To think that homeschooling (without additional needs) is selfish?

If i had the temperament for it I'd home school no question. My kids are doing really well at school but I don't love the influence of other kids behaviour. Dressed like teenagers, wearing make up, constantly posting to SM and watching reel after reel after reel - at 9/10 years old.

It's heartbreaking to see kids trying to just be kids when all the messages are aimed at older teenagers and the parents don't police it.

Give me a log cabin in the middle of nowhere any day!

Home education is mostly the opposite of selfish, it’s putting the child’s needs and interests at the forefront rather then shoving them through an uninspiring limited state education. It’s often very social, involving alternative skills and groups or provisions. Some may sit iGCSEs privately or GCSEs through a 14-16 college provision. I know home educated children who are now GPs, architects, engineer and psychologist.

Even then they can do their GCSEs alongside a college course and then go on to do whatever they like.
You're behaving as if it's a choice between taking GCSEs at 15 or 16 or doing nothing in life.

Ex-teacher now home educating my two littles. I can’t think of anything school can give them that home ed can’t. Quiet, structured morning learning time with no disruption followed by an afternoon meeting with other kids, trying different activities that they may or may not have been able to do in school. Loads of high quality groups and resources available, small group tuition etc.

My children are the quiet, wouldn’t say a word in a large setting, fairly shy type. They are the children who will get lost in the sea of children who have more needs to be met or are more forthright in their personalities. There would be days they are completely missed from the teacher’s radar. That’s limiting to them, sending the wrong message and unfair.

The nearest private / grammar to us is 75 minutes away on a good traffic day. I’m not missing my children for a full school day plus 2.5 hours of commuting when they can have a different (not better or worse) experience. Plus, children get enough pressure and exhaustion without a commute I wouldn’t do myself (FWIW I work part time hours but make it work so I’m with the children during the day).

It’s just an alternative form of education, same as private / grammar / state etc. Some good, some less good. No one goes round saying how people send their children to school because they can’t be bothered to do it themselves at home.

I do see the points about some children thriving in school, it’s great for some children. Plus I agree about not everyone having the right reasons or idea about it, but it’s definitely not all of us! 😊

I’m not a fan of homeschooling for many reasons, but selfish is very much not a word I would associate with homeschooling parents. I think it takes a vast amount of self-sacrifice, actually. I certainly couldn’t do it, even if I wanted to.

Depends. Maybe they'd be capable of more, go to a useless school and fail anyway.

They can do GCSEs then?

Which is fine if the children who are home schooled aren’t capable of anything better anyway. If they can’t do any better because they haven’t been taught curriculums, exam technique and content by a useless parent that’s entirely different

Probably not many compared to children who leave a professional school environment with little to no GCSE's.

This is really really not the case.

yes, teens who don’t get maths or English at 16 have to keep resitting until 19 if they got a 3, but even the government has accepted that if they got a 2 or a 1 or a U their chances of passing are basically zero and lets them do functional skills.

there’s a lot of kids out there, maybe 10 to 15% who never pass either maths or English.

i used to teach severely disabled and autistic teens and many of them despite never passing maths and English got jobs. Some employers are very good at working with disabled young adults and a few have specific programmes for them,

It's all those thousands of school children failed by their parents lack of interest in their education that I worry about 😞

I doubt she cares enough about the language home schoolers insist on to fall into step with that one. Why would she unless she was some fan girl type?

Getting functional maths at a FE college at 16 is a bit shit if you were actually capable of more in a professional school environment though isn’t it? How many of those children have been let down by their parents decision?

You can't have looked into it beyond a brief, judgemental flick through given you refer to it as Home Schooling. It is known as Home Education in the UK. At least try and get your facts right if you're going to try and spout authority over something you clearly know nothing about.

Exactly. This OP is just really against Home Ed so is pretending it’s all doom and gloom when there are multiple opportunities for all youngsters to get their GCSEs, both the ones who fail to achieve passing grade in mainstream and the ones who are home educated.

This is our situation. Local state schools are utterly dire and not the right setting for DD at all. No grammars in the area. Definitely couldn't afford a prep school.

So no different to home educated children who don't have GCSEs by 16 then.
I don't really see the problem?

They go and study level one courses at FE colleges alongside Maths & English GCSEs.

My experience is that those homeschool children who do them get on well with GCSEs because they just do one at a time from the age of about 14, which is easy. The challenge of gcse is doing 9 over 3 weeks 😂

So what do all the school children who fail maths and english do?

GCSEs can't be that important since loads of school kids mostly fail them anyway. I think the pass rate at my local secondary school is 50% 😂

We've been doing college open days this month and there are plenty of options for kids leaving school without any GCSE passes.

You don't even need A Levels for uni - most courses accept a range of other qualifications like BTECs and Access courses.

Many areas are no longer grammar areas. For some people the option will be state or homeschool if they can't afford private.