SCHOOL’S OUT

17-09-2009

School stayaways enjoyed a picnic in Birmingham’s Pigeon Park yesterday as part of a national celebration of home education. Handsworth mum Scylla Parkin has been telling The Stirrer why she is keeping her son out of the classroom.

Scylla says that she had never thought about keeping her lad out the state system, until she found that his Birmingham primary school was unable to deal with the complexities of his poor health.

The 7-year old was born prematurely, and has under-developed lungs, a condition leaving him especially vulnerable to colds and coughs – which can quickly turn to pneumonia.

“In the first year, we were able to take him out of school for a few weeks in winter to protect him, but in the second year the local education authority was trying to push up attendance figures so they refused to allow him time off” she explains.

Rather than expose the lad to risk, Scylla and her partner took him out altogether, and braved going it alone – even though she has no teaching qualifications.

“We didn’t know much about it ourselves” she admits. “We’ve only been doing it for 9 months, but our experience has been quite positive.

“I’m not a trained teacher but we’ve done a lot of research and got lots of ideas from various authors.

“Children are naturally inclined to find out about things and we just see ourselves as facilitators. It’s child-centred learning.

“As our child is only 7 years old, his father and I currently feel well able to facilitate his education to a level suited to his age and ability. And who better than parents to be in a position to closely observe what it is that their child is showing an aptitude and interest in, and to help facilitate the flowering of this?

“The Latin origin of the word education is to 'draw out' that what is already innate, not to impose learning from the outside.

“Quite a few former teachers have themselves taken the decision to home educate, after becoming disillusioned with the education system.”

The norms of the national curriculum aren’t applied to home educated children, which Scylla describes as “great”.

“We see not having to follow the national curriculum as a positive, as although our 7 year old continues to progress with the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, he now has much more time to spend on developing what he loves to do most - in his case, art and design, and an interest in science.

“In his school, most 'creative' pursuits seemed to end in year one, and science is currently being downgraded within the national curriculum.

“At the home education camps which we have taken him to over the summer, he has also enjoyed learning subjects which were not on offer at school, including theatre skills, circus skills, carpentry, aikido,dance, singing groups, drumming workshops, calligraphy, and some excellent science workshops led by Chaos Science, a bunch of students from Cambridge University who generously spend their holiday time creating experiments to fascinate children.

“He has been getting a great deal more exercise and outdoor activity than he did in school to the benefit of his health – sitting at a desk n a hot classroom 5 days a week, with about 40 minutes playtime after lunch, & only one 30 minute sports session a week, is surely not natural for a young child”.

As for the companionship that school allows, there are regular get-togethers (at both national and local level) for home educated kids to ensure they don’t become isolated.

Initially, Scylla wanted her son to have “flexi schooling” – a mixture of school and home – but says that unlike some local authorities, Birmingham doesn’t support this.

Now though, she believes this is the best way of teaching her son – as long as he agrees.

“It’s up to him how long he does it. If he wants to go to school later on he can, but if he wants to carry on like this that’s fine.

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