Teresa Dodgson's story

Until Leo got so unhappy with school that we had to take radical action, I had not thought much about democratic or alternative types of education. I felt sorry for families who were home-educating, thinking the children would miss out on making friends and having to be with other people. My experiences with Leo have forced me to think otherwise.

We won't know until Leo is 50 - if ever - if we took the right decision but for the moment we're living with a 17 year old who's passionate about learning and deeply into a 'creative flow' of drawing intricate pictures - with the 'learning' fuelling his pictures. He also pays his way by working in our home card factory and babysitting.

Two years ago, however, we were living with a very different child. Leo was dragging himself to school and smoking dope on the way home each day, and sometimes on the way to school. He was angry and very unhappy, but I kept saying, 'look, only one more year to go, then you can leave school - just hang on in there!' He had won student of the year in year 8 (£200 to donate to a charity of his choice). I didn't want to let the school down, as much as anything. but since year 8, Leo had been asking if he could be home educated (he'd heard of it when they read 'Skellig'). It wasn't an option at that point as both my husband and I were out working in school hours.

One day, just before Easter when Leo was in Year 10, however, he took drastic action and broke through the fire-door at the school to escape twice in one day - caught on CCTV footage each time - and was chased by a teacher or the deputy head and brought back to the school where they phoned us and said Leo would have to be in 'the bungalow' for a week (onsite unit for children with behavioural difficulties/punishment block). He stayed there for 4 days and the teacher there told me all he wanted to do was work on his drawings and that Leo was 'a very pleasant chap but just incredibly lazy' because he didn't seem keen to do his schoolwork.

To cut a long story short* (detail below), we did some research and came to an arrangement with the school called 'flexi-schooling'. Leo stayed on the school's roll but revised for his GCSE's from home. We dropped art and graphics as he loved doing his own artwork and it seemed pointless to say 'stop doing that and do a pastiche of Georgia O'Keefe's flowers...' John spent a considerable amount of time trying to shovel Maths into Leo - the one subject he had always struggled with, but the rest of the time Leo would read round the history or RS for a week, or two or three, at a time, (instead of 50 minute sessions for each subject) getting really interested in them again. He got so passionate about the RS that he read lots of books on all the religions.

And he felt at peace at home. One day, a couple of schoolfriends (the only friends he'd really liked were in the year above him at school) rang to say they were in the area and could they come and see him. He said 'sorry, I'm in the middle of screenprinting a poster - not now...' He'd found the environment of school mostly so unconducive to learning that he'd kept running away from it, so it was interesting to see him being so involved in what he was doing that he didn't want to break off from it.

Were his GCSE results a success? Not really. He got an A in History and Bs in the two Englishes and Science. So, 4 passes. He got an A* in one RS paper but bombed in the other - we hadn't had the books for that one - giving him an overall E, and he got a D in Maths. I'd talked to the Head of Year at parent's evening in year 11, though, saying 'sorry, Mr S, I don't think Leo's going to get all those As or A*s, but he is so much happier' and Mr S put my mind at rest, saying 'that's so much more important! He can always do these later if he really wants or needs them!'

So, to sum up, I don't know if home education or flexi-schooling is for everyone, but in our experience of 5 children, it has suited the 4th of them so much better than school if you look at 'education' being at all about being excited by learning. Leo is with friends at the moment which I'm pleased about because he now really thinks about whether he wants to go out or not. More often on a Saturday night, he's on the sofa reading a book on Gnosticism or doing another page of his unfolding graphic story or writing another chapter on his 'study of comparitive religions'. I have to encourage him to go off and see friends as he's discovered a peace within himself that pulls him strongly in the direction of the Hermitic life - something I'm frightened of for him, as his mother.


*At the end of the 4 days John and I went for a meeting with the Head of Year and Deputy Head and I asked if Leo could stay in the Bungalow permanently as he'd prefer to be just with a handful of other children. They said that wasn't possible as it was for short-term only, and that their only option would be behavioural units in Tower Hamlets which they didn't think would be in Leo's best interests. It was at that point that I said 'could he work from home?' as I worked from home by that point, and my husband was a part-time lecturer, based at home too from May 'til October. The school weren't keen at first: the Head of Year said 'the Head wouldn't be keen to lose an A student'.

The first day back in 'normal' school, Leo didn't turn up for registration, though - he'd gone off with friends. I had a huge row with him that night saying 'maybe you want this Home Education Lark, but none of our family have ever done this - it's not something we know anything about - what makes you so special?!' Leo started crying at that point and said 'I'm not special but I just really really really HATE school!!' At that point I typed 'home education' into google and stormed off to bed, saying 'research the options - it's over to you!' The first thing the web site Leo found confirmed that it's the legal right for anyone to educate their children at home.