Write Your Own Transcripts

By Craig Smith

Hands-on, real-life, necessary, helpful, life-skills instruction should be credited to our children with, for example, a Nanny Diploma from your home school.

Seriously. Issue it on nice paper with the scrolls, etc.,  around the edges. You can get really nice presentation papers at stationery stores. Have them signed and dated by both parents, one being the principle of your home education organisation, the other being the head teacher or whatever. Get someone who can do nice calligraphy to help the final result look really official.

Each child could, over time, earn a whole series of such certificates issued by mum and dad showing competence in washing dishes (kitchen hygiene), meal preparation (food hygiene & preparation), budgeting and menu organisation, balancing the family cheque book, etc. These are all incredibly important life skills….why not issue certificates for them? Because each certificate testifies to genuine competence at nannying siblings, setting the table, vacuuming the house, cooking a meal, etc., they should be included in the child’s portfolio for when he or she applies for a place at university or a job.

Just think of what such certificates communicate about how seriously you take your home education programme?

When I was talking with Rosalie Phillips and Dave Burgon of the Ministry of Education in Wellington back in September 2001, I asked if a parent’s home- made transcript of what their home educated young person had done would suffice in lieu of School Certificate, Bursary or NCEA. They said, yes it would.  (Of course the final “yes”, the one that really counts, is from the institution of higher learning, not someone within the MoE.) And these nannying or dishwashing certificates form part of your child’s transcript, a formal (though perhaps not an official state-recognised) qualification with you as the issuing authority.

From Keystone Magazine
March 2002 , Vol. VIII No. 2
P O Box 9064
Palmerston North
Phone: (06) 357-4399
Fax: (06) 357-4389
email: craig@hef.org.nz

To order Keystone Magazine do one of the following:

send email to sales@hef.org.nz with visa number

post cheque or visa number to PO Box 9064, Palmerston North, New Zealand

fax: 06 357-4389

phone: 06 357-4399

Trademe (fees added):  http://www.trademe.co.nz/Members/Listings.aspx?member=2366144

Sella (No added fees):  http://www.sella.co.nz/store/4ym9qg/home-education-foundation/display-100