Top Tips on Home Schooling

I have been the Head of Operations at the Oxford Open Learning Trust since 1995 and home educate my own children. These days I mostly seem to spend my time evangelising about home education. However, nothing gives me more satisfaction in my job than talking to the students who had despaired of ever getting an education until they found that they could be home educated.

My Top Ten Tips on Home Schooling

• Make contact with your local Home Education group and share skills and knowledge. Join an online group as well, as sometimes you just want a quick answer and these are great places to ask.
• It's good to make sure your child attends activities outside of home education groups. They'll get to meet other kids and socialise in a different way to the home education groups, and you'll both get a little bit of space to breathe. It's also a great way for you both to get involved and engaged in the local community.
• Investigate all the different varieties of home education, from autonomous education to school at home. Different things are right for different families and even different children at different points in life.
• Local Education Authorities (LEAs) differ in the support they can offer to home educating families. It can be useful to find out from other home educators what services your LEA offers before deciding whether you would find their support useful.
• Get to know the law surrounding home education. It’s a legal right but sometimes you do need to explain that to people and it helps to sound authoritative.
• Remember that you know your child better than anyone, trust your own judgement.
• Relax – you’re almost certainly doing better than you think.
• Make time for yourself. Whether it's an hour in the evening when the kids are in bed, or using childcare to have a day off, it is important. Home educating as well as running a household, possibly working, and parenting is hard work. Find time to recharge yourself.
• Try and get out and get some exercise every day, it helps you and your children concentrate and learn more.
• Enjoy yourself; you will be amazed how much you will learn by home educating. 
• And as a bonus tip, if you’re planning to go down the GCSE/A Level route, enrol with Oxford Home Schooling, but I would say that wouldn’t I...