ERO at Motu Hause.

[Motu]

ERO officer was at our place this morning to make sure our boys aren't stupid - he asked the youngest if he could read him a passage out of a book - ''no thank you!'' ...good on ya mate.

The missus was up till 3.00am getting things in order,kinda overwhelmed the poor guy...he said he would of liked to stay longer to see what she had for him to look at,but he was impressed with what he saw,no problems with what we are doing,just as well....or my wife would go into attack mode on the Education Revue Office!

Lucky he didn't come last year when we were all living in a caravan - well,they wanted to come,but we said we were busy.

[mangell6]

He he he he

Well done.

[Hitcher]

One small step against the forces of evil, darkness and mediocrity! I approve.

[Holy Roller]

Some of the ERO rewiewers can be mini hitlers, but their job is to see if you are actually doing what you said you would be doing in the exemption. If not then the logic behind the change. There is nothing about actually learning anything just that something is taught

[Motu]

He was the same guy who revued us for our daughters home schooling over 10 years ago (we've been at this for awhile now) and my wife enjoyed his visit,she found a refreshing change in someone who was taking an interest in our childrens education,there was nothing negative about the whole revue at all.She was a bit stroppy last time,she stood up for her rights not to have them enter our home,so loaded suitcases with work produced and went to their offices for the revue.Home schooling parents are usualy quite motivated and the children often obviously - actualy obliviously capable of learning.

It's bloody hard to stop a kid learning,it's what they are built to do,like stopping a bird from learning to fly....

[MikeL]

their job is to see if you are actually doing what you said you would be doing ...There is nothing about actually learning anything just that something is taught

More or less right. Actually they are more interested in seeing that the documentation (plans, procedures, syllabi etc) are in place, and that there is some sort of evidence that the procedures are being followed. This evidence can be quite meaningless in terms of a particular standard of achievement or the content of instruction. These things hardly matter; what matters is that there is a paper trail...
Which explains why in our schools today form is more important than substance and process is more important than content. The ERO is not interested in maintaining standards; in fact it is complicit in the dumbing-down...

[jrandom]

Oooh, *I* remember those visits, 10 years ago!

I was the kid, of course. Well and truly nerve-wracking, they were. But I do recall a slight impression, tallying with Mike's comments, that the inspectors were only concerned with paperwork... nobody ever really did anything to figure out whether I was learning much.

(I was, but that was mostly my own fault.)

[toads]

yeah I remember being really freaked out about the ERO visits too, but never came across a nasty or unhelpful one, usually they were really encouraging and full of helpful ideas. I used to have one day a week where we joined in with other h/schoolers, and did sports, cooking, sewing etc, the social/teamwork side of things was the part they always seemed most concerned about.
Your wife must have been very tired last night Motu lol!, I wouldn't have got up at 3am for anyone.

[Motu]

It's kinda like my Performance Revue System I have to go through for WoFs,of course I don't do anything until the big day and then you have to fabricate a paper trail that hasn't been in place - the inspectors know,but so long as you know what you are doing and the intent is there they are happy - but they do like to pick up on things you never noticed!

The big worry as jrandom would know is an inspector putting a loaded question to a child,like...''do you like homeschoolong?,or...''do you like maths?'' The answer is obvious,and is a black mark of the highest order,so yeah,they can be pricks.He seemed interested in picking up on differences between the two boys,he wanted to see their individuality,that we were tailoring our program to their indivual needs and not just churning out a couple of robots who could read and write.

[Holy Roller]

In the early days the ERO treated Home schoolers or Home educators like a mini school and tried to apply the same standards, it didn't work as many Homeschoolers had escaped the system and were educating from a vastley different philosophy such as "Unschooling"
The fear of ERO was that they could retract ones exemption because they were not satisfied with either the home environment or the standard of teaching. During our 13 years of home educating I know of three exemptions that were retracted. Two were for following the unschooling method with no paper trail to varify what had been done (a bit of help organising learning outcomes with what had been done saw these reinstated after a bit of bother) the other proberly was right as the children were left to own devices and if they did not want to complete a given task or work book (they were using ACE paces a work book type course of self study).

Whatever your philosophy for home educating is as long as you have maintained some kind of paper trail showing ERO what you have done and where you want to go with the child and their education grooming them in their strengths and redeveloping their weaknesses one should have no problem with ERO these days

It pays to stay alert to what the ERO is introducing in new requirements for home schooling, the new exemption form being suggested tends to promote more of a mini school environment for the student some have a problem with this as their philosophy is to break away from any ties to the old system.

[vifferman]

It was rather funny when the ERO guy came to our home when my wife was home-schooling the two oldest boys. He turned out to be my 6th/7th form physics teacher from when I went to Rotorua Boys High School.
Wish we'd known that beforehand - I would've made sure I was there, as I worked only two blocks from home.
All in all, it was rather painless. The most pain we had was when we started home-schooling, as my sister had been a teacher for a long time, and was quite negative about an amateur attempting to tackle her highly-skilled job.

[dhunt]

I remember when we got a visit from one back when I was in Form four I think it was he was more intersted in whether I actually did any work or not as lots of the "naughty" kids get put on corrispondence as get kicked out of schools and don't really do any work. So he was quite pleased that yes I did do some work, (Used to get up at 6:30 to start and would be finished by 11:30, so had the rest of the day off )

[Holy Roller]

(Used to get up at 6:30 to start and would be finished by 11:30, so had the rest of the day off )

This what my kids like so much
My oldest has been on The Correspondence School this year and is in the middle of sitting his exams. He has done extreemly well this year with merit passes on most of his papers while living a very busy social life.
Only another 8 years of this before all of the kids have completed their schooling at home. I find it exciting to consider the possibilites that await each of the kids in the future. I know its up to them to decide what they want to do but we will help them get there.

[Motu]

Sounds like you are in for the long haul like us holyRoller - we have done 17yrs worth,with the youngest being 8,looks like another 8 to go.We found a few years ago it became ''trendy'' to homeschool,so people were doing it with no idea of what they were,or wanted to do...but when they found out how much work was required they soon went back to the system.All it takes is one bad case out of thousands for the media to have a field day.

[toads]

Sounds like you are in for the long haul like us holyRoller - we have done 17yrs worth,with the youngest being 8,looks like another 8 to go.We found a few years ago it became ''trendy'' to homeschool,so people were doing it with no idea of what they were,or wanted to do...but when they found out how much work was required they soon went back to the system.All it takes is one bad case out of thousands for the media to have a field day.

good on both of you ( holy roller and Motu) for being in for the long haul, I found it too difficult to continue when the triplets were little and sent the older kids off to school, being in a rural area there was a lot of negativity from locals towards me for homeschooling my kids when the school rolls were declining in our area and threat of closures etc started, I feel homeschooling is the best possible option for some families but both parents have to be involved, Pete was never interested in homeschooling at all and was not very encouraging, whenever the kids had been uncooperative he'd say "send them to school", i note however these days he recognises the kids that had the most homeschooling are also the kids that are far more self motivated and have better work habits and ethics than the ones that have been to school. Or maybe that's just a coincidence.