School choice

Forest school or Home education?

The difference between Forest school and Home education is mostly one axis: when formal academics start. Forest school sits firmly toward when the child is ready, and late is fine; Home education sits between the two. Neither is the correct one. What follows is what each asks of a parent, and where the difference actually shows up on a Tuesday.

Forest school

Long sessions outdoors across the whole year, led by the children, with real tools, real fire and real risk assessed rather than removed. It is a pedagogy rather than a school type — most children get it alongside something else — and where it runs as a whole setting, formal academics start late and the body does most of the learning.

What it asks of you

  • Kit, laundry, and genuine indifference to weather
  • Accepting a higher rate of scrapes as part of the design
  • Checking it is the actual model rather than an outdoor afternoon with the name attached

Home education

Education at home with a structure you choose — bought curriculum, your own sequence, or a co-operative with other families. It gives complete control over pace, content and values, and it converts one parent's time into the school. The outcome research is genuinely good and almost entirely drawn from self-selected families, so it should be read as what is possible rather than as what is typical.

What it asks of you

  • One adult's working life, in most arrangements
  • Building a social world deliberately, since it does not arrive with the building
  • Teaching subjects you are not confident in, for years
  • A plan for the transition back, if there ever is one
Side by side

Where they differ

Forest school is the filled marker, Home education the hollow one. Widest difference first.

L2When formal academics start
when the child is ready, and late is fineearly, and ambitiously

Forest school sits firmly toward when the child is ready, and late is fine; Home education sits between the two.

E3Technology at school
kept out until latebuilt in from the start

Forest school sits firmly toward kept out until late; Home education sits between the two.

E2Outdoors and the body
learning happens at a tableoutdoors and hands-on is the point

Forest school sits firmly toward outdoors and hands-on is the point; Home education sits a little toward outdoors and hands-on is the point.

L1Who directs the day
the child chooses what to dotimetabled, and directed by adults

Forest school sits toward the child chooses what to do; Home education sits between the two.

L5What a teacher is
a guide who steps backan authority who instructs

Forest school sits toward a guide who steps back; Home education sits a little toward an authority who instructs.

V3What it is for
childhood is the pointit should set up university and a career

Forest school sits firmly toward childhood is the point; Home education sits between the two.

C1What the family can put inwhat your life allows
school has to run without the parentsbeing in it, daily

Forest school sits toward being in it, daily; Home education sits firmly toward being in it, daily.

L3Measuring it
no grades, no testsgraded and tested regularly

Forest school sits firmly toward no grades, no tests; Home education sits toward no grades, no tests.

L4Where the curriculum comes from
it emerges from the childrena fixed body of knowledge, set in advance

Forest school sits toward it emerges from the children; Home education sits between the two.

Neither of these is the correct one

Which fits depends on what you value and on what your week actually allows — and the second of those is the half nobody writes about. The questionnaire scores both.

See which one you are already doing