A class of their own

I never meant to conduct a social experiment. I never intended to undermine anyone’s confidence in their judgement. And I certainly never meant to arouse so much hostility. Yet by choosing to home-school my six-year-old this is precisely what I seemed to be doing.

Like many other desperate parents, I hadn’t got our first choice of primary state school (this year, just 68 per cent of parents in our Local Education Authority, Kensington and Chelsea, did). In fact, the only place for Izzy was at a primary across the river, which would take over an hour of travelling to get to.

So I decided to teach Izzy at home. To be more precise, I decided that my mother, then 72, would teach her. I would merely ferry the child to my mother’s flat, and provide textbooks and online courses.

A long tube and bus trip to some unknown school in an unfamiliar neighbourhood or a 20-minute walk to a beloved granny’s — the choice was easy. Less so was putting up with the criticisms. Other parents felt compelled to pass judgment: you are robbing your daughter of precious peer-to-peer interactions; you think you’re too good for our school system; you think she’s cleverer than my children; you’re storing up trouble, because she will grow into a fragile and precious mini-monster.

Happily, I didn’t have to bear these attacks for very long. Shortly after we began home-schooling we stumbled upon a fabulous state school near our home where, miraculously, a place had materialised.

But that brief (three-month) experience left me thinking that home-schooling has been unfairly maligned. For centuries our forefathers learned at home. Home education was the norm, from Aristotle who tutored Alexander the Great, through to Thomas Hobbes who tutored the Earl of Devonshire, and the succession of tutors who educated our kings and queens until the 20th century.