To wonder how people who homeschool acquire the knowledge to do so?

This thread has been so helpful and encouraging, and full of posts from extremely knowledgeable people; thank you for that!

I have four children, all currently at mainstream school. However, I have concerns about whether one of them will cope at secondary school in a couple of years. He is very bright and academically able, but his autism presents other challenges for him that I worry may be difficult to overcome when he is no longer in his small and supportive primary school. I will definitely consider HE him in the future. I have spent a long time thinking about this, and find the experienced and knowledgeable posters on MN so helpful.

Great! A Home Education bashing thread!
The correct term is Home Education by the way, Home Schooling is a child doing work set by schools, but at home. Home education is a different philosophy.
The parent doesn’t need to know the subjects they are more facilitators and usually learn with their child.
There is no issue with ‘socialisation’ as there are groups and many activities that the Local Education Authority count as socialising.
Please don’t judge Home Ed parents, they have legitimate reasons to Home Ed and it’s a choice that is NEVER taken lightly.

I was forced into home schooling for a short period when the LA didnt have a school place available.

It was primary level if that makes a difference.

I looked at the national curriculumn and then at resources like twinkl and other people that had lesson plans. Then had a stab at 'teaching' those plans.

Maths was very structured and lots of online resources for abd easy to get tutors for.

Writing was hard as I didnt always get what I was supposed to be looking for.

The other subjects were easier.

I had previously volunteered in school hearing and benchmarking readers and supporting maths lessons for 2 half days a week. So I had some examples of what they do.

Financial - tough but zero choice

That’s really interesting - I would have called that remote schooling rather than home-schooling. I know someone else who has done this and it works well for them.

All the home educating families I know have 2 working parents.

@Jean24601Valjean , my son is a GP my DIL is with their three children full time and is the main person who delivers the schooling during the week when my son is out at work. I think it would be nigh on impossible to provide a proper education if there wasn’t one parent for whom this was a full time responsibility.

In my case, the "knowledge" came from a love of learning - instilled mainly by my Dad, who was a walking encyclopedia of knowledge and never stopped learning himself.

The skills you pick up as you go along, much like you pick up the skills of parenting.

There was no fixed "timetable" as such but there were regular co-ops, sports, socials (there are home ed groups everywhere that families can hook up with) and those regular commitments set the weekly timetable in effect.

We did no more than half a day of academics on any given day, whether that was KS1 or GCSE.

There were absolutely loads of trips, at least one per week, to museums, education workshops (including the kinds that schools access), talks at places like the RI, author talks, lab work, theatre, factory tours, shows - it literally ranging from the sewage works to the Royal Albert Hall.

We did not follow the national curriculum (although obviously we had to follow GCSEs syllabus when the time came.)

All of mine got as many 8-10 I/GCSEs. At least one would have been deemed SEN if in school.

Obviously all of this takes effort on the parents' behalf and a willingness to plug any gap you identify in your own knowledge, skills or available.

Home education and school education are very, very different and therefore the skills required are not the same.

When I considered it I spoke to an online school, and they pointed out that as I have 3 children at similar stages I could just hire a teacher to do it for around the same cost of their school fees, with nanny helping with the youngest and doing social/pastoral stuff.

The school addressed concerns and it came to nothing but I bet there are people who do this.

Teachers need qualifications as part of the requirements to apply for a job as a teacher but they aren’t necessary to impart knowledge. I did my PGCE 2002/2003 and most of it was based in school, with practical experience, and that’s the premise of most teacher training. You become a teacher by teaching in other words.

I do think that school is a lot more than teaching and I couldn’t do it myself. While phonics and basic maths aren’t difficult concepts in themselves, imparting and explaining this to very young children is!

Our KS3 curriculum is death by PowerPoint, the units are dull and bitty, behaviour is poor, engagement and motivation is also poor and teacher absence is high. But ofsted say we’re good. So …

Why do teachers need qualifications yet they don’t appear to be necessary to homeschool your own children?

This response is ridiculous. No one is suggesting your experience isn’t useful and probably great in a school setting, but the idea that you need all these qualifications to take a single child through the primary education syllabus adequately is crazy.

So no, those qualifications are not a “waste”. But not are they necessary for the task of home educating.

I think the premise of the OP assumes that parents acquire knowledge that they then pass on to the children. It is not quite like that. The knowledge comes from a variety of sources: tutors, online resources, shared teaching etc. The parent is not required to know everything themselves.

I’ve no idea where the idea that Einstein did poorly at school came from. He went to gymnasium (the German and Swiss equivalent of a grammar school) and the Swiss Federal Polytechnic at 16 where he excelled.

If your child can’t cope at school or cannot go to school you have to make it work for them.

My daughter who left secondary school 3 years ago, had to learn so much via teams due to staff shortages - she was basically teaching herself for most subjects! It's an actual laugh to see how many say parents can't support children through GCSEs... Yet the school thought my daughter was fine to do it herself!

Yes school can be great, but it also cannot be great! You are completely right at how naive some parents are over the learning quality from a schools.

Unless they themselves were homeschooled this rather suggests that schools are not very good at teaching maths.

But this is the whole point!

Parents who HE are trying to avoid their children being compartmentalised into a "one-size-fits-all" series of highly tested incremental steps.

There is nothing to "come out in the wash" later. In the main HE produces self-motivated young people who go on to take public exams when and where appropriate and go to college or university.

The current over-tested micro-managed school curriculum is a massive turn-off for may young people that destroys any love of learning.

If I could have afforded not to work I would have home-educated mine for sure. Supporting them through a rigid system fraught with the problems of poor discipline was very hard work.

I think a lot of parents can be quite naive about the quality of education at most state secondary schools. Teacher absence is high, no proper cover is arranged so there’s an ad hoc approach to lessons, work isn’t marked and it’s just about getting through the hour with minimal behaviour issues.

Well no because you might be talking about 4-6 kids. One parent maybe leading a concept and one or more others around to help as needed. In a room with most likely decent, non fluorescent light, no uncomfortable uniform, not freezing or boiling etc. Im a teacher by the way.

Replying to @Mauvish1 - We work opposite shifts. Tiring but it works. We budget / cut back on outgoings while making sure we still have what we need.

General comments- If my state schooling was so adequate, then I am adequately capable of teaching my children, surely?

I’m an ex-teacher, certainly none of my time spent in the classroom is helping me teach my kids. Not particularly tiger mum or earth mum, whoever said that earlier. We do ‘sit at the table’ work in a morning which at primary school level isn’t difficult to understand or prepare for. Then out at groups such as forest groups, sports groups, social groups, special trips out in an afternoon. We also choose themes of current interest and make sure it covers a broad range of curriculum content and academic/ life skills in that way.

It looks very different to school (no “no talking, you’re not here to socialise”, no 40 minute lunch time stood in a huge queue for social time, no wasted minutes waiting in queues / for quiet / for everyone to have equipment and be organised, lots more hands-on experience). While the structure of school works brilliantly for some children and that is great, for our family home educating is a joy and a privilege.

This. DD2 is thriving at work in a restaurant, and is learning to drive and picking it all up at a pace I could only dream of. Anything practical I often have to be shown/do/practice several times whereas DD2 you just show her once and off she goes. She is also immensely likeable. How could school fail someone with so much potential so badly?

My friends who homeschooled split it up between about 6 families. With each family doing 2 subjects for GCSE,. Either in stuff they were already specialist in, or they learnt it ahead of the kids. Most the kids came out with amazing grades at GCSE and Alevel. Most chose to do Alevels at colleges and most are at uni now.

There is no requirement to follow the national curriculum if you homeschooling. This means there is a huge variation in experience. There will be many people doing a good job and even using tutors or online programs to provide a broad curriculum but sadly there are also children out there just left to their own devices and not receiving and education. It needs more regulation.

Sorry, but you definitely don't need to have many degrees to teach primary school kids phonics and basic Maths. In many countries kids start school at 7, so you definitely don't need any special skills to teach kids between the ages 4-7. I'm actually not a fan of home education, as I think it's largely completely unregulated, which is shocking. For any child with dedicated parents and tutors, there are many more sitting at home doing nothing or worse - being abused and no one knows about it. However, you definitely don't need to have First Class honours degrees to teach primary-aged kids.

Books!