Home Schooling - Teaching Individuals

Do you have children? Do you have more than one child? Are they the same? If you are reading this the chances are you said, yes, yes, no. Sir Ken Robinson, in an excellent talk that is available on TED, asked the audience the same three questions, with the same answers. He went on to say, `Then how do we expect an education system that tries to teach 30 children the same thing at the same time?`

I have recently earned myself a PGCE (Post Graduate Certificate in Education) and on the course we learnt to try to treat our students as individuals, and developed strategies that enabled us to have extension material for the smart ones, and ways to occupy the average students so we could spend time helping the less able to keep up. In private education where we have maximum class sizes of 16, it is a difficult task, in state education with class sizes of 30 (31!) it can work, but is significantly harder.

All students are individuals, and all have their own individual way of learning. Some are Visual learners, some are auditory learners and others are kinaesthetic learners. It is the teachers duty and responsibility to incorporate all these elements to allow individuals to learn.

In a one to one environment this becomes so much simpler. The teacher quickly develops an understanding of the capabilities of the student and can tailor the lesson to the student. Think how much more can be achieved.

In my own experience I have found that I can cover roughly 4 times the material in a one hour session with one student than I can in the same time period with 16 students, and maybe 6 times as much as with 30 students.

I have certainly found that when I kept a disruptive child back for a 10 minute detention after class, two things happened. With no audience the child`s disruptive and rude behaviour stopped, and we were able to review the topic covered in the lesson and get to a better understanding within 10 short minutes.

Clearly the economics of amortising a teachers time over 30 students to one student does not work, and so the current system will continue.

However if you can afford to bring in specialist tutors in conjunction with a well put together home schooling program you can bring your individual children to a point of better education faster and still on a sensible budget.

My recommendation is to put together a home program that allows for reading and writing, selected educational videos (you tube, TED, Khan academy and the BBC are all excellent resources), sport and group activities for social development, and then a few hours a week with specialist tutors in the core areas of English, Mathematics and Science.

By carefully selecting the pace of the subjects I believe it would also be possible to time the taking of GCSE examinations so that the pressure of taking all subjects within a few stressful weeks of each other can be avoided. Spread them instead over a couple of years by taking some early. Trust your tutors to give a realistic analysis of when your children are ready to take exams and to what level.

I wholly recommend home schooling, provided you as parents have the time and bandwidth to provide the core of the tutoring, and are prepared to bring in specialists for English, Mathematics and Science. Think outside the box, there are more sciences than just Physics, Chemistry and Biology, GCSE`s are available for Astronomy, Applied Science and Electronics as well.

We tutors want the same as you do, the best individualised education for your children.