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T<\/span>here are things Caro Giles will never be able to forget. The moment when Emmie, her \u201cshiny bookworm\u201d of a daughter, crouched \u201cwide-eyed with terror\u201d in the footwell of the car to avoid going to school. Or when another daughter ripped out her eyelashes in distress. Or when she had to carry her eldest, Matilda, then 11, out of the house because she was so scared to go outside.<\/p>\n These behaviours, Giles believes, were predominantly caused by the experience and prospect of school. Giles, a single mother of four daughters, watched as Matilda endured a miserable two years in primary school before withdrawing her \u2013 making her \u201celectively home-educated\u201d in official jargon. Ada, her second eldest, was mostly home-schooled until 2018, when Giles\u2019s marriage ended and her children had to return to school so she could work more. Emmie, her third daughter, struggled on in primary until 2022 when she became \u201cvery ill\u201d. At 10, she had stopped speaking because she found it so challenging to attend lessons. \u201cI feel horrid about my learning,\u201d she once typed into Giles\u2019 phone. When her youngest, Tess, who started primary in 2019, showed similar distress around school, Giles acted quickly to remove her in early 2023.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been in no way a lifestyle choice. It has been me trying my best to listen to the individual needs of each child<\/p>\n It left Giles, somehow, having to run their household, try to earn a living and educate three of her four daughters \u2013 Emmie, Tess and Matilda (not their real names) \u2013 at home. Unschooled, Giles\u2019 memoir of the last three years, is a barnstorming critique of today\u2019s school system. She writes as a mother but also as a teacher who has worked in primary, secondary and special schools.<\/p>\n \u201cThe schools system isn\u2019t working for a lot of children,\u201d says Giles when we meet in Glasgow, her family\u2019s new home. She trained as an actor, retrained as a teacher in her 20s and taught at an inner London state primary. Later, when she and her family moved to Northumberland, she worked in a social, emotional and mental health school for eight years, around having children. She began blogging about her family life in 2013; her first memoir, Twelve Moons, was published a decade later, combining nature writing about her family\u2019s coastal adventures with \u201can attempt to write myself back on to the page, having got lost among all the mothering and inside my marriage,\u201d she says. Giles writes personally on Instagram and Substack but guards her children\u2019s privacy and gives them pseudonyms.<\/p>\n Giles\u2019 own education in Devon and Yorkshire state schools in the 1980s and 90s was straightforward, and she expected the same for her kids. Instead, she found school\u2019s impact on her daughters led to hundreds of appointments with support workers, school nurses, speech and language therapists, psychologists, physiotherapists and psychiatrists. These occasionally helped, but \u201coften harmed\u201d, she says.<\/p>\n She argues she had no choice but for three of her daughters to join the 111,700 children in England who are home-educated; according to the NSPCC, the number of families home-educating their children has more than doubled over the past five years. \u201cIt\u2019s been in no way a lifestyle choice. It has been me trying my best to listen to the individual needs of each child,\u201d Giles says. Matilda was diagnosed as autistic in 2019; by then, she was so unwell that she required psychiatric help. Emmie obtained a diagnosis a few years later. As every parent of an autistic child knows, getting a diagnosis \u2013 the first step towards finding appropriate help \u2013 is slow and fraught.<\/p>\n <\/span>One of Giles\u2019 daughters working at home.<\/span> Photograph: courtesy of Carol Giles<\/p>\n When they were younger, a typical day of home-educating Matilda, Emmie and Tess involved board games, jigsaws, dressing up and role-playing, as well as creative project-based working, where Giles could meet the requirements of different ages and abilities in a single activity. There were online worksheets for those who thrived on more formal learning, too. Often, her children\u2019s needs clashed: Tess benefited from letting off energy outdoors, whereas Emmie didn\u2019t feel safe outside the house. \u201cI\u2019ve tried to not sugar-coat it,\u201d says Giles. \u201cOften there was a joyful chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n After nearly three years of struggle, she scored a small success when she was granted a personal budget from the local authority to fund Matilda\u2019s and then Emmie\u2019s learning at home. In 2023, just 2,305 children in England were awarded such budgets <\/strong>\u2013 <\/strong>which are available for children with special educational needs who have an education, health and care plan.<\/p>\n However, she found that the price of getting that support was high. \u201cYou have to demonstrate such distress within a school environment in order to get the money, which puts off many people from applying for anything.\u201d Her biggest regret is trying to put Matilda back into high school, and keeping her and Emmie inside the school system for so long. \u201cI wish I hadn\u2019t, but that\u2019s with the benefit of hindsight. I was on my own and I really needed some support.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Cooking lessons.<\/span> Photograph: courtesy of Carol Giles<\/p>\n Unschooled, says Giles, \u201cis not a school-bashing exercise\u201d. Instead, it is a \u201cplea for conversation and for listening\u201d. To understand how and why almost 20% of pupils in England were \u201cpersistently absent\u201d from school in 2023-24, missing more than 10% of lessons, perhaps it\u2019s better to think more broadly about the system itself. \u201cSchools can be great but they\u2019re just not great for everyone,\u201d says Giles. In her own family, the \u201cappalling failure of the system\u201d has led to \u201cchronically unwell children and me struggling to hold on to my own health and identity\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cSchool is seen as the holy grail,\u201d she says. \u201cWe always want children to demonstrate success, which we\u2019ve decided in schools is a written exam or coursework. We\u2019re obsessed with measuring everything. We don\u2019t think that success can be an intrinsic thing \u2013 a child thriving. We need to change what success is.\u201d<\/p>\n Her daughter Ada is finding success at school. She is \u201cvery focused, very ambitious, very academic\u201d. However, Giles worries that Ada\u2019s childhood is \u201cracing by in a blur of revision and comparison. We\u2019re not teaching our children to be independent thinkers,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re all just learning the same thing \u2013 and our brains are all different, so it seems mad.\u201d<\/p>\n What would Giles\u2019 ideal schooling look like? Teachers and local authority staff would be \u201cproperly trained\u201d to understand autism. Schools would follow a skills-based approach rather than cramming knowledge, with less reliance on testing. There would be project-based learning throughout secondary school, allowing pupils to take \u201ca deep dive into a project they\u2019re passionate about\u201d. And there would be provision for flexi-schooling, whereby children are permitted to attend school part-time and can attend an alternative setting (such as a forest school) or be home-schooled for part of the week. Some children can only tolerate the \u201cvery challenging sensory environment\u201d of 30-plus pupils in a small classroom \u201cfor a period of time and then need time to regulate,\u201d she says. \u201cFlexi-schooling would be a good answer for so many children. It would keep them in school for longer and keep the community around the family for longer, rather than being forced to drop out completely.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead of blaming children or parents for non-attendance, we could also ask: what are schools missing out on by failing to accommodate diverse young brains? One of the heroes in Unschooled is the primary school headteacher who tries very hard to help Giles\u2019 autistic children. \u201cShe said: \u2018These kind of children bring so much to other children\u2019s lives. If you have a child who is autistic or a young carer who doesn\u2019t conform completely, that difference is such an asset to a classroom, helping other children grow and be more accepting.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Giles: \u2018We\u2019re all people who need to do things differently.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Giles is not, however, arguing that everyone should be accommodated in a mainstream school. \u201cIt\u2019s not about saying that some are mainstream and some are special people. It\u2019s about saying: we\u2019re all people who need to do things differently. The othering has to stop. We could have more schools that meet different needs, but they must not be seen as something less than a mainstream school, or that you have to attend a mainstream school and break in order to access them.\u201d<\/p>\n I find villains in Giles\u2019 story, too: staff at the local authority who don\u2019t reply to emails for weeks or who nitpick home-schooling plans in Zoom meetings. For instance, Giles\u2019 request for funding for an iPad as well as a laptop for Emmie was refused, even though her psychologist had recommended that she use an iPad to help her communicate. (She was eventually given an iPad but not a laptop for her studies.)<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that I didn\u2019t unnecessarily paint any individuals as villains, but certainly the system feels very adversarial and very aggressive,\u201d she says. \u201cI found it hard to find humanity. They haven\u2019t got the finances to give people what they obviously need. The system is the villain.\u201d<\/p>\n For anyone suspicious of \u201clife-writing\u201d in the wake of the scandal over alleged omissions and untruths in Raynor Winn\u2019s The Salt Path, Unschooled does not reach a neat, upbeat conclusion. \u201cEven though our day-to-day life has always been sprinkled with joyful moments and as a family we\u2019re very tight, it was important not to do the \u2018happy ending\u2019, because there hasn\u2019t been a happy ending for us,\u201d says Giles. \u201cThere\u2019s just been a really thorny path that we\u2019ve tried to find our way through.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps they are through the thorniest section. She and her children have made a fresh start this summer, moving to a rented flat in Glasgow, closer to Giles\u2019 new boyfriend and other friends. She hopes relocating from countryside to city will meet the children\u2019s changing needs as they grow older. \u201cI was reaching a point of burnout in terms of how long I could keep holding everything together on my own. I had to make a change in order to save myself and stay strong enough to be able to keep saving the kids.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>A marine biology lesson at the beach.<\/span> Photograph: courtesy of Caro Giles<\/p>\n The new term has begun brightly. Ada, now 15, is settling well into a new school, while Tess, 10, who loves Star Wars and fashion design, has returned to full-time classes in school with enthusiasm. \u201cThe school run has been a delight so far up here, and that is exciting,\u201d smiles Giles. \u201cIt\u2019s lovely that they come out and have lots to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n At home, Matilda, 18, is finishing her online learning, a Level 3 qualification in art and textiles and an extended personal qualification that is the equivalent of two-and-a-half A-levels and will get her to uni if she chooses. Emmie, 13, is talking more, smiling \u201cin a genuine way\u201d and planning a project about trees. Just the fact that she wants to learn is heartening for Giles, who will restart her fight to fund Emmie\u2019s home-education in Scotland. Emmie has also made a chart to record how far she swims in the local pool. She wants to clock up the length of the Clyde.<\/p>\n Each chapter title in Unschooled is a phrase from Emmie, who wants to be a writer, too. One particularly fits her family\u2019s new and changing life: I will try to take it slowly.<\/p>\n Unschooled: The Story of a Family That Doesn\u2019t Fit In, by Caro Giles, is published by Little Toller on 2 September (\u00a320). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n