"Very sensible comment. So why insist on lumping them all together by condemning the whole 'edukashun' system?"


Dave, I have always said that I support brilliant teachers who care about their pupils.

So many of the excellent teachers have left though. They have left because of 'The System' and the way they are no longer able to teach as THEY want to, in a way they KNOW works.

Our Education Welfare Officer, a former teacher himself, of long-standing, as was his wife, before she was paralysed in a car accident, used to almost weep at what was happening inside The System, and believe you me, he KNEW!   

He knew that Home Education was growing on a rapid scale and he knew the reasons for most of that growth too. He dealt not only with the likes of us, but with the children who were expelled too. He used to turn up at their house, five days a week to deliver 5 hours of edukashon to a child that had no interest in learning.

He was a wonderful man, understood kids inside out. He soon had them working alongside him and enjoying doing that work, because he'd used different methods to bring the children over to his side, to make them interested, to inspire them.    They were entitled to 25 hours free home education a week. I think that may now have increased to full time hours, along the same hours as ordinary schooling.

We, as home edcators, got nothing from the system, other than a yearly inspection (6 monthly if they were worried, but we never needed extra visits) and the top mark of 'satisfactory'. They never awarded anything higher to home educators, than 'satisfactory', no matter the calibre of the child, no matter their intelligence, the work they'd covered, the examinations, the degrees achieved, nothing, but NOTHING went above 'satisfactory'..which shows you the mean minded, mean spirited, narrow minded prats who are in The System, because they couldn't BEAR to think that ANY home educated child was better educated than if they had been at school.

So bloody insulting!


And I disagree with you about good teachers. They are NOT, imo, 'in general' but 'in the minority'. Most people only remember the good teachers, and they only remember a very few of those. They tend to stick in our minds because they were the ones who were kind, gentle and understanding to us, who made us laugh and feel good about our work and about ourselves.


There are now more Factory Farm Schools than ever before in this country, vast souless places where thousands of children spend their secondary school life. Smaller schools have been closed down and centralised.

Bit like Russia..?

They were saying in the paper the other day that pupils and teachers alike are struggling in these mega schools. They breed trouble and fear, more often than not. I know. My daughter went to one such school and now, it is even BIGGER than it was then. Totally nuts!