Home ed, full time

[pantstastic]

Hello,

My Dad is kind of supportive of He, but is worried that I am falling foul of the education act, that children must have a full time education. How do you counter this when you are autonomous? We are de schooling at the moment until September.

Section 7 of the Education Act says

"?The parent of every child of compulsory school age shall cause him to receive efficient
full-time education suitable ?
(a) to his age, ability and aptitude, and
(b) to any special educational needs he may have,
either by regular attendance at school or otherwise.?"

Here are the guidelines the government gives local authorities on what it terms EHE (Elective Home Education): www.home-education.biz/EHE%202007.pdf

You will notice right at the outset (2.2, page 4) that education is compulsory, schooling is not.

2.1, sorry, not 2.2.

LOL!
Autonomous education doesn't start and end 9-3 pm (actually I don't believe the education of any child does, they are all learning all the time)
It's just that autonomous home educators, don't differentiate life from learning.

So just say to your dad that you don't limit your children's learning to school hours and term time any more.
Without knocking school as a valid choice for many families, it may help to point out to him, how much time in school is spent in crowd control.
Think of a lesson starting, how long does it take to get 35 children settled, how long does it take to make sure that 35 children remember what was covered last time, how long does it take to make sure the slowest member of the class understands the point of the lesson.

I don't know where, but somewhere I've read that a child gets an average of 18 mins a week, individual attention in state school.

It didn't happen every day thank goodness, but over the ten years of our children's home ed, I have been woken quite early with someone asking about the capital of Pakistan and the different factions in the Muslim religion. And I clearly remember one night getting quite 'romantic' with dh in our bedroom about 11pm one night and dd2 coming in saying "tell me about polysaccharide, I have been reading this book and need you to help me to understand them"..............

so yes tell your dad, it starts each day when they wake up and ends each day when they fall asleep, and is therefore way above the 25 hours or so that children get in school and therefore counts as full time education, AND we score much higher in individual attention time.

Is it the "fulltimeness" that is your dad's concern?

Here is the government saying what julienoshoes explained (from the document DadAtLarge pointed you towards):

"3.13 Parents are required to provide an efficient, full-time education suitable to the age, ability and aptitude of the child. There is currently no legal definition of ?full-time?. Children normally attend school for between 22 and 25 hours a week for 38 weeks of the year, but this measurement of ?contact time? is not relevant to elective home education where there is often almost continuous one-to-one contact and education may take place outside normal
?school hours?."

Thankyou everyone, that's really helpful.

You have put it all much better then I could.

I think my Dad is trying to understand, but doesn't get the idea of de schooling at all and he thinks my children are "dossing" until September.

My kids learned more "dossing" about with me over the weekend than they did all week at school.

Try Googleing unschooling, sandra dodd, dayna martin and dr. ken robinson.
Have fun.

there's quite a nice article about 'deschooling' here
and I like this which might make your Dad see why you question society's view on schooling.

Many people (including me) have found sharing the book Free Range Education with close family members, helps. It has 20 shortish chapters each written by a different home educating family, explaining how home education works for them.

'My kids learned more "dossing" about with me over the weekend than they did all week at school.'

Absolutely. My 11yo and I came home late tonight to discover her dad had picked up some secondhand life jackets. The resulting discussion included the following: conversion between stones and kg and why the two systems are still in use, plane crashes, history of rock and roll, my own father's career, the hazards of fatigue when driving long distances, how to overthrow a dictatorship, slavery, and electoral reform. All in 45 minutes.