I have taught science in London and in Kenya. 

I have led year groups, designed whole-school curricula and supported hundreds of schools across England and North America in a variety of roles. 

For nearly seven years I led E-ACT multi-academy trust.

And then in March, like many parents throughout the UK, my wife and I became homeschool teachers to our three children aged 16, 13 and 10. 

Coronavirus: The demands of homeschooling

It’s been incredibly hard balancing the demands of what schools are expecting of the children against the time spent developing their own passions - even if those passions are gaming and maintaining friendships through Houseparty.

Add the daily dog walks, cooking, veg growing and the weekly pizza-making party, and we soon run out of time. 

So we unilaterally decided to take an Inset day a few weeks ago (much to the children’s delight) to reflect, take stock and plan the next few weeks.

We started by looking at their recent test scores and trying to understand why, after completing what felt like a thousand worksheets and watching hours of Khan Academy clips, manipulating percentages was still a problem.

Was there a better clip? Was there a better worksheet?

A moment of realisation

And then it hit us: rather than focusing on course content, syllabi or the wealth of online resources available, we should be spending more time trying to really understand what motivates our children and really knowing their potential. 

Sounds simple and easy? After all, they are our children. But it’s not. They’re not linear. They’re complex individuals who have their own ideas, thoughts and interests. 

Fundamentally, it’s about relationships and nurturing children’s intrinsic appetite to find out about the world around them, and their inherent desire to achieve. 

So we decided to encourage our children to take a step back and show them the bigger picture. And the answer was all around us. 

Embracing everything teaching can be

That evening, we stood outside gazing at the stars. We saw the brightest light in the sky - not a star, it was Venus. And then we saw the International Space Station fly past followed by what felt like a never-ending stream of Space X satellites. 

So we talked about planets, the solar system, galaxies and the universe. And we talked about humans’ desire to explore and the impact humans have on Earth and the space around us.

We took a mango seed and germinated it - not a quick process, but the excitement at watching the roots and stem emerge were enough to prompt a discussion about photosynthesis and the crucial role plants play in our world.

We watched the film The Hate U Give and we also followed the news reports on the global Black Lives Matter protests, and we discussed the civil rights movement. We talked about human rights and the responsibilities we all have towards each other.

We all sat quietly and read whenever we wanted to, and we’ve all tried something new - making pizza dough, learning the ukulele, using a 35mm camera, pressing flowers, and looking after a baby hamster and an orphaned hedgehog.

We discussed what we thought were the big issues of the day and, from this, we decided to develop an “app”. 

We researched, we designed and we developed a business model - suddenly, in this context, percentages made sense! 

A change that’s needed

It’s difficult and time-consuming with three children, but we expect our teachers to know the same level of detail with between 30 and 1,000 children.

At the same time, we expect them to report on the minutiae of the progress our children are making, based on their performance in tests, which appear to happen more often than not.

This must undermine so much of what teachers want to do  - as our Inset day experience showed.

In their book Professional Capital, Andy Hargreaves and Michael Fullan state the case very eloquently: ”The view that what schools should be about are performance, scores and results to excess has lost sight of all the other things that characterise teaching, that teachers bring to their work, and that keep them and their children motivated.”

I believe that, as educators, we have a unique opportunity now to learn the lessons from homeschooling and really push for educational change.

• Change the culture of fear that is at the heart of our accountability and regulatory frameworks.
• Change the obsession with testing.
• Change the marginalisation of the curriculum.
• Change pedagogy to make the most from technology.

David Moran is founder of Red Lodge Learning and former CEO E-ACT