As other parents strolled past happily, hand-in-hand with their children, Caro Giles dragged her nine-year-old daughter from where she had wedged herself into the footwell of the family car and carried her, kicking and screaming, to the school gates.
Emmie’s dread, and desperate protestations, at the prospect of joining her classmates had become a daily torment.
It wasn’t that she was being bullied, more that the school environment – with all the noise, the smells, textures of unfamiliar foods, as well as difficulties understanding the nuances of friendships – was, as Caro says, ‘making her ill’.
Despite being a single mother of four daughters trying to earn a living as a teacher to support her family, Caro decided she could no longer endure it. So she pulled Emmie out of school. For good.
And Emmie wasn’t the only one. Her older sister Matilda, then 13, had already stopped going to school at the tender age of six.
She too had been unable to tolerate the noise, or the demands, of the classroom environment and, despite every effort to keep her there, including Caro sitting in lessons with her, nothing had worked.
In fact Caro has been the sole educator of Matilda, now 18, for 12 years – and Emmie, now 13, for four years.
Not only that but her second-eldest, Ada, now 15, was mostly home-schooled until 2018, partly because she was insufficiently stretched and partly because, with three others at home, ‘it fitted in’ with Caro’s life.
Caro Giles’s nine-year-old, Emmie, had been unable to tolerate the noise or demands of a classroom. So Caro pulled her out of school
When her girls were younger, a typical day involved playing board games and building jigsaws, dressing up and role-playing
What’s more, her youngest Tess, now ten, was also removed from primary school – albeit only for a year – from early 2023 when she too became very distressed about going.
Those wedded to the idea that a school education is sacrosanct might baulk at the thought that Caro has pulled not one but all four of her children out of school at one point or another.
‘I’m fully aware that some people think parents who don’t force their children into the classroom are just mollycoddling them and should enforce more discipline,’ says Caro, 48. ‘But I tried everything to get my girls into the classroom, until I realised how sick, with stress and anxiety, it was making them.
‘It’s very distressing for a mother too. Memories of carrying Emmie, begging me not to make her go to school, haunt me to this day.’
School refusal is, it seems, a thorny issue but there will be many parents who empathise with Caro.
There are now 171,000 ‘school refusers’ in England and, according to figures from the NSPCC, the number of families home-educating their children has more than doubled over the past five years.
Experts put the rise down to a combination of an increase in children experiencing mental-health problems, which impact their ability to attend school, and parents feeling more comfortable with homeschooling, having done it during lockdown.
According to figures from the NSPCC, the number of families home-educating their children has more than doubled over the past five years
Maths and sciences are approached from an applied, real world – which means Matilda did not sit any GCSEs in 2023, and Emmie is unlikely to do so in 2028
Perhaps most controversial, however, is the way Caro has chosen to home-educate her children.
While it is assumed parents simply follow the national curriculum, Caro has abandoned that in favour of letting Matilda and Emmie decide what they want to learn, based on what they do like.
When they were younger, a typical day involved playing board games and building jigsaws, dressing up and role-playing. Matilda has since focused her energies on art and textiles, while Emmie enjoys learning Greek and reading Jane Austen and is currently working on a project about trees.
Maths and sciences are approached from an applied, real world, rather than purely academic perspective.
This means Matilda did not sit any GCSEs in 2023, when her peers sat them, and Emmie is unlikely to do so in 2028.
‘Maths and English GCSEs are necessary for lots of jobs, so, in an ideal world, I would want all of my kids to be able to do them, but I’m not living in an ideal situation,’ says Caro, who divorced from the father of her children in 2018.
Matilda was diagnosed as autistic in 2019 while Emmie was last year diagnosed with autism and elective mutism, which means she often doesn’t speak. This has had a huge influence on how Caro, who worked in both primary and special education schools, tailors their education to ensure it meets their individual requirements.
Both academically able, a special school would be unlikely to meet their needs, and the only school specifically for autistic girls is in Surrey, hundreds of miles from where they live in Scotland.
While the youngest, Tess, now attends mainstream school, along with Ada, she spent a year at home between the ages of eight and nine, after – in a manner distressingly reminiscent of Matilda and Emmie – breaking down in tears and pleading, each morning, not to have to go to school.
Last year Tess made a gradual return, initially half a day, while Caro sat in the classroom with her. This built up to three full days earlier this year and she is now back full time.
‘Before having kids, I never imagined my parenting journey would look like this,’ admits Caro. ‘For a start, I thought I’d always be married to the person I had children with, as my own parents are, and that my children would all happily go to school like I did. That I would get to pursue my own teaching career, which I gave up in 2021.’
Until last month, the family lived in rural Northumberland but moved to Glasgow before the start of the new school year to be closer to Caro’s boyfriend, Joe, who she met online at the beginning of last year. She says he is a big support and makes her ‘very happy’ but they don’t live together, as yet.
Caro has written a book, Unschooled, is about the harsh reality of life as a parent to the increasing number of children who cannot be enticed into a classroom
Meanwhile, Ada, who wants to study medicine at university, attended a private school on a bursary in Northumberland, and has now moved to a comprehensive, while Tess is at a local primary.
‘Ada would often say to me, “Why can’t our family just be normal?”,’says Caro. ‘I do think her experiences with her sisters has influenced her decision to become a doctor.’
Matilda, on the other hand, is a year behind her peers so although Caro didn’t think GCSEs appropriate for someone who struggles to focus on subjects that don’t interest her, she is studying for a level three BTEC qualification in art and textiles, the equivalent of three A-levels. She is also looking for a part-time job.
Although it is unlikely that Emmie will take any formal exams, Caro is hopeful she’ll find an online course she feels passionate about that will lead to a career.
‘I have frequently been under pressure from the Local Education Authority to get my kids to do exams, which has been difficult,’ says Caro. ‘I know my children, what they need and what they are capable of, best, but parents are rarely treated as the experts on their kids.’
It is this frustration that encouraged her to write her new book, Unschooled, about the harsh reality of life as a parent to the increasing number of children who just cannot be enticed into a classroom.
‘I believe that children like mine would have coped better when there was less emphasis on exams and more project-based learning in classrooms,’ says Caro.
Meanwhile, although happier learning from home, her daughters are missing out on the social life that school brings.
Although Caro engaged with a local community of homeschoolers for PE and art classes when her children were little, in more recent years Matilda and Emmie have found group activities ‘too overwhelming’.
‘Parents like me, whose children cannot cope with school, can feel very alone,’ says Caro. ‘That’s one of the reasons I wrote my book, so that they can see they’re not alone, and those who haven’t experienced it can appreciate how tough it is.’
- Caro’s daughters’ names have been changed.
- Unschooled: The Story of a Family That Doesn’t Fit In by Caro Giles (out now, Little Toller Books)
