Last week my wife Jayne asked a question in a home education Facebook group. It was not a controversial question. She wanted to know whether anybody would recommend what we had built. The post was closed before most people saw it.
Then a friend told us the same thing had happened to her. She had mentioned using an app that helps with record keeping, and the post was pulled. Another said that in the groups she is in, you only have to say the word "AI" and the shutters come down.
We understand why. There is a lot of rubbish being sold to home educating families right now, and moderators are tired. A blanket rule is easier to enforce than a judgement call, and most of these groups are run by volunteers who are also home educating their own children. Nobody is the villain here.
But the effect is that a lot of people have quietly stopped asking things. And a home educating parent who stops asking things is a home educating parent on their own.
So we made somewhere else
It is called the Flybrite Home Education Group, it is on Facebook, and it is free. You do not need a Flybrite account and you never will.
It has one job. To be somewhere UK home educating families can ask anything without being judged for it. The daft questions, the hard days, and the small wins that nobody outside home ed would understand.
What is different about it
There are no banned topics. You can talk about any tool, any method, any approach. Apps, spreadsheets, notebooks, scrapbooks, AI, or no technology at all. Structured, eclectic, autonomous, Charlotte Mason, whatever actually works in your house. Nothing gets removed for mentioning a product, including products that compete with ours. Disagree with something as strongly as you like, talk it through properly, and nobody gets their post pulled for it.
There is no judgement of how you do it. Curriculum or no curriculum. Screens or no screens. Tidy house or chaos house. Big budget or no budget. Deregistered last week or ten years in. Every family is doing this differently and that is the entire point.
What is shared there stays there. People talk about their children. No screenshotting posts out of the group.
Who runs it
We do, and we are telling you that up front, because you deserve to know who is behind a group before you post in it.
We are Richard and Jayne. We home educate our daughter Skyla. We also build Flybrite, an app that turns everyday moments into a record of your child's learning, so that when your Local Authority asks what you have been doing, the report is already written.
The group is moderated alongside some of our Founding Members, the families who backed Flybrite at the very start and have shaped it ever since. They are home educators first. Several of them are admins, deliberately, because a community group run entirely by the company that named it is not really a community group.
There is one pinned post in there explaining what we make, and that is the whole of the selling. You will not be pitched. Plenty of members do not use Flybrite and never will, and they are exactly as welcome as the ones who do.
Come and ask something
If you have ever had a post pulled, been talked down to, or just quietly decided a question was not worth asking, this is the group for you.
Join the Flybrite Home Education Group. Put the kettle on, and ask your question.