Guardian today had a story relating to reports on primary schools, saying kids are increasingly being either home-schooled or educated at alternative like Steiner schools.
"Both the numbers opting for home schooling and the range of motivations of those wishing to do so have expanded considerably in recent years. One substantial and growing group is comprised of those who have abandoned formal schooling because they believe it to be too constrained," according to a paper by James Conroy and colleagues at Glasgow University. An estimated 50,000 children are being educated at home. A second paper, also released today, reveals that English children are attending school earlier, and spend more days a year at school, and in increasingly large institutions.
However shite mainstream schools are, I am glad that I went to one and wasn't home-schooled or go to some hippy school. It's valuable that a study is finding kids are tested too much, go to school for too long and parents are increasingly seeking alternatives but isn't everyone who gets homeschooled kids of either: a) right-wing christian fundamentalist stock, b) middle-class hippies, c) nut-job survivalists?
As for Steiner schools - aren't they just crap and pay their staff fuck-all? I mean the local Steiner schools pay teachers 10grand a year the last advert I saw.
