A wave of illiterate “home schooled” children

All you know is that PP is disabled. From that you deduced “stuck at home” and “suffocating “. That’s your own prejudice at play , not necessarily reality.

Doesn’t schooling just mean educating? E.g. scholarly article

@DontGoJasonWaterfalls We have a couple of saying s here;
'Never wrestle with a pig. You both end up muddy and only the pig enjoys it.'

And: 'Never play chess with a stool pigeon. You end up with half the pieces knocked over, and shit all over the board.'

I met a child who is ‘homeschooled’. I suspect her schooling consists of sitting in front of an iPad. When she wasn’t growling at you, she spoke in an American accent.

Lone parent, disabled, WC renter, not on benefits, self employed, vegetarian family- used to be much cheaper, step kids (dad not in picture) and very small age gap between me and older ones. (for clarity I do now claim PIP)
Originally back footed into home education, before realizing it's power and embracing it.
I live pretty hand to mouth to be honest. It isn't pretty and I'm a MN outlier.
I had years of cutting my cloth too tight anyway, so little changed except we spent what I could bring in, on what we needed and wanted. Mainly in the thick of it, I took on pretty horrible work in unsocial hours, which is where the money is.
A 'think outside the box' 'problem solving' basic worker who speaks English, and can communicate well with others who don't, and understands the crap end of society and how it operates, can do well for themselves, without exploiting others. The sacrifice is health and pension, (I wont be retiring) but we where already there, I just followed more money harder.

I did later take the APWA (didn't touch the SEN part) for one Dc, off my LA through the courts, which helped a little, and tbh I effectively hustled the cost of a substantial number of IGCEs and A levels out of the private sector as a method they could show some social value as charitable status organizations. You scratch our back, we'll scratch yours. That's just ended, so one's that already benefited are putting into a pot for the one's needing them in the future.

All off them have been encouraged to make their own externally sourced 'pocket money' from being entrepreneurial, and have been encouraged to understand financial literacy at a much higher level than mine. Some have had good little businesses from early.

Dc's and now DGc's have always had huge input into decision making and consequences around their education, what we do and how it's achieved.
Result is 97% of the time are co-operative about making everything work, which meant if I picked up work that involved 12/14 hours of overnight dirty hard graft, they understood my needs on return, catching up sleep, not being ragged, and being a bit brain dead later that day. Apart from one with high SNs, they literally put squabbles on hold and understand delayed gratification most of the time.

We live a bit differently, having figured out how to ensure each others needs are met as a family with 'matriarchal head' leading it. Very occasionally I've had to put the 'matriarch' hat full on and read the riot act. I'm their parent/grandparent not their friend, but anything can be challenged and changed if you can show why it would work better. The one with high SN's gets everyone's help to voice theirs, more grace over emotional regulation, and more exceptions. I've set them up to be ok enough when I'm dead, without too much dependency on siblings providing for them, though they all say they want to.

Everything here's a choice and living with the consequences of them, good and bad, which everyone knows. Mainly from the Dc's/DGc's POV, they aren't sacrificing anything that matters much to them, and are getting things that do, with the exception of one who would be a gaming/doomscrolling addict if let, but even they recognize once they're doing other things, they're just as happy.
We tap into other home ed families and a couple of school ed single parents, exchanging night 'minding' sleepovers etc, for things they wanted.

We don't have many of the things many families have, because all have discussed them and valued them lower than other things we do want and value higher, but there are individual expensive exceptions, that are highly valued by either one, or all. It's all choices at the end of the day.

Everyone finds their own way to pay for what they truly want, whether that's using school systems to free up a parent to do standard work, or not, if you think about it.

I work freelance around my child.

I suggested home education while I was still teaching, with the idea that I'd continue teaching and DH would be the home educator. DD was instantly thrilled, wasn't being pushed or challenged enough in school and the secondary school choice isn't just "less than perfect", it's dire. A Year 7 was suspended from our catchment school this week, less than a month into the year, for repeated poor behaviour and swearing at teachers. I'm not sorry that she isn't in that environment.

Then I became disabled and unable to teach anymore, so it worked out for us to be able to home educate. DD was thrilled. I check in with her on a weekly basis that she's still happy and offer her the choice of trying a school; she point blank refuses. She isn't "stuck at home"; we spend more time out of the home than in it. This week she's been to various home ed and extracurricular groups, we visited a castle and a NT property, we went to the park and collected conkers for maths and science experiments. School pupils have spent more time trapped in their classrooms than she's spent at home.

She has friends, is developing her own identity and doesn't want a school community if it's the sort that's available where we live.

What part of our home environment sounds suffocating? Just the fact that I'm disabled? Should I have shuffled off to die quietly when diagnosed with a brain tumour to avoid causing suffocation?

Are you fucking serious? You know nothing about my home environment beyond the fact that I'm disabled and you call it "suffocating" and imply that she is "stuck at home"?

I'm going to reply in full shortly, but you can absolutely fuck off with assumptions made on the sole basis that I am disabled.

Are you sure it is a silver lining for your children? I would hate to be stuck at home in this situation, and I didn’t have the best experience at secondary school. Making friends, developing your own identity, having your own school community is immensely beneficial to dc even with less than perfect schools.

Your home environment sounds suffocating sorry.

Most home ed families I know have one SAHP or very part time worker and one high earner or they work opposite shifts. An ex teacher is a tutor which is very flexible and I know a few people who have their own businesses or teach in the evenings.

For us personally, I'm disabled and my husband works part time due to caring responsibilities. One of the few silver linings of a very shit situation is that we're able to home educate.

It is unbelievably hard. Child is registered at school but can't attend as needs are not being met. Financially, it has been so hard for years. I haven't been able to work properly for years as school has been so challenging.
The stress of trying to arrange last minute child care or having to cancel work. In the end I just stopped work. Now I just work reduced hours a couple of evenings (I go to work when partner comes home).

We were fortunate that our mortgage was small and we have really tightened our belts.
I wanted to work and enjoyed my job but nothing is more important than our child being healthy and the stress of unmet needs and the trauma from school was causing so much damage that we were dealing with a real risk of suicide.

an ex colleague of mine also home educating and she is not that brainy imo
i am concerned but otoh genetics may well mean her own dc will also not be that brainy either

Once again, it depends on their set up and motivations. Some will indeed have a high earning partner, some will WFH around the children, some will get benefits, some work and get topped up with benefits, some will make sacrifices elsewhere, some never worked and with no actual education or care happening, there’s no extra costs really and so on. Just like with kids that do attend school.

I do think the government should set up some form of online school. They should look at the Australian 'school of the air' and the OU. This would allow children who are out of school to take classes their parents are unable to provide.

It would have made lockdown much better.

I did ask a question earlier but the issue hasn't been raised at all (unless I missed it). I know as a family on fairly ordinary wages back in the day, we wouldn't have been able to live on one income. So, unless one parent is a relatively high earner how do some parents manage to afford to keep children out of school long term?

This has been my experience also. We track the numbers of chikdren who start a school in our trust and then remove their chikd for home education (of 20 odd schools) and the reason why (if known)

The reasons vary and some are very sensible, but enough are basically either ones a safeguarding issue has been raised about.

I do actually think effective home educators need to engage with the idea that not all home education is suitable and work with the government on what would be fair in terms of safeguarding and suitability measures. I think the risk is, if they insist its all good or school can be bad too, the turn to option for the government will be to ban home education for everyone other than eotas. I dont want that.

That's interesting and more nuanced than most of the thread.

I agree with the other poster though who said the government don't / can't deal with the issue seriously because they haven't enough suitable school places for SEND/EBSA anyway. And probably don't want to deal with educated, articulate (Mumsnetting) home educators.

They were such idiots to destabilise private schools! It's simply reduced capacity overall.

Like I said before - no one educates their kids entirely by themselves. There are resources online, and most homeschooling parents have tutors.

I dont homeschool but I would imagine having one to one attention (without 29 other kids disrupting the process) would be beneficial. A lot of time at school is taken up with discipline, organising and moving from class to class... Though I do agree that socialising and being able to follow rules is something homeschooling is not good at.

No, that there are 'lots and lots" of crap home educators.

The other thing that a lot possibly don't consider is that those who are able to discuss and chat about home ed in forums like this or on Facebook generally aren't the ones we worry about. We have a not insignificant number of home educating parents who we can only communicate with via phone call or in person because they are completely illiterate in terms of reading and can't even use tech well enough to access emails. They haven't got the cognitive ability or resources to hire tutors or plan social opportunities.

We also have a not insignificant number of "home educating" parents who have deregistered their children because school has raised sincere safeguarding concerns. They deregister and eyes on that child all but disappear.

My mind was blown when I started my job as to me this was incomprehensible until I was confronted with it regularly.

I’ve acknowledged that many times in the thread. I even stated that I would like more oversight . However, how can a LA push for a return to school order and be successful when they were unwilling unable to provide a suitable environment to begin with , and that’s why that child is home educated to begin with? More importantly, would they even bother? It’s a bit of a chicken and egg situation, and there’s no real will or push for change when it comes to EHE tbh, otherwise it would’ve happened already. Or legal power would’ve been awarded to begin with . However , having suitable placements for children would fix some of this, purely by cutting numbers. More kids in school and less casework /resources needed to keep track of the rest.

The latest trend of influencers 'home schooling ' their children to avoid court fines for taking their kids on holiday. Seen it loads recently. Set up for generational failure

All forms of education have their pros and cons, benefits and risks. As many have said, I don't think much in our current system is better for the vast majority and yes, that is concerning.

I think a lot in home education in the UK has changed since 2020 - not the least of all being how many now call it homeschooling, which previously in the UK meant when the LA was still involved, Elective Home Education when they are not.

Part of that change I think is more parents withdrawing over issues with schools that would have been resolved differently before - both because parents are withdrawing faster and because schools have figured out if they just send out a letter about how they don't approve of home education and ask for a meeting that will almost always put an already frustrated parent's back up and be ignored, they can "prove" they're not off-rolling, they're not avoiding part-time schooling or other options that many schools hate as it's a lot more paperwork (for example - they have to show safeguarding for the entire school day even when those students aren't there) but do have as options when needed and really pushed by parents and outside professionals.

My kids have been home educated, school educated, and done part-time school and home. They all have additional needs and when they were little, we lived in a place that had very poor education outcomes and no support for their needs.

I home educated for a couple decades and have absolutely known people who did it for anti-establishment reason or just because they hated their secondary school. I've known the so-called mythical home educators who not only rely on their kids to teach themselves, but brag about it. I've met the ones who complain and encourage their kid to leave college because it requires require maths and English - I think the worst was being told that his kid didn't needs maths, she needs science.

The thing is, these types don't tend to be in structured home education groups, at least not for long. They carry that attitude with them and tend to leave groups quickly if it doesn't completely bend to them and their kids. They can be loud in some online spaces, especially around not cooperating with the LA, but they're not who most are going to see offline. They aren't the ones getting tutors and grouping together with others. I can see why some home educators who haven't been in those spaces might never have to deal with them and see them more as a boogey monster used against us.

I'm not in an area where there are many home educating parents getting tutors or paying for many special GCSEs - we haven't had any centres that will take private candidates in many years, the last ones closed well before COVID and that shrunk things down further. I've done the private GCSEs with my oldest - it's expensive and required us to travel to a much larger city, I'm glad we only did it for one and he wasn't one like many I know who due to COVID had theirs cancelled (a lot of home educating families had issues with that).

I've also been in the conversations schools have had about parents withdrawing, both the dismissive ones where they go on about how they'd never want to spend that much time with their kids and the ones where they've had to get education welfare and social services involved for the wellbeing of the child. I've been in meetings with our local head of Education Welfare when she called all home educating parents arrogant and basically called all home educating parents idiots as she mockingly read aloud extracts from emails which were literally parents asking for help - they had obviously been confused likely by online rhetoric about the difference between Education Otherwise Than at School - what we used to call home schooling where the LA gives support which is a rarely but possible help for some child - and Elective Home Education, and this seemed to amuse those in power. There is a divide that there is little desire from either side to repair.

While I support parents being able to register for home education in the same way we can register for schools, I understand why some parents are very untrusting of the system as it is and also why some don't see the benefit of bothering. I was a very cooperative home educator, did the visits, did extensive reports on curriculum, and after a while, all I got was silence. I spent the last 8ish years as a home educator with no contact with the LA. They were useful when someone tried to report us for home educating - they had the reports and the boxes ticked - but other than that, it was meaningless.

The more uproar there is against home ed, the more clamp downs the government try to bring in which affects ALL home educators, not just the few who take advantage of the system.

Try is the operative word there, and really I think the regular so-called consultations they do every few years is more to look like they care than anything else. The law that parents are responsible for education is there for a reason that very much benefits any government. They don't want that responsibility.

There has not been any change to the laws around home education in decades, and no sign it's going to be.

She probably saying this about schools as she sick of all the negativity and m
misconceptions around home Ed.

Yeah, there was similar reasoning used during the Badman report times when there were home educators who put out fake news reports that the government wanted to intimate checks on our kids and similar to try to frighten parents in joining them in the protests, forgetting the kids they were terrifying in the process. It was pretty unforgiveable to me.

It is possible to recognise the failings of many schools, to acknowledge that for some children to thrive they must be taken out of school, to believe that there are lots of home-educators doing a fantastic job and still be concerned that there are almost certainly lots of children being withdrawn from school for either unwise or deliberately neglectful reasons and that this is not being properly checked up on.