The home-ed.info site is now over twenty-five years old. This page is about both the site and our home education journey.
We started home educating somewhat reluctantly when we moved to Cyprus at the end of October 1997. Private schools were prohibitively expensive, and our sons (11 and 9) did not want to go to a state school (Greek-speaking) until they had a least a little Greek. The staff at the UK school which our sons had attended were very positive about home education as a temporary measure, and helped us find text books, yearly plans and more.
What we did not expect was that home education would be a thoroughly enjoyable, inspiring adventure. I felt fulfilled; our sons seemed to be learning at least as much as they would have done in school, but at their own pace, in their own styles.
At the start of 1999, when we decided to continue our home educating long-term, I did a lot of research online. Although I found many American ‘homeschooling’ sites, there were very few for British home educators.
My sons suggested I start a site of my own. I knew nothing about web-sites, but registered at a free site called Geocities, and launched my first pages on February 1st 1999. There was a positive reaction from people on UK home education mailing lists, and since I enjoyed writing, I added further pages. I then re-designed it every couple of years to keep it looking reasonably modern.
In April 2006, someone who read my blog suggested that I move this site to its own domain, rather than Geocities. My husband offered me a bit of space on one of his servers, and I registered the domain name home-ed.info. I upgraded and edited as I moved the site, and launched the new version on May 1st 2006.
In the Summer of 2007 I went through every page – now about 120 of them – and cleaned up the HTML to make them compliant with W3C guidelines. This was time-consuming, and I wondered at the time if I would do better to use some kind of template, or stylesheet.
At the start of March 2008, I realised that I needed to do some more changes. One of the fonts I used was not showing on some computers, and the site was looking a bit dated. So I read a few tutorials on CSS. I found a template I liked and played around with it.
In March 2015 I realised that I needed to make the site work with tablets and smart phones. Analytics of the site showed that it was starting to get visitors using mobile devices rather than computers. Friends and family persuaded me to start using WordPress. After a steep learning curve, I think the switch was beneficial.
I hope the site is now consistent, and functional in all devices. While my enthusiasm is lower than it was, I am continuing to add loosely educational pages to the site irregularly. Every so often I check for broken links and re-write pages slightly, making them easier to read. When asked, I add links to new resources, or to home education groups (though not always immediately, and I reserve the power of veto if I don’t feel they are a good fit).
I apologise for any broken links or other problems, and am always happy to make corrections if people let me know. You can contact me at the email address below, or via the related Facebook page.
In the summer of 2022 I decided that the site design was too complex, as pages became slower to load. So I opted for a much simpler, more streamlined template which loads much more quickly.
About our home education journey
You can read about some of our early forays into home education in the home education diaries at the family website. These give day to day descriptions, showing how we gradually moved from ‘school at home’ to a more eclectic style.
For many years I procrastinated about turning some of the material on this site into a book, and finally managed to get it all together to publish ‘Home education: What? Why? How?‘ on the 20th anniversary of the site, 1st February 2019. Inevitably it’s somewhat out of date now; any legal information or advice should be checked carefully. But I hope some of the more generic chapters about ideas for relaxed home educating may still be useful to some.
About our grown up home educated sons
Our sons are now 40 and 38. At 18, The older son worked for a year at the local youth theatre company and then spent four years working on the ‘floating book ship’ MV Doulos from January 2006 until it retired from service in December 2009. He then spent about six years working in Carlisle, doing media and audio-visual work.
He was married at the end of April 2011 to someone whom he met on the Doulos. Their first child was born in June 2014, their second in December 2016. In the summer of 2017, they went as a family to spend a couple of years on another ship, based at in Central and South America. They returned to the UK in the summer of 2019, and our son is now employed as a software developer.
Our younger son worked for two years in Cyprus as a church organist, and studied for a certificate of higher education with the Open Theological College. He applied to university in the UK in January 2008. Newman College in Birmingham offered him a place to study Theology for Education. He graduated with a high 2:1 in the summer of 2011. He then completed an MA in Theology at Nottingham University at the end of 2013. While completing his studies he worked as a accompanist for two choirs and did IT support for a small business.
He moved back to Cyprus for three years, and worked at a local school, teaching music and IT. He did his PGCE during that time, then returned to the UK, where he taught music at a private school for five years. He moved to Cambridge to study for the Anglican ministry at Ridley Hall for two years, was married in 2022, and ordained as priest in July 2024. He served his curacy in London, while teaching music and RE part-time, and is now the vicar of a church in Yorkshire.
If you would like to contact me via email, you can do so at:
