Where to find UK home education information without using Facebook

[MixedBananas]

I have syarted Home Ed for my nearly 5 year old. Was keen to join Facebook for the Home Ed page for UK but refuse to accept terms of FB and the face scanning rubbish. I don't use social media.

Where can I get the same information? Is there another website? Centralised location online?

I am using Twinkl, CGP, Oxford Reads and Lovevery. I have no concerns about progress, but more so want to know whats the latest on HomeEd and useful tools and links and help in general.

Honestly I would find it very tricky without Facebook. I HE my 4 year old and that’s where all the information and local area groups are. Once in local groups it might be possible to then not use Facebook if they have active what’s app groups that share local information.

All our HE groups/meet-ups are in the local private HE Facebook groups. Not anywhere else. I can’t see how you’d find the info as it’s not circulated outside the HE community, and that is FB based. I’m in a nationwide HE admin group and that’s just how every single group communicates.

All our HE groups/meet-ups are in the local private HE Facebook groups. Not anywhere else. I can’t see how you’d find the info as it’s not circulated outside the HE community, and that is FB based. I’m in a nationwide HE admin group and that’s just how every single group communicates.

Could you just make an account without putting any photos on there?

Do you have any friends from baby groups etc who are going to home ed, could you find out info from them?

It’s all on Facebook here too. There are some Whatapp chats (not sure the T&Cs there but they’re Meta owned) but Facebook is far more active. I don’t like Facebook either but if you want to be part of the majority of HE communities, you might need to suck it up.

I’d also be hesitant to rely on other people passing on information to you. A friend of mine who wasn’t on Facebook would ask me how I knew certain events were on, and the answer was almost always I saw on Facebook. She asked me to send on details of things which looked interesting and while sometimes I remembered, I often forgot or was busy and distracted, and it annoyed me a bit to have unwanted admin role (and that was before I had my child too). She now has a Facebook page to track local events.

It’s probably not impossible to manage HE meet-ups and social events without Facebook but it’s definitely a huge obstacle. Could you try to find out through Google any HE classes (there’s lots of swimming and gymnastics classes around here) or forest schools and meet other HE parents and try to find out if there’s any WhatsApp groups or other pointers for groups they can give you. If you won’t use WhatsApp either then that’s extremely hard. And there’s every chance they’ll reply with, “oh yes, it’s all in the Facebook group”.