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

That sounds a lot like school.

I have a friend who homeschools. She left school without any GCSEs. Thankfully for her, she landed on her feet and married a man with family money and a title. Oooft, she cannot spell or use proper punctuation though. 🙈 Everytime she posts some rant on Instagram about how great home educating is, I think, oh man, the spelling! 🥴 I want to take my red pen to it. I think the pastoral care element is a huge bit that’s missing. We see that especially in the US where a lot of people ‘homeschool’ because they have extremist views or because abuse is happening and needs to be kept hidden.

From the moment your child is born you naturally become their teacher. You figure it out. Teaching the school curriculum is no different from any of the other thousands of skills you teach your child during their lives. There is tons of resources available to help guide parents through the curriculum. There are few areas that are not covered repeatedly throughout their school years. And gaps are easier to find and fill in because you are dealing with the understanding of one child in front of you not 30!

A friend of mine is homeschooling her grandson. She left school with no qualifications. But she is so invested in her grandsons education. She does 2-3hrs of school work with him 5-6 days a week. Despite her lack of education she has thoroughly researched and found lots of resources to help. She says she is learning so much herself too. Her grandsons is picking out topics that he wants to learn about- beyond things he would be taught in mainstream school. For example he is mixed race and so they have spend time learning about his ancestry and looking at history from multiple perspectives not just the British history narrative. He also has several tutors for various subjects. He is incredibly resourceful and invested in his own education too. He is very capable of researching on the internet things he doesn’t understand or wants more information on.

So it is perfectly possible to provide a very full and very rich education regardless of your own education background so longs as you are truly invested in the child’s education.

Oh, and the person who said you would have to be dim not to be able to support a child through primary?

They're right.

When talking about only the curriculum and imparting the knowledge in that curriculum - they're right. Average IQ people can definitely do this.

Homeschooling presents challenges. The knowledge base required is not one of them.

to be honest you would have to be dim not to be able to support a child through primary education but you do need to be dedicated

What a dreadful and derogatory thing to say.
I must have wasted my first class honours degree in education, my master’s degree, and my postgraduate qualification in management and change. After thirty seven years in primary education, including roles as a headteacher and senior education adviser for early years and primary, it seems I am little more than ‘dim’.

In answer to @Homeschooll To wonder how people who homeschool acquire the knowledge to do so?
I was going to say, after a whole career dedicated to developing the primary curriculum, which is broad and balanced, in ensuring prior learning is built on, that threads of knowledge are expanded, that adaptive teaching is based on observational assessment and that key characteristics of effective learning are developed, I don’t know how people homeschool either.

Use the term home education if you are in the UK, and you will find more sources and information. https://educationalfreedom.org.uk/find-your-local-group/

The curriculum is basically book taught. All the information is available. You just need to be able to read and impart the information.

There is a lot of admin, stats, meetings and reports and dealing with parents etc that takes up a lot of time and space which a home schooling parent would not have to deal with.

Most of what is taught in school can be taught in about 2-3 hours in a day, leaving the rest of the day free for useful things like teaching budgets, cooking, field trips.

Anyone with an average IQ can home school a child in their primary years. Yep. Fact. Yep, still a fact even though that enrages some of you 😅 Secondary education is trickier, but still very much possible with the resources available.

The big issue is the day to day behavioural stuff, kids being bored shitless being stuck home, not wanting to stick to a routine, mum slacking off and just staying in bed. It is the showing up and sticking to it that's hard, the information is not that hard to impart and it is all freely and easily available.

Many home schooling parents get together in groups with others to avoid the pitfalls of no socialising, to give them breaks and to make it more workable.

The UK education system is failing a lot of kids. If your kid is doing fine in school, great.

But it's entirely understandable that those who can do so choose this path for their individual children.

Some do... Remember the Turpin case!

There is no requirement for home educated children to sit 9/10 GCSEs. In fact, it's not compulsory to sit any at all. Also, there is no requirement for parents to "teach", by law, parents must facilitate learning by providing the required resources and opportunities for their children.

However, for those that do, they self-study, and sometimes also have a tutor. Many home educated children self-study. Home educated children are usually very good with self-directed learning giving them an easier adjustment into university than schooled children. This has been recognised on many occasions by uni lecturers.

There's no real need for 9/10 GCSEs as usually only English Language, Maths, and Sciences are required. Of course you will get some children who do more than 4, but it's not that common for HE children to do 10, as it simply isn't needed, and it's very costly.

My children do a mix of self-study and some online tutored lessons, with meetups with all of the HE students and the tutor for workshops.

We don't have a car. We don't have a big house or go on fancy holidays. We don't buy a lot of stuff.

Answer enough?

my bad, fair point

I was simply pointing out the irrelevance of your Einstein argument to that particular point.

in that case i would agree and counter with the books by john gatto taylor and also if mainstream schooling was so great then why are all the students not perfect ? people are omg at homeschooling education methods etc yet mainstream is doing so much better etc

Not really as you were using Einstein as an example to try and counter pp’s point that there could be trouble down the road for future generations of badly home-educated kids.

It’s definitely a privilege! Something that many fervent home educators fail to recognise when they go on their rants about how awful school is for all children.

ok fair point, but you can understand my point

You know that Einstein was an exception right? He’s not a typical example. You’ll always get a few geniuses amongst the masses of uneducated/badly educated.

How do home educating families manage financially? So many families can only keep their heads above water by both parents working (or the only available parent working obvs in the case of single parent families). I can't see how you can successfully HE a child of any age if you're working to keep the roof over your family's collective heads.

So is HE only really an option for those families who are wealthy enough not to need both parents working, plus those who are already not working and on benefits where you don't have to prove you're looking for work?

This is a genuine q as it's something that puzzles me.

And how did their parents teach them 9/10 subjects at GCSE level?

There is no requirement to follow the national curriculum, so it's irrelevant really.

But as you've mentioned it, as parents, we do not need training to help our children to learn. In terms of the primary curriculum, it's really not that difficult to any adult with intelligence.

I find it weird that no one has an issue with parents raising their children until they reach the age of 5, and then suddenly they freak out because they have not been sent to school to be taught by a 'teacher'. People should really have more faith in others, and less ignorance and judgement towards people who have made different life choices regarding their children's education.

Of course, there are some parents who give home educators a bad rep, but the vast majority of us do a really good job and raise really fucking fantastic, well-rounded, polite, curious, focused and determined children.

I often think the same. Primary school level fine but there’s no way the average parent has enough knowledge/expertise to tutor the full breadth of subjects at GCSE/ A level.

Not usually at GCSE. They only do KS3.

And home educated children are in the real world every day, seeing their friends and managing relationships. We don't keep them chained up in the basement you know!

This. Teaching primary maths effectively can be incredibly difficult if you don't know what you're doing. There's a reason us teachers have to do a PGCE...

I home ed my eldest children through most of primary school. It’s pretty straightforward so long as you remember the core subjects to bring into their interests (English, maths, science). There are lots of resources available but the most important were other home ed families.

My children are adults now and passed their GCSEs and now in full time work in areas they are interested in.