Hi. My name is Harry. I am 17 years old, and I’ve been home-educated since the very start of Covid-19 in March 2020. I spent my primary school years in East Sussex. I probably enjoyed primary school the most out of the schools I’ve been to in my lifetime. This was probably because there was less pressure at the time, the school was smaller than the other ones and we were all new together.
I remember feeling quite upset and gutted being left out of football tournaments. Football is my absolute passion in life and not being able to be part of the schools’ football team really hit me hard. I will always remember how I felt when I saw the ones who were chosen to be in the matches/tournaments leaving the classroom when the teacher called them to get ready and stand in the corridor waiting to leave.
Once I was at secondary school, I found school life just that bit more challenging than primary school. My worries and difficulties included:
- I really didn’t like the teachers getting angry
- Disruptive children in the classroom
- Feeling alone at break and lunchtime
- Finding it hard to make friends and get to know people
- Pressures of work and keeping up with the teacher despite trying hard to listen and understand and process information
- Frustrated that I couldn’t finish work in time before the teacher moved onto the next topic or the lesson ending
- Lack of extra help in lessons
- Class sizes of 30 – 35 children in one lesson
- Noise
- Lack of learning general life skills
Since I have been home educated, I think I have found things less stressful and just doing things at my own pace and to my best ability and actually finishing topics. I am trying to learn different skills which will help me in the future such as finance, cooking, team sports and general life skills.
