“Experience, travel- these are as education in themselves” Euripedes

Doing homework underway is simpler and more complicated than you might think.

If you are looking for 'Oh it was easy,' sorry, no it wasn't.

We had quite a few fights about homework. Not only was there the natural disinclination to do any work, there tended to be constant distractions.

Schoolwork was an issue. What they would miss out and so on. For Sarah, the younger, my worries were unfounded. In fact she returned far more advanced in IT, Math, English, Geography and Religious Studies. While this can make her mildly irritating to her fellow classmates I'm sure, it has also considerably enhanced her self confidence.

For the elder child things weren't quite so easy as her Math problems were already exceeding my limited skills! And the same applied to many of the other subjects but we struggled on and on the whole it took her around three to four weeks to catch up once we got back.

Going Back to Basics

Again, going back to basics on Math and reading and writing, was hugely advantageous and benefited her enormously too. There is something about walking along a beach in New Zealand, using the sand as a blackboard and having unlimited time to explain a problem that can really take it home and make it stay.

Getting Permission

Getting permission from school wasn’t the big issue that I had originally feared. They gave me some books and the curriculum outline and basically told me to get on with it, and while supportive in principle, this wasn’t backed up in any real way.

I put together some work on the laptop and got on with it. We bought some phenomenal math books in Singapore, which taught us all so much (my maths came on a treat too!) www.ladybird.co.uk .

Geography taught itself, as did a lot of science. Keeping comprehensive journals and reading a lot dealt with English. (The beauty of no TV.) German, we had the aforementioned CD’s and DVD's and the rest we sort of muddled along and came out on top on the whole.

An online BBC debate on the topic 'Are gap years a waste of time?' attracted a number of adults who waxed enthusiastic:

one wrote 'My wife and I decided to take two years out to travel, read and hang out, which was the best, most liberating 24 months we've ever had. We're better people - mentally, physically and socially. Gap years are the best thing anyone could do.'