Home schooling
By Claire Price
Why are over a hundred Bournemouth families teaching their children at home? BBC Dorset investigates the growing trend for home schooling among families here in the county - and discovers that they're hardly at home at all.
It could almost be a class trip. A dozen children are running around Moors Valley Country Park, burning off their excess energy after lessons. But this is a school trip with a difference - these children don’t go to school at all.
June Wilson-Billing is a mother of four children, who she educates at home. She started to think about home schooling after her eldest daughter India was refused a place at primary school. Rather than defer a year, or send her to a different school, she decided to teach her at home.
That was the start of a love affair with home schooling. Now all four of her children are taught at home, although June thinks that’s a misnomer: “Home schooling isn’t at home at all. It’s educating in the community. We meet up with other families, go to museums, parks, the shops. I teach my kids life skills that are going to be far more useful than what they might learn in school.”