We leave the usual AEUK format to bring a story about one of our inspirational members and her family

Make Your Child an A+ Student
(From this months Reader's Digest)

Three very different families reveal their secrets to success
by Catherine Farror

When it comes to education, our children are in trouble. Almost half leave school without having gained even basic skills in literacy or numeracy - hardly a surprise given that one in five 11-year-olds cannot read or write to the expected standard.
There are plenty of reasons cited for all this failure, from lack of leadership in schools to a rigid nationalcurriculum to too much testing. But some pupils - even in the worst schools - do succeed. Are they simply cleverer? Or do they have some hidden character trait that gives them an edge?
Dozens of studies have shown that the most consistent indicators of student achievement - more than income or social status - are the home environment and parental involvement. Academically successful kids get lots of support at home. We talked to three families facing different circumstances to find out exactly how they've managed to produce A-plus students.
It All Begins With Books
A tall self-possessed 21-year old, C has accomplished things that would make any parent proud. He sat his first GCSE when he was 13 and got two As at A level at 16. Last summer, after graduating from University with a 2:1 in Biology, he became the youngest student in memory to be accepted on a PhD course at the University of Manchester School of Medicine. Along the way he's acquired grade 8 guitar with distinction (he also plays piano and drums) and holds a brown belt in jujitsu.
But there is one thing C has almost no experience of: going to school. Apart from one term when he was 11, he has been educated at home near S, as has his 11 year old sister M. Their mother, 47 year old J, a former civil servant, is their main educator. Their father P, also 47, a full-time genealogist and former maths teacher, joins family discussions every evening at dinner and helps when he can. J's mother, a former deputy head, and father, an advisory teacher live next door.
While J knows what children should learn - as outlined in the National curriculum - she focuses mainly on something else. "Our approach to the children's education has been child-centred and flexible; our aim is to instil a love of learning and the confidence to find out for themselves.
As a home-educating parent - one of a group of 120 families in S - she's provided her children with a learning environment at all hours of the day. "If I find something interesting, I'll draw it to their attention," she says. "I see my role as a facilitator." And it all begins with how the home is set up.
"We've always had interesting things around the house," J says. "World maps and educational posters hang on the walls, games and activities cram the shelves. Both children used a computer from an early age.
Most critical of all, the whole house is filled with books - hundreds of books, lining shelves and resting on tables. As home educators, the family can borrow up to 70 books at a time from the local school library. J and P started reading to their children when they were tiny, letting them develop at their own pace. "C began reading when he was three, M when she was six," says J. "Now she's writing fiction."
This book-centric approach is spot-on, say educationalists. "Reading at home with your children when they are very young is one of the most important things you can do for their education," says Anna Vignoles, reader in the economics of education at the Institute of Education. A low reading age can hamper a child's progress for years with predictable results. Teenagers with poor academic achievement are twice as likely to leave school at 16, risking later unemployment.
C couldn't have dropped out if he'd tried because of his parents' commitment to making the outside world his classroom. Along with educational trips to museums, zoos, castles and archaeological sites, there were historical re-enactments and workshops. When C became interested in natural history they enrolled him in a wildlife group - joining nature trails and looking at specimens under the microscope.
"Anything I was interested in, I could follow to quite a deep level," he says.
His love of nature led to his degree and now his PhD researching skin cells.
Both parents are careful not to impose their own interests on their children. They're more concerned with giving them every available tool. "Its about allowing them to be who they are," says J. Judging from her son's success, it's also about helping them discover all they can be.

This picture should link to the AEUK group..so I think it is sussed! Shame blogger doesn't do it for us anymore!

Welcome to Autonomous Education UK.. I'm still trying to work out how this works! What I hate about the new blogger is that I can't use hello and then blog webpages that I find interesting. Minor detail but a feature I love so much in my old blogs on blogger. eg. I see a page online I like and want to share..I click on internet explorer the hello icon and it blogs the website and a picture of it so people can get a nice visual link. I hate when sites change stuff and they think they are actually improving things. Don't they realise that some of us are stuck in our ways and sometimes change is not for the best?
Well there we go...a bit like education..not all change is good!