Half term seems very different once you begin home educating. There’s no school calendar making the decision for you, so you have to choose the pause yourself, and for a lot of parents that choice comes wrapped in a low hum of guilt. If most weeks don’t look like “real school” anyway, does stopping completely […]
Building evidence for an EHCP while home educating comes up in almost every conversation I have with parents new to this, and it makes sense why. You’re gathering evidence for a system built around teacher reports and classroom observations, and none of that exists in your situation. It can feel like operating with no script
Pathological Demand Avoidance (otherwise known as Persistent Demand for Autonomy) is a genuinely unhelpful name for what’s actually going on. It sounds like defiance, or stubbornness, or a child simply choosing not to cooperate. What’s actually happening underneath is closer to a panic response than a decision, and once that clicks with someone, their approach
Writing a school deregistration letter is the moment that difficult decision that’s been circling your head for weeks, months or even years, finally becomes real. It can feel like it needs to be watertight, almost like a legal document you just don’t feel qualified to draft. In practice it actually needs to be much simpler
September always brings a wave of new home educators, usually families who spent the summer deciding, somewhere between the beach and the school-uniform aisle, that their child wasn’t going back this year. If that’s you, welcome! Here’s a realistic sense of what each stage of the first month tends to need, rather than a rigid
There’s a particular trap almost every new home educator and homeschooler falls into, and I fell into it too: building a mini version of the school timetable for education at home. 8-10 subjects, 40-minutes each, a bell going off in my own head telling me it was time to move on, and even planned breaks
The blogs never show you the actual first month. They show the finished shelf of resources, the neat timetable, a calm child colouring in at the kitchen table with good light coming through the window behind them. What actually happens for most families with an ADHD kid is louder, messier, and a lot more normal
“What year is she in?” is usually the second or third question a home educating parent gets asked, right after “is that legal?” or “Who do you need to ask for permission?” And it’s the wrong question almost every time. Year groups exist because schools need to teach thirty children at once in one room,
Nobody arrives at this decision through a calm Sunday afternoon of careful research. Usually it’s yet another meeting that goes badly, a phone call asking you to come and collect your child again, or even a SEND tribunal…and somewhere in there you realise nobody in that building actually knows who your child is. If that’s
Three months is enough time to see what something actually does, rather than what it promises. So this update is going to be honest – what’s working, what we’ve changed, and what two things users have said that I’m still thinking about. What the data shows The families using myHomeEdPlan most consistently are the ones
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