Looking for local Home Education groups in West Sussex?

Over the past 7 or so years that we have been involved with the home education community in West Sussex I have noticed that August and September are very busy months for enquiries about home education.Whether people give in to that nagging feeling in their gut that their child is too young to start school or thoughts of returning an unhappy child in a school environment are the motivators I'm not sure. In my experience there are as many reasons for home educating as there are home educating families.

What I am sure of is that Home Educating is popular in West Sussex, a Freedom of Information Request from 2009 shows 385 children known to be home educated and more recent data from Fiona Nicholson suggests between 250 and 500 children. Membership of local groups suggests the same sort of figure.

There are many groups.

A large facebook group called

HEWS (link is to an intro group - you need to meet in real life before you can be added)

Crawley and Horsham Dragons

Worthing Area Home Education

Activeo

Members meet up for Archery, Drama, Horse riding, days at the beach and everything in between.

and a more structured formal group called Etudeo

and, on a more micro level, a HEWS blog ring  - I am aware some of the blogs in the ring are out of date and not all of the click throughs are working but it is worth persevering there is some useful information in there. Fixing it is on my list.

If you get stuck leave a comment on this post.

On the edge

If you live on the borders of the county you might be interested to know that: Brighton, South West Surrey, Portsmouth, Southampton, Kent and Tunbridge Wells all have lively and active home ed groups that might be easier for you to travel to.

Have a look here

How many home educated children are there in West Sussex?

Well, the short answer is that no one really knows!

Here is a link to edyourself with a map which suggests anywhere between about 250 and 500.

We think that about 3oo of these children are in our facebook group. If you would like to join please email us using the address on the main blog page.

Oh, you think home educators stay home!

This is what one of the 120 families from our local group is up to this year.

• The Wondering Wanderers
  

We have a blog ring which will give you a flavour for the diversity in the group.


I hope to have reviews of trips and days out to publish on the blog soon.

Welcome to Home Educating in West Sussex

Hi Everyone,

This is the first post on the new HEWS blog. Fed up with the labrynith that facebook has become I hope to use this to:

• Store a diary of regular events
• Hold information about exam centres
• Be a place to share resources where they can be found again.
• To record some standard info for newbies on Local Authority involvment and contact

My ultimate hope is that it be superseeded by a website (preferably before too long) In the meantime we can use this blog so that potential members who do not wish to join facebook can stay in touch and we can advertise to new members. If you would like to write a post about you and your family and your approach or to advertise any tution or similar please leave a comment.