Not-Back-To-School 2026 - into Secondary
One of the typical FAQ's I get asked as a home educator is (or was?): will you send them to Secondary School then?
My answer always was, and remains, absolutely not.
N (11, almost 12) would be going into Year 7, which is Secondary, from this week. I see parents posting pictures of their kids in their new uniforms, smiling as they are sent off; in the meantime, for us, life continues and evolves as it naturally has since they were born. For us, there are no sudden changes like that - they were babies, then toddlers, then preschoolers, then primary school age kids, and now N is a secondary school age kid. These divisions are arbitrary, at least to us.
That said, I find myself once again holding back, trusting, waiting - consciously not taking part, even within our home ed community. This time it's GCSE's. I have some experience with this now, this holding back and not being swept along: when they were preschoolers and so many of our friends were preparing for and choosing a school; as home educators, resisting when other families discussed curricula and subjects they were teaching; and now, exams.
Let me be clear: my kids do not learn nothing. That would be impossible.
What I avoid, however, is pushing an agenda, timeline, or milestones at them from without. Motivation can only come from within when it is not hijacked from outside: and rewards have been shown to be just as damaging as punishments to internal motivation.
In practice what this has meant was that I show them what I can of the world, and they pick up what they are interested in. In our family, we talk: lo and behold, they learned to talk. In our family, we walk: and guess what, they learned to walk without me teaching them. In our family, we read: again, they picked up on that organically.
The key, as I see it, is to show them as much of what there is as I can - this can be through conversation, travel, media of all kinds including books and magazines - and some of that will pique their interest. I learn about who they are and what they are drawn to as we go, and that's part of the amazingness of home ed for me!
N(11) is creative in every way; she plays guitar, sings in a choir, writes and illustrates her own books, comes up with stories. She leads naturally in the groups we are part of - not through domination, but because she is able to find common ground between people.
D(10) is creative in a different way: he is methodical, logical, literal. His drawings are precise and life like. He knows all there is to know about the animals he is interested in (anything creepy crawly and reptiles) and investigates his world deeply.
That's all nice and philosophical, I hear you say, but what about GCSE's?
That's for the next post.