Recent Articles in Home Education

In which we extol the virtues of home education

A Level traumas with Mercers College

by Jill Dickin Schinas • Published on the 2nd of October 2008 in Home Education4 Comments

When she finished the last instalment of her GCSE exams in June 2007, Xoë was almost in tears. She couldn’t wait for us to sort out the materials for the next lap of her education – her A levels. (more…)

DIY GCSEs and A levels

by Jill Dickin Schinas • Published on the 15th of April 2008 in Home Education3 Comments

The advantages of homeschooling are so many that they would fill a book. The disadvantages number just two. (more…)

Sea School

by Jill Dickin Schinas • Published on the 29th of September 2007 in Home Education16 Comments

When you live on a cruising yacht the world is your oyster – but it’s an oyster which comes without any dressing. Liveaboard yotties, drifting about on the seven seas, have to do without many of the things that Westerners generally take for granted: there is no hot and cold running water out here – not aboard our boat, anyway – and there is no national grid to provide our electricity. We also do without television, the Daily Mail, postal deliveries, and baths. And our children do without school. People who choose this lifestyle seldom have trouble managing without the frills – but school hardly fits into that category. The parents of a liveaboard, itinerant school-aged child have to find some other way of imparting to him the accumulated wisdom of the world – or else, to quote the late Bing Crosby, he may grow up to be a mule. (more…)