Parents Janet and Phil Ford from Sheffield, decided upon home schooling from an early age for both their children, Christopher and Meredith.

My husband and I first considered home education when as newly weds we met a family who were home educating and we were impressed with the maturity and sociability of the children. That was 23 years ago, my husband was a teacher and feeling disenchanted with the schooling system he was part of.

When our first child Christopher came along in 1985 we started off by learning through fun and games. Chris learned about maths by counting the studs on the Lego he built, by measuring out dinosaurs, baking dinosaur biscuits, weighing and measuring ingredients, and working out the volume of cake tins needed instead of writing out dry maths problems in a book.

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