Budding James Bond: Your 14-year-old son may not be old enough to order a martini, but you can still start him on a glamorous, thrilling career in espionage. Homeschooling allows for more control over your child's education.
More and more families are electing to home-school their offspring, setting the academic agenda themselves, instead of conforming to the national curriculum.
Adam Caller, founder of private tuition agency Tutors International, remarked on the increasing number of specialist tutors his company has recruited for families in London and across the globe.
“Parents want to have a say in what their children learn, and to what level. More families are going off-curriculum, and many are adding advanced, specialist subjects into the academic mix, such as fluency in several languages, entrepreneurship, or geopolitics.”
The Kid with the Golden Pen
While some parents are coming to realise that life is too short to spend stuck in a dull classroom, others argue that home-schoolers don’t get enough social interaction (and after all, what is Bond without his ability to, er, ‘talk’ to the ladies?).
Adam argues that a school-based education isn’t right for every child, “Many previously shy and introverted children flourish once they’re taken out of the competitiveness of the classroom,” he says. “Private tuition provides a safe, supportive environment, mixing experiential learning with book study, and interweaving fundamental skills such as science, maths, and English into all their other lessons.”
Socialising is an oft-considered aspect of home-schooling, and therefore is rarely a problem. It is often the role of the tutor to take responsibility for the student’s social education, and the flexibility that comes with home-schooling means your little smooth-talker has more time to hone his martial arts and blackjack prowess with his peers.
So if your teenager mentions spy-school, it might not be so far-fetched. After all, if you’re going to push your children into high-flying careers, you could do worse...
About Adam Caller
I began teaching in 1987 and taught in the private and state sectors for many years, followed by a long period as a full time private tutor to prestigious families in England and around the world.
In 1999 I founded Tutors International LLP, a specialist private tutoring agency based in Oxford. The world leaders in custom-designed private education, Tutors International provides tuition to an elite and highly selective clientele. Tutors International works with both clients and their tutors to ensure a world-class private education of the highest professional and academic standards.
