By Bonnie Grant, Bumblebees

My name’s Bonnie – I live in Leeds – and I’ve been homeschooled for nearly 3 years now. I’m writing to talk about my personal opinion and experience with home education and why it’s good and sometimes bad.

I left school in year 7. I didn’t want to be home-schooled, as I had to leave my friends, but as the months went on it started to grow on me. I made friends with new people not long after; some were in my classes or some were friends of friends. I was able to do a lot more activities then I was doing in school such as rock climbing, netball, gymnastics and much more that I still do today. When it comes to lessons I use zoom, some are in a class with other home-schoolers and some are one-on-one, providing support on a personal level. But the question is, what’s good and bad?

The up’s

One thing that motivated me with homeschooling is being able to learn the topics that I was most interested in, and being able to pick my own projects to do instead of something a teacher picked for a whole class to do. Of course I had to learn the same things children in school did, so that I could do my GCSE’s. This links in to how I do my GCSE’s. When you are home-schooled you are able to do your gcses at any year whether it’s year 8 or year 10 or 11, and you can re-sit them if it’s needed. 

This year i’m doing my english literature exam: in year 10, then hopefully i’ll be doing my maths and english language exams next year! But you have to have self discipline when it comes to learning from home with all the distractions around you. The last thing which can be a big positive is being protected from the wrong crowd of people. I know it can be difficult if you are caught up in something that’s wrong and that won’t end well, especially if you are too scared to speak up to other peers. This is why home-schooling is a safe option and can keep you safe as it has done with me. 

The down’s

Although home-schooling has a lot of up’s and has a good outcome, there are quite a few downs. One is being at home the majority of time. I find it can become draining and seem to be a constant re-peat but there are so many ways that I try to avoid feeling this way. I sometimes go outside in between my lessons for a walk for a change of scenery; you could even go to a cafe and do some work so you are around different people and a different place instead of home. Sometimes I begin to feel quite lonely, that’s why I tend to make plans for most weekends so I have something to look forward to and keep me going. Even though there are downs to this sort of education there are way more up’s I would say. 

Overall I personally would 100% recommend being home-schooled! If you think it would make things easier for you then go for it. There are hundreds of ways to learn and make it to your ability whether it’s more challenging or at an easier level, just do it at your own pace. Thanks for reading my blog!