Notes from the UnConference: Part 3

(How) should we build a home ed community/do we need one?

This was in the last session of the day and was a lovely relaxed chat which meandered off topic in a very enjoyable way!

I (Catherine) began by saying that the home ed community is so large, diverse, and fragmented. There are big communities of home educators on facebook, which sometimes don’t feel all that welcoming. I talked about Charlotte Mason’s Parents’ National Education Union, a historic organisation which existed to support parents educating at home, and pondered whether there was a need for a similar group today.

Hannah Busing via Unsplash

Leah Boden

noted the importance of building your own community, meeting in person (as opposed to only online), and finding your people.

Eloise Rickman

said it can be hard to find a way in, and the group agreed that often a local WhatsApp group is the best way to find a local community—but that it’s hard to find the WhatsApp groups when you’re not in them! Kavitha said that it’s so helpful to find others just like you, and remember that you’re not the only one in your situation.

Leah drew our attention to the Streams Education website, which is building an online UK home ed community.

We agreed that the diversity of home education can be a challenge when it comes to finding your niche and your people. Not everyone works in the same way or has the same goals, and the community often feels like it is ever-changing, with new families joining, children going (back) into school, families moving away.

Ben from Nudge Education noted that it would be great to help EOTAS parents to find their local home ed community, and that local councils are ideally placed to help share useful information on this and other subjects.

In a cross-over with the session on Decolonisation, participants noted that natural networks are often preferable, and that people don’t always want a big top-down organisation.

We agreed that ‘onboarding’ for home ed parents could be much better, and that councils have an important role to play. One parent shared that the Lambeth council website was particularly negative, and another that the Coventry council had put together a really useful website (and possibly welcome pack?) for Elective Home Educators, which it transpired had been put together with the help of an experienced local home educator. Catherine thinks there is potential here for a big improvement nationwide about how home educators interact with their local council—more to follow on How We Homeschool.

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