Oxford Home Schooling

My name is Victoria Ray and I am a Researcher at a TV production company called Twenty Twenty Television. I am working on a new series for Channel 4 about families taking gap years and wondered if you may be able to help me?

At the moment I¹m trying to find interesting and outgoing families who would potentially make good subjects to base our series on. I am particularly keen to find a family whose gap year has a purpose other than the traditional travelling route. For example, working on a particular volunteer project, sailing or going somewhere really remote. The idea is for each episode to follow one family¹s gap year in a similar style to the series No Going Back.

Twenty Twenty Television is an established independent production company that has won a number of awards for programmes such as The Choir, That¹ll Teach Them, Brat Camp and Lads¹ Army. If you would like more information about Twenty Twenty and our award-winning programmes, please take a look at our website ­ www.twentytwenty.tv <http://www.twentytwenty.tv/>

I was hoping you might know of some families who are planning on taking the children out of school and would therefore require home tuition. The children could be any age between 5 and 16 years ideally.

Potential families could be departing any time between now and Spring 2009 but we would like to make contact, through you, as soon as possible. Please don¹t hesitate to get in touch either at this email or on 020 7284 2020 if you have any questions for me or would like more information.

Thanks very much for your time and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Kind Regards,

This is the question asked by Kevin Rooney of Times Online.  His article doesn’t discuss Home Education as such but does, in a round about way, touch on many of the reasons people choose to home educate.

It paints a world where everything, including a childs home life, is about formal education generated by a school system where testing has become the raison d’etre.  

It also points to a situation where the use of free time of not just the child, but also of the family, is dictated to by the school.

I am interested to know if this is the feeling Oxford Home Schooling students had when they were in Primary School?  Is this why you chose to homeschool, be home schooled?

Let me know!

Now, some times it is possible to wax slightly too lyrically about a resource, and I have to admit that I have only been to the site at Leeds, however as a home schooling resource this is second to none.  I have taken both of my home educated nephews several times, and each time there has been something new to explore.

The material is presented in an accessible way which has engaged the boys and envoked their interest enough to lead to further study.

The entry is free so we have always felt that we could go in whenever we wanted to and just look at whatever interested us that day.  If you want to make a day of it, and their is more than enough to support an entire days visit, then I strongly recommend hitting their website. Plan your day around the excellent special events and demonstrations that they lay on.

Here at Oxford Home Schooling we are keen to hear about Home Schooling Resources which our students could beneifit from.  If you have recently visited or used a home schooling resource, please email me at greg@ool.co.uk.  I will then post you comments and a link to the resource on this blog.  Thanks in advance for any help we receive.

This one may seem a bit boring, but if you are home educating your children then it affects you.  The government are currently going through a consultation process which defines what role your Local Education Authority can have in your lives.  The DfeS full consultation document can be found here.

So why should you worry?

The new guidance gives the LEA significantly more reasons to interfere in your educational decisions.  In some ways as Oxford Home Schooling students you will be protected from the worst of the changes as you will be choosing to educate to the National Curriculum anyway.  However if you are only taking part of your education with us or have children of KS1 and KS2 age, you will still be under much greater scrutiny from the  LEA than ever before.  Some of you may agree with this.

Who else is worried?

The answer to that one is just about everybody interested in Home Education. Please visit the following sites to see the take of the wider homeschooling community.

• Education Otherwise
• Then UK
• Education Everywhere

Oxford Home Schooling think that everyone should take an interest in this one and encourage all of its students and parents to respond to the guidance at the DfEs website.

Then UK, or to give it its full name The Home Education Network has been around a while, quietly smouldering away, giving a decent service to its members.  Then Uk is a national, not for profit network of support and resources for those families who have already chosen home education or are looking to find further information about the legal right to educate their children at home.  It operates a yahoo group as well as many other worthwhile support features.

ThenUK members will get 10% of any Oxford Home Schooling course, just like members of Education Everywhere and Education Otherwise.

Education Everywhere are an information sharing service, based primarily around a Helpline. This is staffed by a highly experienced team of volunteers. We have always found them ready and willing, to help anyone with a query about alternative approaches to education otherwise than going to school. Many Oxford Home Schooling students turn to Education Everywhere in time of crisis, or simply because families would like to explore all their options, and so make an informed choice about what is best for their child’s education and welfare.

Who is Education Everywhere aimed at ?

Education Everywhere focus on families who are considering different approaches to learning. Parents may believe their child’s needs and interests are best met by being out of school, with all the inherent flexibility this allows. Or a child in school may be struggling, or they may be unhappy. This might be due to unrecognised dyslexia and/or school attendance anxieties (often called ’school phobia’), or they are being bullied etc., and the family are looking for a change.

If you wish to contact Education Everywhere, their telephone number is 01942 897779

Well here it is, the much awaited Oxford Home Schooling Blog.  If you don’t know much about us, our main website can be found at www.oxfordhomeschooling .co.uk.   This blog is for anyone who is or is thinking of Home Educating their children.  Over time we hope that the posts of those of us who work at Oxford Home Schooling and other contributors will be able to give both emotional and practical support to anyone who is engaging in Home Schooling whatever your reason for doing so.

I hope that many of you will become regular visitors to our website and I encourage anyone to email me to let me know what you would like discussed in the blog.