Home schooling

RIVER NETWORK CHARITY, HOME SCHOOLING offering information, guidance, signposting & support. Our Board, Leaders and team come with decades of credibility, Professional experience and qualifications. With this experience, heart and local need are looking to expand our services.   

At river network we have fully trained and experienced home schooling teachers who are also experienced in forest schools .Home schooling is a good alternative to mainstream schooling with children needing to attend 3-5 hour per day depending on the child’s age.  A child’s swimming lesson can come under their education through home schooling where as it wouldn’t in mainstream schooling. This gives both parents and children more freedom with their curriculum, allowing more freedom to learn from real life experiences as well as core curriculum subjects. Almost 50% of parents are considering home schooling feeling that it will better support their child’s social skills.  Home schooling can benefit children who suffer from mental health issues and well as some children with disabilities who struggle with mainstream schooling. Child lead learning can be more fun as well as learning at the child’s pace and in the child’s time when the child will work at their best even if they don’t start learning until the afternoon.

Homeschooling allows much more freedom for parents when it comes to their children’s education, this is due to the available activities which fall under homeschooling but do not under mainstream schooling and, depending on the children’s age, will only need to attend 3 to 5 hours a homeschooling each day. For example, swimming lessons do not fall under mainstream schooling but are supported under homeschooling.

Homeschooling can also benefit children who may suffer from a mental health illness or who may have a learning difficulty as they may struggle with mainstream schooling. Homeschooling can provide a more relaxed, stress free environment and allows the education to go at a pace which will benefit the child.

River Network has fully trained and experienced homeschooling teachers who are also experienced in forest school, which is another form of alternative education.

Homeschooling Hub is a great asset for parents who may currently be homeschooling or may be considering homeschooling. Homeschooling Hub can help children learn a variety of skills through activities such as woodwork, needlework, baking and much more. Homeschooling Hub is free of charge.

Between 2013 and 2018, the number of children in homeschooling has increased by 130%, growing from 24,824 to 57,132.

Homeschooling is a progressive movement around the country and the world, in which parents educate their children at home instead of sending them to a traditional public or private school.

Families choose to homeschool for a variety of reasons including dissatisfaction with the education options available, different religious reasons and also the belief that children are not progressing within the traditional school structure.

More than 40,000 students were formally taken out of school in the U.K. between September 2020 and April 2021, compared to the average of 23,000 over the previous two years.

There was a 75.6% rise in home education between September 2020 and April 2021 compared the averages for the same school terms over the previous two years.

Every region of the U.K. has seen a rise of at least 50% in hole education.

In the U.K. over 100,000 students are believed to be home schooled.

Types of homeschooling

Flexi Education involves a combination of home school and part time attendance at school. Though the school need to give their approval as it can impact on their school absence statistics.

There are just a just a handful of U.K. schools, state and independent that are Flexi education friendly

Online Schools allocate classes, register at the start of each day, greet their teacher and have discussions. Each pupil can be based anywhere in the country, though schools are increasingly introducing ‘real world’ meetings and events to create a sense of community.

Correspondence Courses specialise in distant learning. These course are normally linked to formal qualifications like GCSE’s and A-Levels. The student or parent pus per subject/level and will receive all literature and coursework they need together with a dedicated tutor who will call to support them and will mark their assignments.

Most of the U.K. have groups of Parent-Organised Resources and can usually be found on social media platforms.

They organise get-togethers and educational trips and also swap tips on online classes and activities.