Is HE more popular in certain areas of the country?

[BetteDavis01]

The reason I ask is that I am considering HE and live in SE london. I've searched HE in my local area online and nothing comes up.

We may be moving to kent in the next few years and from what I've seen online, there does appear to be a lot of HE living there.

If I do go down the HE route it's going to be important for me that I am able to link up with others.

Can anyone shed anymore light on this? It seems everyone sends their kids to school where I live!

Where do all the HE families live?

Not where I am. Last I looked, according to the council, there are approx. 30 children being Home Ed in Perth & Kinross. I think there are 70 odd primary schools across the council. A tiny proportion.

I suppose it must be more common in some areas than others.

We are in a Grammar school area, and HE is very popular here.

There are usually way more people HEing than appear on the council's records, so Yahoo groups etc. are the way to go in figuring out how popular it is locally.

We are just outside London, but still go to a few groups in Central London as access is so easy there. London seems to be full of HE groups for all ages/interests/philosophies.

The London groups seem to be city wide rather than borough wide, so people from Camberwell and places often pop up at events in Kensington too for example. Obviously smaller groups do exist though.

In our city (on the South coast) there are around 250 children known to the council and I imagine there are just as many who aren't.

I think so or some areas just have more active home ed groups?

I am in Norfolk and there is a big home ed group here and lots of support and activities.

Lincolnshire has a fair few and parts have Grammar Schools....interesting.

We are Greater Manchester and there aren't many in our town, although Manchester itself has a larger proportion.

In some areas there is plenty of HE activity but very little of it appears online. It's just that nobody has bothered to start a website or promote their activities. It's unwise to conclude that an area is an HE desert until you have done a good deal of ferreting around.

Doobydoo, can you point me in the direction of any Lincolnshire groups you know? I have a toddler but in the light of what people have said about kids knowing each other all their lives I wonder if I ought to start getting to know people now.

Apparently there are events and meet ups in West London but I'm yet to locate any! Not sure why HEs have to keep everything so top secret...looks likely I'll be doing HE alone because I can't seem to connect to anyone near by which I imagine can be quite off putting for some who need support from local HEs. Just my opinion.

Calpol I think in Lincolnshire you come under East Midlands Home Educators which is a forum of around 200 families. A lot of the activity is Notts based but it's a start and some events turn up further East

In order to be able to home ed, a lot of families I've come across have moved to my current area as house prices are VERY low compared to other parts of the UK. Great minds think alike! The bills don't disappear when you home ed so servicing a London mortgage for example is an unrealistic dream for many. I wouldn't expect to meet many home edders in Swiss Cottage or Greenwich but would be suprised if there is wasn't a large contingent in the North West or the Welsh valleys.

Some areas have long established lively and vibrant Home ed scenes - I know families that have deliberately relocated to Bridgend or the Isle of Wight specifically to take advantage of them. Sadly it would be naive to assume that there aren't a few "black spots" too.

The unregulated nature of home ed means it's unrealistic to expect even coverage across the country and some areas favor specific "flavours" of home ed too. A home ed surfing group is far more likely to pop up by the coast lol! In my old area of SE London home ed groups were around, but when I investigated they weren't that great a "fit" activity wise for our individual family, though many individuals were lovely.

I do think that wherever you live if you are home edding you are going to have to be prepared to travel at times for some activities. The advantage of London is that at least the public transport system makes this easy. Home edding for a non-driving rural family must be hard at times.