Some of you may or may not know that from September last year until July of this year I was home schooled. I wanted to make this article to share my experience because really, home schooling isn't very common as I have never actually met someone who has also been home schooled.

I never expected to be home schooled. It was one of those things that me and my parents would joke about, saying that my mum could be my teacher but it was never actually a serious consideration. We never actually thought I would be at one point though. Home schooling was my last option if I wanted to gain the qualifications that I need because we were moving. You're probably thinking 'why didn't you just move school?' well sadly it wasn't actually as simple as that. This time last year I was living in a city in the south west of the UK and living down there was making us unhappy so we were going to move back home, to the north of the UK. At my old school down south I was studying English, Maths, Science, History, Catering and Performing Arts. When looking into the school I would have been going to, had things been simple, we realised that they offered none of the courses I was doing and if they did, they were different to the courses I had been working on. And we also realised that even if I did move schools and they had my courses, I would likely have been going over stuff I have already learnt and missing out on stuff that I hadn't learnt because my teachers had taught the modules in a random order. This made us realise that the national curriculum is actually not national at all and made us realise that if I wanted to get my GCSE's and not just go to school for a register mark, we would have to find an alternative.

After doing a little research into home schooling my mum stumbled across a website that offered everything that I would need and want. This was Oxford Open Learning. Oxford Open Learning offers GCSE, IGCSE and A Level courses for you to learn from home. They offer a wide range of different courses and if you enrol with them you will get a tutor specialized in that certain subject to help you improve your work and get your final grade. After a lot of thinking we decided that this was the option we were going with. I chose five new courses and I was going to have a fresh start. I chose to study English Language, History, Religious Studies, Sociology and Psychology. A few days later my course books had arrived and I had an entire course to work through in just eight months. If I was at school I would have had two years to complete the work.

At first it was strange getting use to everything and having to keep myself motivated but I got used to it. The tutor support definitely helped in the subjects where I got that support. Sadly I didn't get it in all of my subjects and that has definitely shown in my exam results. My English and Sociology tutors were fantastic, they were so lovely and helpful that it didn't even feel like they were my tutors. For my other tutors I didn’t get much help at all and was basically left to my own devices. I basically taught myself this year.
This experience has taught me a lot though and I feel like I have learnt more teaching myself than I had in my ten year school career. My grades went from being 30 or 40 % to being well up into the 80’s, even reaching 97 % at one point. I had the time to take things in and understand them and this has made huge differences to my work. It makes me realise just how bad the education system in this country is, especially for people who don’t understand something straight away. Teaching myself I got the chance to go over things a few times to make sure I understand where as at school you would be expected to move on when everyone else understands. It makes me wonder how many other people could benefit from being given the chance to properly go over things and be taught properly. How many people’s grades are suffering because of poor teaching? I know that if I had stayed in school I wouldn’t have left with any of the grades that I got this year.

After taking my exams in July I got 3 C’s, a D and an E. Now a D and an E aren’t the best but I didn’t have support in those subjects at all and because of that there was a lot that I didn’t understand and in those subjects you need to understand things better so I am pretty damn proud of myself. Who else can say they taught themselves and got 3 C’s? Now I’m back in school and I’m doing a BTEC diploma in business that will give me the equivalent of 3 A levels. I am incredibly thankful for this experience because it has gotten me to where I am today and without it I honestly don’t think I would be sat here with the grades I’ve got and on the college course that I’m on. So my advice to you is that you should work the way you want to. Don’t do things the way your teachers would want you to, do it how YOU want to do it and do it the way that you understand it. If you have to go over it more than once, go over it more than once. Don’t think you should know it straight away because you won’t always get something straight away. I hope that this article gave you some insight into what it’s like to be home schooled. If you have any questions then please feel free to ask because I’m happy to answer. Have any of you been home schooled?