About

Home Education Forums is a social enterprise whose primary aim is to benefit home educating parents and home educated children and young people while simultaneously securing sufficient revenue and sponsorship to make it viable as a business in its own right. Its mission is to connect home educators, encourage the pooling of resources, experience and expertise, nurture home-edupreneurship and facilitate preferential trading between members and supporters to benefit the home education community and the home education economy.

 

The project is underpinned by the belief that educating your own children and running your own business present similar challenges which are most easily overcome with support from others in the same ‘community of interest'. Both are serious but immensely satisfying undertakings which require liberal helpings of imagination, enthusiasm, vision, commitment, resourcefulness, energy, passion and drive. As independent thinkers and doers, home educators and entrepreneurs alike often find themselves swimming against the tide of conventionality, and both invariably fare better with minimal state interference and regulation and maximum exposure to the wealth of knowledge and expertise which exists within their own trusted networks.

 

Home Education Forums was founded by home-edupreneur Alison Preuss, whose own involvement in home education spans 15 years. Finding little support during her family's early home educating years in Scotland, she co-founded the national Scottish charity Schoolhouse in 1996. She has previously set up and run a number of small businesses, ranging from catering to language services and freelance writing, and worked for seven years as a researcher for two Members of the Scottish Parliament before opening an online shop two years ago.

 

A team of experienced, well networked home educators from across the UK has been enlisted to help manage the site and contribute to its ongoing development. We hope it will grow into an invaluable independent resource for home educating families and for those who have a personal or professional interest in home education in the UK.