When we left the school system, we were forced to review our ideas about what a good education was and what it meant for us as a family. We had made the bold decision to remove the kids from school without giving too much thought to how we would deliver education at home. It had been an intuitive decision, one based on the need to stop our children from suffering the anxiety of separation that was clearly eating away at them, especially our daughter.

We knew it could work, we knew it could be a great turning point for us all as a family, but we hadn’t given too much practical consideration to how it would look. Stuck in the pros and cons of the decision-making process, we had not had time to evaluate how it would practically work day to day, on a granular level. I think this was also because we instinctively knew, as we had read from others’ experiences, that it was going to be a trial-and-error process—an experience unique to us as a family, and so one that only we could live out once the decision was made.

The Practical Reality of Our Situation

The benefit of me being at home, as a result of taking time out from my career and trying to heal from chronic illness, was that I was around to care for our kids 24/7. We did not have to make the decision to forgo one income in favour of teaching the kids, because in some ways that decision had already been taken away from us. We were already trying to survive as a one-income family. The chronic illness added another layer of difficulty in itself, but it wasn’t the potential loss of income that made the decision challenging for us as it may for others.

Although in the longer term, Jimmy wanted to be as hands-on with the process as me and share the burden of full-time childcare. We knew that we had the physical means to make it work, and time on our side. We felt the benefit of our situation was that the kids were so little—our daughter only six years old and our son not even at school age yet. We realised we had time to work it out without missing out on any crucial educational milestones.

Deschooling is too narrow a term for me to describe the experience we have been through.

The Deschooling Journey—Longer Than Expected

When we left school, we knew it would take some time for us all to adjust to our new normal. It is clear now, though, that we definitely underestimated this transition. People in the homeschooling community often refer to that period as a deschooling process, a period of time where the children who have been used to formal education unlearn the rigidity of the format of school life and slowly adjust to a more self-guided way of learning.

A rough calculation of one month for every year the child has been at school had us gunning for a deschool period of three to four months. We left school officially on the first day of term in January 2024, and I can tell you for sure that we did not have it all sorted by April. We were only just getting started. The kids were fine, having adjusted very quickly. Our son was three years old, still enjoying play and having his sister very much back in his life as a playmate. No more separation, watching Mummy go one way, his sister go another, whilst he was marched into the preschool classroom alone.

I believe our daughter just felt relief. It did not take her long, maybe a month, to return to her usual calm, content, funny self without school mapping her days. Whether we were encouraging workbooks, trying out local homeschooling groups, or trying it more free-range, she took it all in her stride. She was just content to be with us again.

As for Jimmy and me, it was a whole other ball game. It has precipitated a two-year journey by which we have come to re-evaluate everything we thought we knew, with education being at the foundation of that. Deschooling is too narrow a term for me to describe the experience we have been through. It hasn’t been about rebellion, anti-establishment ideals, or assuming that only one way of learning is right. It has been about working out what parts of the education system work for us and what parts we need to let go of.

It was one decision that we intentionally made that led to many more decisions that have reshaped our lives.

It was one decision that we intentionally made that led to many more decisions that have reshaped our lives. This journey has seen us reprogram the core beliefs we had surrounding education—the subconscious programming that we, as parents, had gained as a result of growing up in modern-day Western society and going through the conventional education system in the UK ourselves. We had both had different experiences, some good, some bad, but these had inevitably shaped our view on what education was actually about.

Jimmy’s Educational Path—The Entrepreneur’s Rebellion

Jimmy left academia at 18 years old. He had been accepted onto a business degree at City University in London, but partway through his first semester, he decided that university wasn’t for him. Having always had an entrepreneurial spirit—running a DJ business as a teenager and making money on the side buying and selling on eBay—he wanted to continue honing his skills. A year away from home travelling after A-levels made him realise he didn’t want to be spending three years discussing and learning about other people’s businesses; he wanted to get started building his own.

Showing his rebellious spirit early and his desire to go against the grain if he couldn’t see the sense, he took the courageous decision to leave university and move back home to work in his mum’s kitchen business. He was able to use this time to learn necessary skills to allow him to set up the IT support business that would continue to build and support our family later on.

Jimmy already had a healthy disregard for conventional education, having successfully fooled his teachers and parents into letting him drop an AS-level—something that wasn’t allowed in his private sixth form—because he couldn’t choose one that was relevant to his needs. He left with three A-levels in economics, business studies, and maths. These clearly helped to shape his worldview and gave him knowledge that he could apply in the workplace, but the pieces of paper the grades are written on have never been worth anything to him as a business owner.

Academia has never been high on his agenda. Instead, using his analytical and practical problem-solving skills, he taught himself what he needed to in the way that was relevant to him. He never received an academic education in IT. Instead, his self-motivation and curiosity with technology meant he was able to learn the skills he needed on the job, allowing him to run a successful support business. His early life experience meant he had a lot of real-world experience and was very self-sufficient.

In a lot of ways, it didn’t take much convincing for Jimmy to remove our kids from school. Always keeping abreast of news and politics, and having practical experience of the job market as an employer of eight staff members, he could see better than I could how the school was not keeping abreast of the rapidly changing work demands on graduating students.

I was so consumed by the anxiety to perform, the stress of not getting anything other than the best marks, that I never allowed myself to be proud of what I had achieved.

My Academic Journey—The High Achiever’s Trap

My experience was very different. An eternal academic, I found myself completing every qualification that was thrown at me. I thrived on the metaphorical pats on the back that I got each time I excelled at an exam, but I never really took any satisfaction from it myself. As each exam became more difficult, more pressured, I was so consumed by the anxiety to perform, the stress of not getting anything other than the best marks, that I never allowed myself to be proud of what I had achieved.

I remember feeling relief when I stared at my first-class honours degree certificate. There was no elation, just sickening relief that I had got “what I needed.” My sights were already on the next thing—on the pre-registration continual development process and exam to be able to pass and register as a pharmacist. The cycle of just doing what was needed to get the right marks was so ingrained that my mind was always worrying about the next thing.

When I left full-time academia at the age of 22, I found myself in a job that required lifelong learning, studying, and CPD (continuing professional development). I was so used to doing what had been prescribed, what the teachers asked of me, performing for the grades and the congratulatory remarks, that I never delved deeper than I needed to. I was too exhausted to contemplate what my own interests were, what my purpose was, or what really made me tick.

It was easier to listen to everyone else around me and let their insights and opinions guide me. I was clear that I needed to get a job to finance my independence in life, and a vocational degree fitted the remit. Finding a career that had a well-mapped-out progression and reward scheme was comfortable for me, and pharmacy fitted the bill.

I took a gap year at the age of 18, as did Jimmy, choosing to put a full stop on our time as students before moving on to the next qualifications. When I look back, this choice stands out as one of single-minded determination by us both to say no to the studying and the pressure, and to take a rebellious step towards doing something that was our own choice. The year, for the first time in our lives, was dictated by us and not somebody else.

We had the freedom to choose what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go. For me, letting go of the pressure and allowing myself to have some fun on my own terms saw me experience the only year in the last 24 years where I did not suffer one migraine—a shining light in the storm that all quickly disappeared the minute I returned home and back to academia. Sadly, at the time, I was unequipped to understand what this meant or what my body was trying to tell me.

The Shared Programming of Success

Both mine and Jimmy’s educations were different, but our conditioning had been the same. We had grown up in the same society and absorbed the same subconscious messaging, and this had formed part of our education. Jimmy had a lot more real-life experience than me, a result of his disjointed upbringing and less time spent in academia, but we had absorbed similar ideals about what was important in life: external validation via academic, career, or business success, and wealth accumulation through a foot on the property ladder and material possessions.

This saw us use any free time we had, when we weren’t studying, working, or running a business, renovating our first house in Southampton. In between answering on-call bleeps from the hospital at weekends, we would be demolishing walls, tiling, painting, and plumbing. Both chronically stressed, we would balance this with partying and drinking away our anxieties with friends.

The day that I came home and found that Jimmy had sat and watched the window company remove the wrong window in our house, replacing it with plywood whilst they hastily had a new one made, I should have stopped and tried to see that we couldn’t carry on as we were. Instead, it was easier to just blame him for his absentmindedness, overlooking the fact he was trying to build a business amidst a demolition zone. We were so blinkered, not understanding what it was that we were racing against or doing it all for.

We didn’t know how to take our foot off the gas and relax, we didn’t know what downtime looked or should feel like, and we definitely didn’t understand how to take care of ourselves properly.

We had had role models for this way of life but none to show us the way to a more fulfilling way of being. We didn’t know how to take our foot off the gas and relax, we didn’t know what downtime looked or should feel like, and we definitely didn’t understand how to take care of ourselves properly. For me, there had never been any time between school and after-school clubs to manage myself and think independently, to learn how to exist out in the world. I did not know how to just be.

I was well educated in healthcare, having a deep understanding of the links between exercise, diet, alcohol, and heart disease. But what I had never been educated in was how to implement those things successfully in my own life. When the stress got too much, I did not understand how to soothe the discomfort in any other way than through food or alcohol. Jimmy knew no different than me. Sadly, it took having children and chronic illness to stop me in my tracks and force me to find another way of existing, encouraging him to do the same.

The Comfort Blanket of Formal Education

Formal education was a great comfort blanket for me. It provided a clear formula for success, a mapped-out vision that I didn’t really need to give any thought to. It was cut down into manageable steps, which meant I never had to think that far ahead. I understood that if I played the game, learned how to perform, and ticked the boxes, I would get where I needed to go. The goal was always about a place at university in order to get a good job, with no consideration beyond this.

It became a very unconscious and passive process, dependent upon teachers always instructing me on what to do and think, and extrinsic motivation arising from good marks. I became apathetic to the learning experience, having no desire for further self-driven learning outside of this or any curiosity about my surrounding environment. I did not have any knowledge of politics or finance, the social structures of our country, or the wider concerns in the world. I was very sheltered, very blinkered.

When I turned up to vote for the first time at 18 years old, I had no understanding of who or what I was voting for. I wonder what Emmeline Pankhurst would make of the fact that as a British girl, I received a free education from 4 to 18 years, but it failed to instil in me the knowledge of current affairs and the open-minded curiosity to critique and analyse news stories and form my own judgement in a sufficient way to turn up and make my vote count, as she had so fought for.

Academic Success, Life Failure

At school, I mastered rote learning, memorisation of facts, regurgitating my teachers’ analysis of texts, and the ability to perform under pressure to gain A grades across the board at GCSE and A-level in all of my exams. In the eyes of the government, I was a success story in education. But despite my apparent academic success, I later fell at the hurdle of life.

I developed many unhealthy behaviours at school which did not equip me for life or the workplace: being frightened of making mistakes so that I would often only tackle things that I knew I was already good at, lacking any scepticism so that I would never challenge any authoritative information provided, and being addicted to black-and-white, right-or-wrong thinking as uncertainty was too uncomfortable to consider.

I had not learned how to truly think for myself, to be confident in my own decision-making abilities, and to assert myself with them. At work, I would often doubt my own opinion if it had the potential to cause contention. I would avoid face-to-face discussion with colleagues if the same message could be conveyed in writing. I often found it difficult to share my ideas within the department, still feeling too young, too childlike, too inferior to contribute to developing change.

I was successful by external metrics, having received four promotions in six years to develop my knowledge and skills as a pharmacist for the benefit of patients, but I never felt it, never believed it, and I never felt like I truly belonged.

I would avoid contacting senior doctors, despite knowing that the junior doctor did not have sufficient knowledge to make the correct decision, because of an inferiority complex. I had built up conditioning that meant I perceived both my young age and sex to be inferior. Not just this, but I constantly felt inferior, an imposter who at any time could be outed. I was successful by external metrics, having received four promotions in six years to develop my knowledge and skills as a pharmacist for the benefit of patients, but I never felt it, never believed it, and I never felt like I truly belonged. Below the surface, I was suffering, dealing with increasing anxiety. School had allowed me to put my intelligence to good use, but it did not help me to hone the behaviours necessary to perform in a job and retain my integrity.

When the Body Fights Back

It all imploded for me when my body started to fight back. Having suffered from an array of irritating, mildly disrupting, but apparently random chronic conditions since I was a young child—migraines, tension headaches, eczema, scalp psoriasis, urticaria, hay fever, chronic dry eyes, irritable bowel syndrome, restless leg syndrome, and insomnia—I always had something simmering in the background. I always managed to just about keep a lid on it, medicating it away and battling on for fear of appearing a hypochondriac.

I did not know how to manage the stress, to respond to my body’s needs, to offer myself compassion for my experience and for the empathic burden I was feeling from working with distressed patients. Pregnancy became the tipping point for me, when my body finally said no. With no choice but to get signed off sick from work by my GP, for no medications were safe to take and I sorely needed rest, I found myself at the sour end of the NHS beast and its militant HR department.

A miscarriage was the result of the stress of being put through a disciplinary procedure for the time I was compelled to take off sick whilst pregnant. Finding myself diagnosed with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) as a result of the trauma of being surgically treated for a miscarriage in the place of my work, I left pharmacy and the NHS for good.

I wonder whether the government would still view my story as the same educational success story. I may have passed all of their metrics for success and worked as a pharmacist, dedicating my time and working life to the wellbeing of others, but for seven years, I was unable to work or contribute back into society as a result of the behaviours I had learned from this type of education.

In 2020, almost half of the UK population reported suffering with at least one long-term health condition. I can’t help wondering how many of these conditions have been contributed to by unhealthy behaviours learned as a result of being in our educational system. I know that if I had learned how to be more independent-minded, knew how to care for myself, knew how to be authentic and stand up to authority figures without losing my own integrity as a person, I wouldn’t have left the NHS so rapidly. Perhaps we may not have lost our unborn baby at 12 weeks.

This period, this time which has taken much healing and growing to get over, has been one of the great lessons of my life.

But I do know that this period, this time which has taken much healing and growing to get over, has been one of the great lessons of my life. It has forced me to become more authentic, to work out what it is I want out of life and my purpose here, and what I need to learn in order to fulfil that. That comes from taking care of myself compassionately first so that I can have the energy to care for others—something that my education at school could never have given me or prepared me for.

A Different Vision for Our Children’s Education

Our experiences have led us to want the educational process to look different for our children. We want them to have the opportunity to achieve academic success, see their dreams realised, and go to university if they wish to, but also to understand that this is only one element in life. That this should be driven by their own innate desire to learn, for a purpose relevant to them, not because it is dictated to them.

Work and academia are only a small aspect of a well-lived life, and it is important for us that they do not conflate these achievements with who they are as people. We want them to balance understanding who they are and how they fit in this world with what interests and innate purpose drive them so they can map out their own path of learning. This path will then guide them to learn the necessary knowledge and skills to achieve what they need to.

They can only do this if they learn to nourish themselves and understand how to look after their wellbeing as their number one priority. Only then may they try to commit to a life of meaning. It is the opposite of the path I learned, and the hope is that by focusing on this first, they will not find themselves like me and millions of others suffering with chronic illnesses in our society in a position of having to upend their lives in order to find out what really matters.

Leading by Example—Our Own Transformation

This shift has been about Jimmy and me re-evaluating what we need to do to thrive so that we can lead the kids by example. From the minute they entered this world, our children have learned by copying our behaviour. Having this mirror continually held up to us has forced more intentionality in how we are living. We are trying to make decisions that fit with our value system and carve out a balance between meaningful work that continually energises us and paying the bills.

It also looks like us attempting to learn new skills to share with the kids and inspire them, or prioritising hobbies, relaxation time, and fun. We want to be the role models for our children that we want for ourselves—people who inspire us to be better, to create, to contribute, to be the change that we want to see in the world.

We can only expect our children to be self-motivated, adaptable, curious, content, compassionate, and kind to themselves and others if we are being that to ourselves. This requires a constant process of Jimmy and me checking in, reflecting, re-evaluating what we expect of ourselves and what measures and values we wish to stand up to, then trying every day to work towards it. Trying hard to avoid comparison with others and just live in tune with what feels right for us. Then, with time, encouraging our kids to do the same.

The world is our playground, just waiting to be explored if we can find the courage to do so.

We all get to write our own stories, and we all have the opportunity to manifest our own dreams. But first, we have to have the belief, the faith, that they can come true. The world is our playground, just waiting to be explored if we can find the courage to do so. We just have to find the strength to move beyond the political games and devastating news stories to find hope and believe the world and life are not something to be feared.

I truly believe that you get back and become the person you put out into the world, and the best education I believe we can give our children is a deep understanding of this. Because with this belief, this core understanding, they have the power to create the person that they want to be. A life without school creates a level playing field and an empty canvas, and I am excited to see how our children choose to fill it.