Full-time home education does not suit everyone...

Full-time home education does not suit everyone; and where both parents must work for financial reasons, it’s not always practical. But in most countries it’s an increasingly viable way of ensuring that children are truly educated according to ‘age, ability and aptitude’, as the UK education law requires.

Research has long established that most children educated at home not only learn faster and more effectively, but are better able to socialise with people of all ages and backgrounds than those artificially limited, day by day, to mixing only with children born in the same year. For children with learning difficulties, or who have some kind of physical disability - and, indeed, for those who are highly gifted in any respect - education at home has every advantage over mainstream schooling.

Sadly, the law about compulsory schooling in Cyprus appears to be tightening even for ex-pats. The Ministry of Education seems reluctant to give exemption from school, even in cases where children are clearly at an advantage learning at home. Yet more and more people are becoming dissatisfied with classroom learning and the negative ‘socialisation’ that takes place in so many schools.

Cyprus is near the bottom of the European educational leagues. Compulsory schooling is not proving successful; yet people are sending their children not only to kindergarten at four or five, but now to pre-school at three, or even younger. There seems to be a widespread belief that children should separate from their parents as early as possible, and that education can only take place in the classroom. Yet in countries with the most successful educational systems, children do not start any kind of formal education until they are about seven, with parents seen as the most important educators for at least the first several years of life.

Will the authorities in Cyprus ever allow parents to take back the full responsibility for their children’s education in the first five or six years of life, and beyond that if they choose, or will they continue in the production-line mentality, condemning anyone who prefers to think outside the box? As part of the European community, are you prepared to fight for the rights of your children and grandchildren to receive education which is truly appropriate to them at each stage, or will you continue to hand them over, dutifully, to institutions from the time they are potty-trained?

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