A bit of background
My name is Vicky, I am married to Chris and have two children. I founded my business Little Bit Different candles in 2010 when I was on maternity leave. I now run the business and home educate our youngest child. First, I will say that home educating while running a small business is not easy. It won’t work for all children or all parents.
We value education
Our eldest child is 26 and has recently bought her own house. She went to a bricks and mortar primary school, comprehensive school and college. She then went to Cardiff University, doing a BSC and an MSC. So a very standard education. She now works at Swansea University helping students who need more support to access higher education. Both my husband and I went to mainstream schools and university. We take education very seriously and have always encourage both of our children to do their best so they have all the opportunities available to them.
It all started with lockdown
However, our youngest, who is now 15, found school really draining. He did well academically and had some absolutely brilliant teachers in primary school. They listened to us as parents and also instinctively knew what worked for our son. They provided him with exciting challenges and understood his strengths. We knew he found school a struggle though. This became even more obvious when lockdown started. While we were stressed about the situation for the families health, our jobs etc like everyone else, our son was living his best life. He was getting stuck into practical hobbies, teaching his dog tricks in the garden, playing board games. He was happier and chattier than he had ever been.
Decision time
When the time came for schools to open back up we felt very uneasy. Not just because of the still real health worries but that we would lose our happy, confident son. If he had found school difficult before, a world of distancing and masks was going to be really damaging. We were lucky that we were both still able to work from home. I had stopped renting space for the business and built space in our garden in the form of a purpose built candle kitchen. My husband was still working from home in his civil service job. We were able to be present all day everyday so couldn’t expect our son to go into an environment that we knew we going to be incredibly difficult for him.
The decision to home educate was not taken lightly. It was obvious that it would all fall to me as I could be more flexible with my work. Having said that I knew that home educating while self employed was not going to be easy. I still needed to keep working coming in and at the busiest times of the year this proved really difficult. I worked some very long days, often doing several hours before my son got up. I felt very responsible for keeping him company so would try to work from our dining table while he was doing lessons or home work on the other side of the table. We decided we would try it with a view to a move back to mainstream for secondary school.
Online schools
Initially we used BBC bitesize like everyone else in lockdown but then by chance discovered an online school. It was called My Online Schooling. They had live lessons, assemblies, after school clubs, home work etc. It was like an ordinary school but without the noise and bustle. The amount of work they got through in an hour was amazing. Our son thrived. I was able to work around his lessons and be around if he needed help which was very rare. It was lovely to hear the teachers and other children and get real time updates on his progress from the homework he was submitting. We had discovered the very best of both worlds. Fabulous education and being able to provide a calm and familiar space for our son to learn while both being able to work.
I can’t honestly say that I could have home educated when my son was very young as I don’t think he would have responded so well. I certainly wouldn’t have had the time and flexibility when I had a civil service job.
Secondary school or home education
When the time came to start secondary school we sat down as a family and decided what to do next. It was clear that if we continued to home educate I would need to commit to it for at least five years. I knew there were things I couldn’t achieve in my business and that we would have to really watch our money. Fees were getting higher and exams would be our responsibility to pay for. We did make the decision that carrying on was the only real option. I was relieved once the decision was made and my son certainly was.
Sadly My Online Schooling merged in September 2023 with Kings Interhigh, a much bigger online school. We moved with them and closely monitored the quality of the education. Fees were a lot higher and the IT set up was more basic, class sizes were bigger too. We carried on for that academic year as we didn’t know what else to do. The subjects were getting more in depth. Despite the fact I had studied English language and literature at University and my husband had a masters in Astrophysics so could help with the maths and science we really wanted to give our son the same chances as his peers. At the end of the academic year I sought advice from a home education forum. Someone suggest the £2tuition hub. I took a look at their website and couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was run by a group of home educators . They had found highly experienced teachers who they employed to run lessons each week. They charged £2 per lesson. They were live and also recorded just like the two online schools. I watched a lesson and signed our son up for English , Maths, Physics and Chemistry on the spot. I couldn’t believe that I had found something so good. It meant I didn’t have any guilt that our son was not getting a great education, our financial situation was much improved and our son was thriving. My husband agreed to tutor him in ICT and Computer Science as they didn’t do those. Thankfully both my husband and son are pretty relaxed characters, Pearson do some amazing text books and there were no cross words.
More time for hobbies and learning
A spitfire our son was given in bits by one of the club members. He rebuilt it and got it back in the air
Aside from working towards GCSEs our son has taught himself to build and fly remote control planes. They are so much more complicated than I ever realized. He goes to Carmarthen rc flying club and has gained so much confidence. One of the biggest worries when people decide to home educate is the social side. Our son didn’t want to go to any home education groups as most seemed more suitable for smaller children at the time. However he has great conversations with the people at the flying group. He laughs and jokes with all ages and shares tips and asks for advice. He has proved to be really good at flying the planes but also at the electronics need to build them. Oh and repairing them after crashes!!! He was offered a ride in a microlight by one of the members of the club last summer at the age of fourteen. He loved it. He has since had many lessons at the club and will soon be having more to hopefully qualify as a microlight pilot before he can get a driving licence!!! I must add that lessons are paid for by grandparents, with four GCSE exams coming up this year and the impact home education has on my earning ability we could not afford them ourselves.
Home education and GCSEs
As I am typing this he is sitting a GCSE practical exam at our local private college. This is a year early. The cost is not great, we have paid in total about £1000 for two subjects this year with four more to do next year. There were added fees for an assessment to be able to type his answers rather than write so it can be less than that. We can use the results of that assessment for four years though which will really help him. Some local education authorities will fund Maths and English exams so it is worth checking with them. I feel strongly that yes if parents choose to home educate they realise costs now fall to them. However, I also feel that young people are being put at a disadvantage by their parents having to pay for exams at private colleges. This is a huge barrier to education and is my view is totally unjustified, particularly when you look at how much money the local authority saves by not providing a school space. Anyway, that’s a whole subject in itself!
The benefits of home education for us
Our home education journey has been relatively smooth. I know that is often far from the case so I don’t advise it lightly. It takes a large amount of time and commitment. Until recently I couldn’t go anywhere unless my husband was home, more to make sure there weren’t any IT issues than anything else. Now I have more freedom and can book work meetings during the school day if I need to. Looking back I wouldn’t change the decision we made. Our son is happy and confident. He is well educated which is a huge bonus. We still like each other because I was able to leave most of his education to professionals. I am not sure we would have found things so easy if I was actually providing most of the education. Is still remember my own parents trying to help with homework and how that always ended up with everyone annoyed or sulking! He will have the educational certificates he needs to move onto whatever he wants just the same as his peers in mainstream. He didn’t have to struggle through the horrors of PE or learning French. Oh and I think our eight year old Yorkshire terrier Pixie could get a good C at GCSE English!
I hope my ramble has given you hope that it can be done. It isn’t an easy option but for us the benefits have outweighed the negatives. It is always hard to make a decision that is slightly off the normal track, parental guilt and worry can be huge. For example, our daughter didn’t have the best time in mainstream school despite being very hard working and doing well academically but we didn’t feel the responsibility of making the decision to send her to school so acutely as we felt the decision to home educate our son. We were never questioned about why we sent her to a comprehensive school, we have been questioned many times about why we home educate.
We are in a really privileged position that we get to spend time with a happy, funny, insightful and mature young man everyday. When I use the word mature it is in the best way, he is very much a young person with a wise head on his shoulders. Our son doesn’t care what the latest trends and nonsense ideas are, he has his own path and ideas. He is as driven as any teenager is likely to be and knows what he wants to do with his life, I can’t ask for more than that. If you want to email me please do at vicky@littlebitdifferent.co.uk