Every Child Has A Right To An Education...

Every child has a right to an education - every family should have a right to choose what that education looks like.

We are Cedarwood Montessori, a tutoring support service and community for Home Educated children and their families.

We have started this GoFundMe as we urgently need your help recouping the legal costs we have recently incurred, and to enable us to safeguard the future of Home Education.

Families choose Cedarwood for a variety of reasons.

A number of our families have tried Mainstream settings and found that it doesn't meet their children's needs - something we are hearing more and more in the news and in our communities.

Cedarwood provides an environment where each young person is cherished. Our ethos is based on the Montessori philosophy and methodology, focusing on individualised learning, hands-on activities, fostering independence and self-motivation.

Our fully qualified teachers and assistants specifically offer support in English, Maths, and Environmental Studies. We are proud to be able to offer empathy, inclusion and connection to all of the children who attend our setting.

However, following an unannounced visit by OFSTED, Cedarwood’s very existence was placed under threat.

Despite OFSTED finding that our teaching and learning is of a high standard, the project lead was accused of ‘running an illegal school’ and she was threatened with legal action-including the threat of a prison term!

At this time Cedarwood was offering a maximum of 3 days per week (17.15hrs per week), in keeping with the guidelines provided by OFSTED. We were advised that we needed to cut the days down to 2 days per week- with immediate effect-whilst the investigation was ongoing, otherwise we would be operating illegally and could face criminal charges.

The responsibility to continue to support our families and retain our unique community at Cedarwood felt paramount, so we invested in an educational law firm to take action on our behalf. Consequently, the DfE dropped their accusations and closed the case and we were advised by our lawyers that we could return to offering 3 days.

The impact of the sudden drop from 3 days to 2 days on the children was evident immediately, there were tears, confusion and huge sadness. For parents, the impact was also huge, suddenly needing to restructure all their work and home commitments to accommodate this change. For Cedarwood, members of the team suddenly lost a day's work (which is no small thing financially) and Cedarwood as an organisation lost the fees for all the children for that 1 day (again, no small thing financially).

This process has been incredibly traumatic and disruptive for all involved and has also incurred a large amount of legal costs.

We have taken the first steps to protect Cedarwood, other settings like ours, and families who are choosing to electively Home Educate.

We are able to continue with our vision…for now. But we need your support to spread the word and help safeguard the rights for families to choose the right style of education for their child.

We also hope that one day soon the DfE will acknowledge the need for settings like Cedarwood and be more open to providing a framework for settings like ours to work with, something we have been asking for all along.

Your child: your choice.