Application Filled and not quite rejected

Just before we went to Christchurch I sent off our application for Exemption I believe it was about 8 pages of guff designed to make the powers of bureaucracy at the Ministry of Education. I should have sent it earlier I left us with just over 15 working days to get it back before school started, but it was hard work.

The law states we must teach Merenia as regularly and as well as she would be taught in a state school. And that's all it says. The MOE get to interpret and decide how we can prove we are going to do this.

One of the things you have to do is present a years curriculum plan and with our plan to unschool and our curriculum therefore being Child-led I was struggling with how to honestly present information I didn't know. I called the Student support guy to ask what I was supposed to do. Big mistake. We both spoke a completely different language and I really struggled with his staunch passion for the 'state school way' and he just completely didn't understand me at all.

One of the examples that I gave him from Merenia's list was the fact she was keen to learn about Helicopters and I said that until we got into it I didn't know if she wanted to learn about Heli mechanics, Flight, Les' Heli related job or about being a pilot- and that quite possibly Merenia herself didn't know either. So how could I say what our first year curriculum might entail.

His reply was that it would be absurd to try and teach a 9 year old to be a pilot.

Um, so NOT what I had said.

By the end of the phone call despite me keeping my composure we parted most certainly not as friends. With my new found knowledge not gained directly but by inference I wrote our application in which I surmised from thin air what our first years curriculum might include and I wrote in edu-speak so as to make the educator who'd be reading it as comfortable as possible. I thought I had done well but I wasn't really surprised when the letter came back with a request for more info.

Perhaps most frustrating was his statement that: "In your application you state- "We don’t intend to adhere to school terms or hours...." which could be interpreted as an intent not to adhere to the requirements of the legislation."

What we actually said was.....

"Merenia’s education will be essentially constant from the moment she wakes till she falls asleep, most likely, knowing our girl, with a book in her hands. We don’t intend to adhere to school terms or hours especially as we have an older child who will also benefit from the activities and opportunities that will presented to Merenia. Also as we will be sharing the workload for teaching Merenia a reasonable amount of her learning will happen during weekends and evenings when her Dad is home from work. Just as our 2 year old is constantly learning from the activities and actions that occur daily Merenia will also be almost continually learning."

In my reply to him on Thursday I wrote:

"I’d like to assure you that on the contrary while children only spend approximately 11% of their time in any given year actually in the classroom it would be unthinkable for us for Merenia to spend such small amount of time actively learning. We were simply saying that the learning experiences and activities that Merenia takes part in would not happen *ONLY* between 9am and 3pm each term weekday. But that she would also spend time in the evenings, weekends and holidays. By structuring our programme to work like this we are able to offer Merenia a richer learning experience as she will be able to have one on one time with each of us, rather than in a Monday – Friday/9-3 style school timetable in which she will share one parent with her 2 year old brother ."

I hope that he understands it this time around.

I also had to provide more information on the content of our curriculum as well. Although I honestly couldn't see why and nor did he really explain it either. He read my email about 30 minutes after I sent it on Thursday morning but has yet to reply. I expect he will probably do it in writing in about 15 days and will probably ask for yet more info.

It's funny the ministry suggests they will take approximately 15 working days to approve your application/ask for more info if required. But if you are asked for more info you are expected to reply within 10 days of the date they wrote the letter or you are automatically declined. Something I find intriguing because if you get declined you then have to appeal to the head honcho... I'd quite like to do that because I think Gary is just picking on us because of the phone call.

All this leaves us in something of a no mans land. Until she gets her exemption Merenia is expected to turn up to school. But I've already sold her uniform and I sure as heck am not about to buy her school books.

There is a whole bunch more I could say on this there are some truly wrong aspects of this whole process which are in place because the government provided no clear guidelines so the MOE had to make up their own which are all based on the state model of education which I believe (and the research supports) has some huge issues. It reminds me of the ERO inspectors visiting Arthur Street School and trying to get their head around the Montessori classes.

♥