In the UK school is not compulsory but education is. In England and Wales the law states: ‘the parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive full-time education suitable to his age, ability and aptitude, and to any special educational needs he may have, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise’. Consistent with the recognition that education may be provided in the home every Local Education Authority will have inspectors or advisors that meet with home educators to ensure the child’s needs are being met. Most home educated children will be registered with the LEA but there is actually no legal obligation to register a child that has never been to school.

The reasons for home educating are numerous.  One is the flexibility that it provides the family. There is no obligation to follow the National Curriculum and research conducted in the UK and US suggests home educators tend to take from different curricula, devise their own or have a very loose structure to the education they provide. Many expound this flexibility as the greatest virtue of home educating, as Shariska Ajari, a Law graduate and mother of three from Birmingham explains, “I am interested in a child centred and holistic approach to raising my children so the Steiner- Waldorf and Montessori approaches to education are very appealing. I find both approaches compatible with Islam and intend using aspects of these to ensure that my children have the best all round Islamic education that I can provide for them”.

Research seems to suggest that the majority of home educators begin with some form of structured study for their children but many abandon it in favour of a much more destructured approach which has at its heart a belief that children learn naturally and with very little intervention. Self-directed learning tends to be more organic, encourages independent study, independence of thought and allows the child to explore in ways that structured study, timetables, target driven regimes simply cannot. Sara Hadi, a writer who also works in education was home educated for three years and remembers this form of learning as being one of the greatest benefits of home education. “We learnt how to learn basically! My mother would expose us to various stimuli and then let us explore and learn what we could from those.”

Learning how to learn is the driving force by the new Kinza Academy in America. With Sheikh Hamza Yusuf on its advisory board it seeks to revive a traditional education for children. Offering a “classical” educational curriculum it is in the structured camp of home education but where the child is given the tools to then learn themselves. 

Very few home educating families have externally set standard tests or targets that they try desperately to meet. Indeed many believe standardised testing and externally set targets to be damaging to children of all ages but particularly to those that are very young. There are increasing concerns at the levels of stress, depression and unhappiness amongst children and indeed the whole system of standardised testing has come in for sharp criticism and is being reviewed. Professor Thomas McElwain, Associate Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Stockholm, home educated his daughter Maryam who is now thirty. “My wife and I home educated primarily because our daughter just did not want to go to school. She was quite insistent at the age of seven that we home educate her so we did. After trying formal study for a year we abandoned the idea and took a much less structured approach. We would take her to the library and let her loose on the books. However, we did try to do the Finnish Middle School exams with her but abandoned them as she had no interest in them. Her natural curiosity and desire to learn were significantly dampened during this period and we withdrew her from the exams.”

Whilst many home educators do not follow a curriculum and do not partake in standardised tests many home educated children do extremely well academically and do go on to Further and Higher Education. A recent study by Paula Rothermel of the University of Durham (Home Education: Aims, Practices and Outcomes, 2002) found high levels of attainment amongst home educated children. Rothermel found that 64% of home-educated Reception aged children scored over 75% on their PIPS Baseline Assessments as opposed to 5.1% of children nationally.

As far as continuing education to college and university level there is little to suggest that home educated children are in anyway hampered. Research undertaken in the USA by Dr Brian Ray of the National Home Education Research Institute in 2003 found that over 74% of home educated adults (aged between 18-24) had taken college-level courses, compared to 46% of the general US population. Dr Ray also found that 49% of the 7,300 respondents in the study were full-time students who had yet to receive their degrees, which may have led to lower numbers of reported degrees by them.

The most controversial aspect of home education seems to be the belief that any child that does not attend school will be deprived of a necessary and beneficial process of socialisation. The home educators response to this is manifold but basically that there is ample opportunity for socialisation outside of school and that the socialisation in schools is by definition contrived, artificial and in some respects harmful. “For centuries children have socialised with adults, siblings, neighbours and other members of the community without any problem. Peer group socialisation is a very recent phenomenon and coincides with the introduction of mass schooling; we are now led to believe that it has to be the best thing for a child. In fact there is no reason why children that do not socialise with their peer group in a classroom setup should not have very good social skills” says Shariska. Paula Rothermel and Dr Brian Ray also concluded that homeeducated children were ‘socially adept and without behavioural problems’ had ‘good social skills’ and were ‘actively involved in their communities’.

Whilst the advantages to home education may be numerous there are some significant disadvantages. Foremost amongst these is the fact that it is simply not viable for everyone. As living costs escalate many families would struggle to survive on a single income. Home education usually necessitates a lengthy career break for one parent, however, many home educators share the responsibility for home educating and job share or work half time so that neither has a lengthy absence from the work environment. Whilst home educators need not hold any particular qualifications home education appears to be the preserve of the “educated” classes and may not appeal to those that do not have university level education. Moreover, as a lifestyle choice that is made by 1% of the UK population it is certainly not an overall solution to what can only be described as a crisis in the provision of education.

The debate on educating the next generation is likely to rage for some time. What is clear, however, is that home educators will be part of this debate in ways they have not been for at least a century. One dimension that will certainly be added by them is the consideration of what ‘education’ should be. Whilst there are no hard and fast answers to this question a classic adage may well prove to be instructive – “Momma knows best”!

For a classical education: