Home ed capital of UK?

[bigyellowfish]

Does anyone know which area has the highest population of home edders, or anecdotally is known for having a large proportion with a forward thinking LEA. Thinking of moving!

[EauRouge]

There's a lot going on in Cambridge, organised groups almost every day. I'm not sure how accurate records would be because a lot of families don't both registering. Cambridgeshire LEA isn't bad, I haven't heard of anyone being doorstepped or anything like that.

[ommmward]

Bristol is massive too - and again, no idea what the number would be, because few people would bother registering. The schools in the city are quite mixed in quality, especially at secondary level, so quite a lot of people do HE for some or all of the time.

[bigyellowfish]

Thanks, we live in a small village at the moment and I feel we are stagnating a bit. We need a bigger community.

[Saracen]

You may want to be asking not only where the HE families are, but also where good communication and organisation is happening. It's so much easier to make friends where there are things going on. Even if you and your kids don't like groups and are just after individual friendships, you'll find that more rapidly in an area where there's an excellent network.

What ages are your kids? In some areas the HE families seem to have got their act together with respect to teen activities, whereas in others there is little in the way of organised stuff beyond primary level despite there being plenty of HE teens around. It may be slightly trickier to make friends in the latter areas, as most of the teens are already occupied doing things informally with small groups of HE friends and/or participating in non-HE activities.

Someone on an HE list wisely observed that to make new friends, adolescents often need more structure and proactive help from parents than little kids do. They start getting self-conscious and more particular about their friendships, and you can no longer haul them out to meet people over their objections. Until they know each other fairly well, they would rather have an active purpose to the meet-up rather than being chucked together and told to play!

Do you want somewhere urban or not? Though we have a car, I love being in a city because of the freedom it gives my teen to roam around alone, see her friends and do more after-school activities without needing the mum-taxi. I expect this will also give her more options when she wants to start working, volunteering or maybe going to college.

[bigyellowfish]

Thanks Saracen, you have hit the nail on the head.

My kids are indeed teenagers or approaching it.

We have only home schooled for 2 years and are finding socialising hard, I didn't want to post that directly actually because I know it is seized on my non home edders as a big negative, and I didn't fancy the bunfight that might ensue.

Our village location is not helping, public transport is poor, an urban location is definately what we need, a bigger pool to choose friends from.

[ellenjames]

I live in lincs and must admit I would love to h.e but there is nothing here and it would be too expensive with all the driving needed.

[Startail]

I wouldn't feel too guilty, my older in school teen chooses not to socialise with her school cohort, but only with family friends DDs and mates from Rangers.

[MariscallRoad]

There are 2 boroughs in Southeast London both just West of the Meridian and one right to the South of the other. U ll find them if u just look on the map. Very reasonable and open. I am in one of them. l I never had any problem. V urban but never mind, the environment has lots of open spaces, good libraries etc .

[ILoveToLaugh]

Home Ed is very big on the Isle of Wight. I know people do actually move here because of the established community. Sorry, I don't have their web address but a quick google will sort that out.

[milk]

edyourself.org/articles/latotalnumber.php

Saw this, thought of this thread :)

[fishfingericecream]

Milk that is very useful and surprising in some areas too!