MORE than 1,200 children in Essex are currently being educated at home.

They are among 36,000 in the country whose parents took the step to de-register their youngsters from mainstream school, or decided not sign them up to start in the first place.

Colchester mum Erin Summers Norman is among them.

And despite the number of parents home educating in the region going up year on year, she says there are still a huge number of misconceptions surrounding educating children at home and while it does not suit everyone, it has been the making of her son and has helped bring the family even closer that it already was.

She explains many people wrongly assume children who do not go to mainstream school will have trouble socialising, that they will be bored or they will not achieve the same standard of learning their peers do.

“There are so many myths surrounding it and I do get upset when negative things are written about it and the point of view of those who are successfully doing it is not given.

“For a start, I do not see it as a replacement for school but rather an alternative to it.

“That is why I like to call it home educating, and not home schooling. We do not set up a classroom and I do not try to do the things that would be done at school. It is a very different way of learning,” she says.

Erin explains she and her husband discussed the possibility of educating Alex at home before they signed him up for school when he was four but put it to one side.

“I wasn’t sure at that time whether it was something I could do and I didn’t know enough about it.

“But whereas he was a very confident and happy little boy before he started school, he soon became quite withdrawn and we realised he was being bullied.

“We already knew he was quite bright but he is also quite shy and sensitive.

“That was when we made the decision we would take him out of school and educate him at home.”

Rather than there being a long drawn out process involved in making the switch to teaching at home, the only legal requirement is parents write a letter to the school their child attends, or the authority to which they would apply for a school place if the child is not yet enrolled, to tell them they are de-registering them.

Erin says: “There are no further legal requirements whatsoever. That is all you have to do.

“Of course, the response from the schools can differ wildly and I have heard of some writing letters designed to scare parents.

“It might be because they think it makes their records of achievement look bad.

“But in our case the school was very good about it.

“They wrote us a letter back saying they were very sorry to lose Alex and sent him off with a wave on his last day and a good luck card.”

While there is no legal requirement for parents to further involve the Local Education Authority once they have informed them, Erin was more than happy for them to visit Alex on a regular basis to see his progress.

“We did not legally have to do it but I had nothing to hide and was more than happy to do it.

“They sent someone once a year but then on the last visit they said he was doing so well they felt their time would be better spent where it was actually needed,” she says.

Rather than having a structured day of lessons, Erin has formulated a way that suits them both while keeping up with Alex’s learning.

“We have workbooks that have year three, four and five level work in maths, phonics, English, science and Spanish and an agreement he has to do three different pages out of three different books plus a written assessment each day.

“We also research a lot of different subjects together and we tend to resort to the library where we get loads of books on the subjects we are studying and also use the internet.

“I do a lot of research too which, because I have a background in journalism and am an author now, I enjoy doing.

“We also go on a lot of trips too, we are not beholden to term time so we can go when we want, which I try and fit in with what Alex is learning at the time.

“For example, we were learning about the War of the Roses recently, so we went to Canterbury.”

Erin agrees home educating is not for everyone but says parents might be surprised at their ability to do it.

“If you are a single parent or you cannot be at home then it obviously might not work for you and I am not in any way saying home educating is better than being at school.

“I am saying it works for us and my son is doing really well.

“We are looking at education with a different philosophy,” says Erin who also feels the idea children who do not go to school will miss out on the social aspect.

She says: “He goes to forest school once a week as well where children learn in an outside environment and he loves that.

“Alex is more sociable than a lot of children his age, both with his peers and also the people he meets when he is going around with me who include journalists and politicians.

“It is a misconception to think children home educated will not be able to socialise or make friends, and it is also not true they will get a second-rate education or that they will be bored,” she adds.

Erin also feels it has brought the family even closer together, especially since at the time they began thinking about removing Alex from school, she suffered a life-threatening brain haemorrhage which has left her with life changing disabilities.

“During that year we were afraid I might die at any point. I was so grateful to have him there and I kept saying I wanted him to have as many memories as I could fit in.

I wanted him to remember me if there was a chance might not be around any more.

“I could not really move around but we had lots of cuddles and I could sit up and bed and read with him.

“Although I am now out of the woods it made me think how they grow up so quickly and because of my illness I could not have any more children and so it was important to me to be with him as much possible.

“I am not saying mums who send their children to school are not loving mums. It is not a competition, all of our children just want to be loved and they all need to be educated.”

The family had initally planned for Alex to re-join mainstream education for his secondary schooling but Erin says they have now decided to continue as they are.

“It is something we have given a great deal of thought, along with sitting exams and how his further education would develop.

“But it has gone so well with educating him at home we now plan to continue with that."