Hiring Someone to Home Educate my children? Do people still use Governesses???

[CountryMumAtHome]

We have recently moved to the countryside and have several children, 4 with another on the way, (all varying ages 1-7) and I have been considering educating them at home until they reach the age of about 8. However, my DH and I work, either at home, or travel to London for a few days often. Not having the children in school would allow more flexibility for them to travel with us at the moment. Since we both work though we wouldn’t be able to teach the children on a set school day schedule which is what we want so we have been considering hiring someone to help with schooling. We also want our children to spend time being children while they’re so young instead of sending them to school all day, with most of the local preps requiring Saturday school at some point.
Im not completely sure how we would go about this, should we look for a teacher, nanny, or tutor? We have looked online a bit and some sites advertise the role of governess which lists their job as teaching children in the home. I don’t know how common it is for someone nowadays to hire governess and if anyone has done so recently. We would want the children to enter prep school eventually, around the age of 8 so they can make friends, as we do live in a more remote country area, as well as preparing them for a senior school.
Has anyone hired a teacher, or even a governess to teach their children at home?? How did this go for you?

I beg to disagree
School Attendance Orders were part of my role
Some LAs do visit all every year and do insist on plans (and do proceed with legal action)

5 children going to prep school at some point... yes, you ARE an extremely wealthy family.

@guineapugs 5 children going to prep school at some point... yes, you ARE an extremely wealthy family.

apparently about 60% of people whose income is between £80k and £100k (about 95th to 97th centile for wealth) consider their income to be "about average" but they coukd only manage 1 or 2 kids at prep school.

I worked as a home education nanny. It’s not quite a full on governess and I cared for younger children too. I would take children to home Ed meet ups and classes, teach them when baby napped etc, much like a home educating parent would.
I’ve taught reception so felt confident we could cover the academic parts in an hour or two. Mainly it’s phonics plus play in reception.

@LoggingOut In that case you were badly trained for your role. Very few home educating families consent to visits, in my experiencing working in the HE community (nor do they have to). It would obviously be inappropriate to effectively OFSTED parents. There are some rogue LA but many good ones too. Regardless, it’s very unlikely that LA is going to worry about a family employing a well qualified person to educate their children. So entirely irrelevant to this thread.

@LoggingOut it sounds like, sadly like make LAs, you misunderstand the law around home education. There is no requirement for parents to consent to visits and no requirement to provide plans. Written reports showing retrospective progress meet all legal requirements to show an effective education is taking place.

@LoggingOut i should also add that the schools bill (which is looking likely to be scrapped in its current form at least, there’s already a vast number of proposed amendments) doesn’t make any changes to these requirements

@CountryMumAtHome I will DM you the name of the company my cousin used for her son X

@Queuesarasarah A home education nanny seems right up our alley as well! Thanks for the reply, I’ll ask the agency about this particular role. It seem it might be easier only having to coordinate one governess/nanny instead of two (one for the older children and one for the younger is also in consideration)! And since our children are quite young at the moment we might not need a full on governess quite yet.

I love your idea @CountryMumAtHome however I will point somethings out as someone with a dc in a £21k pa prep school....

Alternatives to homeschool in your situation,
We put our dc in a 'cheap' private school to year 3 ie up to prep. £10k a year then moved to £21k prep then a lot a lot of people do this. They also regularly come in from state schools and no one cares or judges. You've basically saved £££ for sounding out letters and learning to read.

Homeschool using online school but this requires supervising so a normal nanny would probably be fine to get them logged in, however I'm not sure about screens and young dc personally

My dc had a nanny and then started school with nanny.
If you want the private school route and the private school is traditional, generally they will expect 'traditional' behaviour. We're on our second such school now,
One thing I didn't realise was how my dc who had had complete freedom to do whatever they wanted (and I mean in a liberal way not a bratty one ie if they wanted to go to story time in the library nanny took them if they said they didn't they didn't etc) when they started school they couldn't sit still at all and it was rather tiresome keep hearing the feedback from school about it.

They needed to socialise in various ways not the way you/siblings or a nanny socialise with them. At school your dc will mix with various cultures and customs (if it's a really good prep school anyway there will undoubtedly be an international cohort) generally irreplaceable in the home.

Itchy uniforms. I know it's a contentious subject but generally private schools have full on uniforms. Getting my dc in a hat may never have gone well if they hadn't been brainwashed into it from young and as for the rest of it. Well tbh we still get lots of moaning about it's too itchy but they accept it. I'm not sure if they went in the school system too old it would have been as straight forward but they may just be my mega fussy dc!

All these things can be overcome and are but it's really obvious the dc who are older coming into this 'shock' to the system.

Also stamina for school. Our prep runs 8;15-4;30 minimum. That's a longgg day. If you're not used to it it's tough. Lots of dc stay later as well for prep. Especially those with working parents, some even stay for dinner.

Add to this the various sporting opportunities, swimming every week, learning tennis, netball, lacrosse, football, fencing etc plus arts and educational visits, how will you manage sports and extra curricular in your household? My dc is now aiming for national level in a sport and this would never have happened had they not been in school because I didn't even know about all the competitions that exist or the route that's usually taken to get into it. I am well educated and dedicated to my dc learning but even so I cannot provide that a whole school can.

I am very pro home schooling and I love your idea. I just wanted to point out some potential choices you may need to end up making in your decision.

I would want an agreed timetable that was, in general kept to. One of of literacy and numeracy in the mornings. Break milk and cookie run in garden about half phour. Then each day something different after the break. History geography ext. Break for lunch. Afternoons outdoors most of time Maybe swimming lesson ,riding lesson, nature ramble. If indoors art , cookery. Formal teaching in the morning for olders ones, maybe joined up with nanny for afternoons. Back home reading together before evening meal That way you should keep up with the academic demands needed to join prep bit keep that stuff for mornings with broader education in the afternoons. Might arrange afternoons with other home schoolers for rambles, sports opportunities. Can also incorporate opportunities for individual interests like dance, brownies ext. Not cheap to get someone good as although only 4 or 5 children, they would all be at different stages of their education. Don't think you could expect a governess/nanny to complete all roles and if you are working you will need someone doing full on nanny work like cooking, cleaning ext for the children plus looking after younger ones. I am a teacher and would do guess a teacher might do it for around £45000 but she would be full on teaching and escorting older children. No way could she also manage tinies and cook dress them ext so you would need a nanny as well. £25000 approx for good nanny wouldn't leave you spending much less than the prep. Of course if you sent older ones to prep you would still need paid childcare for younger ones. Could work ,especially if nanny and governess had a good working relationship and could do some coordinated care. Could arrange days off so always one or other there and two to split any evening babysitting or sole overnights. 🤔

I cared for two boys. They refered to me as a mothers helper but it was more of a nanny situation, plus light housework. They payed me very little but we had an agreement that I could bring my own young children along. This provided companionship, a great big garden to play in, acess to wonderful toys and up two free meals for my children and I, they were similar ages.

What I did then was very similar to what I previously did as a registered childminder from my own home and later did as a home educating parent of pre school/early primary aged children.

We used a home schooling curriculim which I had for my own children, did Bible class and hynm singing (a family freind of their family, came round to lead this, a retired clergyman) story time, park and soft play, art projects, gardening, nature walks, took them to swiming lessons, museam visits, and taught them to do basic house hold chores, baking bread, making soup etc. We also all went along to some home education group activities and feild trips.

I enjoyed it, my children enjoyed it, the boys enjoyed it we stay in touch and all have happy memories of that time.

But in the longer term it was too much of the day to spend away from my own home responsibilities. Another young lady without children of her own took over, from what I gather she was paid more but refused to do any housework or gardening, which is probably fair enough, as it was a big ask. The boys found her overly strict, but she had then do much more maths and Reading!