People used to say “I don’t know how you do it!” when we home educated. Let me tell you a few things, now, while the “Back to School!” signs prepare to pop up in shops before the kids have even broken up.
Here is why school is worse than home ed if you are a parent.
- Dinner money. The endless slog of lost logins and cheque books and umpteen different systems for paying school, remembering who needs packed lunch, who is sneaking a second pudding on their payment card and who needs a letter signed to say the school can hold their thumbprint (and that’s without even getting on to the pros and cons of biometric system).
- School run. Dear gods above. 7am is for other people. It’s for other people for EVERYONE. No one should be shrieking about getting in the car by 8am, the only slice of your day together ruined with yelling, tears, yawns and frustration. And that’s just me.
- Letters. I get them on paper, I get them by email. I lose them all. I can’t be trusted.
- Homework, VLE systems, passwords, signing home work diaries. All on 1.5mb download speeds. Or with a total absence of pens. Painful.
- 5.School trips. And why you can’t go.
- Hanging out at the local shopping centre with friends. And why you can’t go.
- School trips when you can go. That mean being at school, across the other side of town, at 7am.
- Parents evening. Whimper. I’ve never made it out of one without a headache. Or with any useful information.
- SATs. GCSES. End of year exams. Coursework. Grumble. Wail. Procrastinate. (And yes, that’s just me).
- The Gifted and Talented Programme, which mostly seems to involve either acknowledging they are clever and doing nothing for them, or scheduling random trips that mean I have to be somewhere else very early or very late.
- Bags in the hallway. Shoes in the middle of the kitchen. Lost PE kit. All. The. Time.
I swear my kids need a PA all of their own. It’s a never ending onslaught of STUFF to deal with, worry about, fill in, hand out, drive to, put together, pull apart, comment on or fold up and stick in an envelope. If you have never not schooled, you don’t know this, but life doesn’t have to be this way. It sucks.
I used to just do things with my kids. They all did fine. Even without SAT scores and predictions and a reading system where every book has a decimal number and you can only read ones with the right range of numbers stuck on the spine. For heavens sake.
And school uniform. The endless onslaught of buying skirts, not dyeing them pink, growing feet that don’t fit anything less than £40, changing schools and needing a different EVERYTHING, finding a balance between acceptable and fashionable trousers, finding the day when everyone magically alters back into winter uniform from summer dresses like some murmuration style code got sent invisibly out. Fitted shirts with short sleeves and button collar but not so long they have to be tucked in? You’d think it would be easy, but no. And as for the BLASTED “how short can I tie my tie without getting detention?” thing – give me strength.
If, like me, you are stuck with buying school uniforms against your will, you could try that link above. It’s one thing you will be able to cross off your list.
How I yearn for the days of conversations, music lessons at home, pyjamas, books, games, films and documentaries, curling up together, following our noses. Time. I miss having TIME.
Disclosure: This post is in association with ASDA and I have recieved compensation for posting it.
Yes yes yes. I long for the holidays when it all stops. Luckily at secondary here there is.only uniform for sports stuff. But that is quite enough. I don’t do parents evenings at secondary school it’s a total waste of time and so I email individual teachers when I’ve seen the report. I’m so glad I’m not the only one that is hopeless with the letters but why they can’t just be put on school website or tweeted I don’t know. They teach technology but still use the most inefficient ways of communication. Sigh.
Oh I can relate. Especially with the yelling at them all to get in the car (and then feeling terrible about it afterwards). And my kids have to be the other side of town by 7.50am. If there is traffic or they are late they are ‘written up.’ The Principle has ‘just decided’ to change the colour of uniform shirts for next year. Just because. And you can only buy them from one shop at about £10 each. We will get the minimum as I hope to move schools for all the kids next year.
We are currently in week 6 of our summer holiday. Of 12 weeks. Which is a ridiculous amount of time. But at least I avoid all of the above stress you mention…….
Our school communicates really well – website, newsflash each week, e mails etc.
Down side is in return for the collage of photos/ video that I get sent to show what happened during the day, I am encouraged to e mail in my own photos/ video to show the onward learning at home. Fine if I was actually at home and all the SAHMs revel in it but is just another thing to fit into a weekend as they are all at school till 6 during the week.
Totally agree with the morning pain of – hand on the door moments of ‘I can’t find XXX’ or ‘I need to take in YYYY’. Works wonders in how to learn to tell the time quickly and mental maths as they work out how quickly they need to walk to get there in time (presuming we find a parking space).
The drive to work is the wind down!
My top tip for letters is to take a photo on your phone which then automatically uploads to Dropbox. Then you can’t possibly lose it. Whether you remember to look at it is another story….!
I like the uniform bit but then ours isn’t too strict. Not thinking/ stressing about what to wear and is it clean/ironed/ fashionable etc Everyone in the same jumper/ cardigan and providing you stick to the colour scheme is all fine.
Shopping even easier – order online from JL, have delivered next day to waitrose and pick up when doing shopping. Don’t even have to go to a shop. Jumper and cardigan from school office. Easy.
What it will be like at secondary school I presume will depend on which we end up at but I’m a few years off that stress yet.
Biometrics seems interesting. Is that the same everywhere?
As a teacher who works ridiculous hours with 3 small children because we need the money and I love my job- I am terribly saddened by this. Oh it would be delightful to be at home or to be actually doing a school run and not be at school to sort a g and t programme at 7.30am for parents who clearly don’t care about our input. OI totally understand why people would want to home school but this post didn’t reflect any of the positives I thought there would be, it just belittled the people that work hard for your child.
I don’t really see why the title gave you the impression there would be positives. Nor do I see a single remark belittling teachers. Nor can I imagine why you imagined an ex home educator would have positives to say about school, especially one who is vocal about her dislike of school. I think you’ve just made that remark as a frustrated teacher who wants a pop at someone to be honest. But for the record, I have a lot of time for teachers, who I really feel for. I sent a thank you letter to a teacher this week who stepped out of line to put my child first regardless of the consequences. I also sent a complaint letter about the one who decided not to teach my child anything for her English literature exam at all because language is the one that gets ranked. My post is a frustrated parents rant about a system, the same system lots of teachers are frustrated by and striking because they despair of it. And I for one fully support them in their frustration.