)

I can answer this one.

Education is an institution. It's a factory-production system designed to grind out like-minded children.

The only problem with this; children are individuals and in the institution model their needs are not met. Individualized instruction is next to impossible, and even working in small groups can be challenging. Ergo, lessons are pitched to the "middle" level of the class, with the higher students bored and the lower students hopelessly lost.

If we want to improve education, we've got to lower the student-teacher ratio. But here in the states, with the budget cuts, that ratio is going up, not down.

Nm, question answered above.