Nursing Mom to take her son along to Oxford University

Every parent who have ever got separeted from his child would understand how hard it is to leave the son or daughter, no matter how good the reason is.

I was elated to know that I was accepted to Oxford to do my Master of Education degree. I was even more excited when I received the full funding including tuition costs and living expenses for the whole duration of my studies.

As a breastfeeding mother I hoped to take my son along and have my husband to support us from Russia. Unfortunately, the UK Government doesn't allow to bring your children as your dependants if your partner is not coming to the UK with you. So now all three of us have to go.

For the visa purposes we have to show that we have sufficient funds to cover the stay of my husband and babyboy for 9 months which is 12000 GBP in total.
We are going to sell our car and try to pluck up as much money as possible but we are still 6000 pounds short...

The educational systems worldwide are going through significant changes at the moment, new concepts of testing and learning lead to new challenges, unforeseen problems arise constantly causing the frustration among children and parents. That is why I have applied to Oxford to read MSc in Education. Frankly speaking, I have applied to Oxford as I seek a degree from a highly reputed university to be able to implement my ideas. State schools, parents’ attitude towards education, the whole view of what education is and what the results of education should be are very hard to change. School systems are very rigid, and school officials are very inertial. I have worked with the state schools before and I’ve seen many brilliant ideas rejected just because the person who introduced them didn’t have enough so called “weight” in Russian or credibility. I believe that the Oxford degree will give me the authority to talk with school directors and education officials as an equal well-qualified professional thus allowing me to be heard.

Yet at the moment I feel totally torn apart between my passion towards education for children in general and my responsibilities to raise, love and educate my own child. I don't want to follow the footsteps of Maria Montessori, the woman whose whole life revolved around the development of young children’s minds but who missed out on the first few formative years of her own son’s life as she left him behind with another family. It was not until he was older that he came to realise that she was actually his mother. My toddler son is an integral part of who I am, and though hard it is I simply can not leave him.

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Thank you all for you kind words and support!