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

Also this always reminds me of Kim Constable- a woman who craves attention and had a turn in the mid 2000s getting attention for sleeping in a massive bed with all her children and “unschooling” them.

She is now an influencer with a good following so we can see Her children (now school leaver age) have achieved zero despite being very privileged in every other way.

Home ed pages and groups often pop up on my TikTok. So many of the women (always women) remind me of the arrogant under educated attention seeking mid 2000 wave of home schoolers who were very vocal about how brilliant and they and home schooling were back then. Due to how small the internet was, a few are still friends of friends. They now have grown up children. The incidence of mental illness (serious- self harm etc) and number of them who are trans far exceeds the usual population.
None have any basic academic or career/ life success - and the parents have moved on fluidly to other attention seeking projects. I’m convinced a few actually had fabrication disorder by proxy.

seeing them over 20 years and the outputs of their hoemschooling has made me pretty anti.

I know people that have homeschooled very successfully (kids into uni and doing well). I know people who have homeschooled very badly.

i’m a teacher. My DC was homeschooled for medical reasons in her teens.

for some kids it is better than school.

Honestly I think it depends on the situation.

I can definitely see the appeal and I would probably have considered it if I didn’t need to work and if I had the right skill set and knowledge.

I don’t really see what is so great about (state) schools these days. But it’s the only option for us so it is what it is.

We don't homeschool but I often think my eldest DC would thrive at home. She doesn't love school and is very academic, so is often bored and waiting. She has friends at school, but there's lots of drama and frustrations and she often chooses to play alone

If we committed to it, I reckon we could do a good job at primary level. We have the skills to research and plan teaching for our (one individual, fairly easy to teach) child. We could afford to pay for clubs and homeschool events, plus tutors if needed. It would be a lot of work to do it well though IMO.

I do agree with you about secondary and qualifications though. I imagine it would be hard going to work on GCSEs at home. That puts me off the idea of homeschooling when they are younger, as it would probably make it harder to restart school later when you aren't used to the routines and rules.

The home Ed community is often thriving and the children take GCSEs.

You only need 5 to get into college and 3 A levels for uni - if that’s what you want to do in the future.

Lots of time to learn other skills and enjoy your childhood.

I work in education!

I can see why for some students it works, for some families it works and for others it doesn’t.

Some people love learning and thrive following their own curriculum and will learn far more with a more tailored learning environment than the curriculum in schools allows.

Mine were home educated for SN reasons.
During those years (last 10+ years) the largest growing group of people home educating their children were teachers, leaving the profession and doing everything they could to make sure their own children were not in the system.

I always thought that was rather telling.

I think you are unreasonable to lump all in together. There are those who fully plan their child's education, use recognised tools to monitor progress and tutors to fill gaps, ensure docial opportunities with a wide variety of children and genuinely do it as best option for their child. Then there are those who do it for more selfish reasons such as to avoid termtime holidays fines etc, and even for sinister reasons, such as to avoid school contacting social services with their concerns.
I do think it should be more closely monitored, in a broadly ofsted type manner with regular checks of learning and progress by a qualified professional

The reason I say you are unreasonable is because there’s a few general assumptions in your post.

Some parents pay for the children’s GCSEs. We can’t assume that all parents are not doing it properly with some perhaps even using tutors, online lessons etc.

Regarding the travelling home schoolers, I think it’s nice to give them the opportunity to explore the world which they may never be able to later on in life. Some people live differently and that’s ok.

A parent is a child’s primary educator and the one ultimately responsible for them. Seeing the state of many schools and also what is taught in then with respect to sex/gender ideology as well as the violence and bullying I think parents are totally sensible to remove their children. It’s usually done after a lot of thought and considerable sacrifice by the parents of their free time and ability to work outside the home.

Some schools are becoming very violent places. I work in a large primary - having come back to teaching after a long absence - and remain astonished at the level of need of individual children that are now in mainstream.

I am offering neither reasons nor solutions for this, but if I had a child who was being persistently adversely affected by a violent classmate (as was seen on a very recent thread), and I had the means to do so, I would home educate in the blink of an eye.

I think that the vast majority of parents want to do what’s right (or what they believe is right) for their child. I’m not here to judge them for that.