By Jane Lowe and Alan Thomas
Australian Distributor: Allen and Unwin
Price $39.95
Reviewed by Susan Wight

Educating Your Child at Home is a great introduction to home education for new home educators and families enquiring into home education. It clearly explains what home education is and how it differs from school education. It also outlines the different methods available with the advantages of each in order to assist families to choose the home education style most suited to them.

Rather than reviewing various curricula, the book focuses instead on the differences between home education approaches which are broken into three broad categories – structured, semi-formal and informal.
It has sections on starting out, learning in the primary and secondary years, informal learning, projects, social life and special needs as well as options for older students. Home educators are quoted liberally throughout in order to illustrate various methods and points of view.

The book was written for the U.K. market and some parts of it are quite specific to the U.K. for example, key stages of the English National curriculum and preparing for GCSE (the English equivalent of the VCE). Despite this, the book is very relevant to the Australian market as it contains universal ideas for teaching and/or encouraging learning at home in all the major curriculum areas with a variety of approaches.

I liked the tone of the book which gave a clear message that there are many ways to educate children and that parents are more than capable of doing so by whichever method suits their individual family.

Jane Lowe is a founder trustee of the Home Education Advisory Service, the national home education charity in the U.K.

Dr Alan Thomas has researched home education extensively in the U.K. and Australia. He is a visiting fellow at the Institute of Education, University of London and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He will be in Australia next year for our national home education conference and this book as well as his original Educating Children At Home and a new book will all be available for sale at each venue.