To disagree with home ed

There was a very recent report about the growing lack of any toilet training, play and language input to children starting reception. Worse than it’s ever been - so that compounded with school underfunding would lead I guess to some very poor outcomes for children and young adults.
So yes there is some bad parenting going on pre-school, throughout childhoods, and presumably in home education. Not ALL HE’s obviously before I get attacked!

I disagree with you completely. We will home ed our daughter because the school system is shockingly bad. My two nieces (one primary, one secondary) are failing badly. One is an anxious mess and struggles to socialise, the other feels like a massive failure because no matter how hard she tries, she is not naturally academic so her confidence is at rock bottom.

My DH will home ed our daughter, he is bright, can critically think, will take her to many social groups and will enrol her in online / courses where he may not feel comfortable teaching.

If the school system was producing genius's that were extremely sociable, I may agree with you. But this is not the case, many school kids are not well socialised, and bullying is rife.

I think people tend to take rather polarised views on this subject. At one end of the spectrum you've got people who believe that home education is findamentally wrong and that all HE'd children are socially inept and at best semi literate and at the other there are those who think that all schools are either overrun by knife wielding hooligans or run like prisons. Of course those extremes do exist but they're not universal. There are good, bad and indifferent HE'ers just as there are good, bad and indifferent schools.
I'm not sure the argument that you can't effectively home educate if you are not a qualified teacher really holds water though. Educating one or two of your own children when you have complete freedom over when and how you do things is very different to teaching in a school. I think that I could probably, with sufficicient time to prepare, have taught my own children mosr subjects to GCSE and the sciences to A level. I mean it's not exactly intellectually demanding subject matter - I'd imagine that knowing the syllabus is the easy part of teaching. My kids are reasonably bright and would have been engaged and well behaved so I reckon I could have made a decent job of teaching them if I'd had to.
But could I be a teacher in a school, potentially switching from a class of 30 anxious new year 7s to a disengaged bottom set of year 9s all the way through to an A level class in one day, and having to teach children with a wide range of abilities and backgrounds, on a tight time schedule, with all the pastoral care, planning, marking, record keeping etc that goes with it? Not a chance! I think being a school teacher is an incredibly difficult job and I have huge respect for those who do it, but I don't think you necessarily need all those skills to be an effective home educator.
I have met quite a lot of HE'd children over the years, whether professionally, through the volunteering I do or the children of friends. They are not a homogenous group any more than those who attend conventional schools and parents have lots of different motivations for choosing to HE as well as lots of different methods. I don't think they all do it well and do have some concerns about the lack of oversight and the potential for abuse that that opens up. But then schools are highly regulated and some of them are absolutely terrible so even that isn't a simple issue. But some HEers do a great job and I can see some of the appeal. As with many things, if you are well resourced in terms of time, money, your own education, the facilities available to you, your own motivation and that of your children then you can probably provide a very good standard of education outside of school. The less of those things you have, the less likely it is. But there's no one size fits all solution.

Adults are not adulting anymore?

So what on earth is going on that 60% of children are being failed by both parents and school. Unsurprisingly, this figure is reflected in GCSE results too.

It is skills based. Private schools have to use it too.

The Iowa Test is an exam given to students in K-12. It covers the following 5 subjects:

1. Language Arts
2. Reading
3. Math
4. Science
5. Social Studies (history, geography, economics, civics)

And that’s the parents fault as much as the school. If we are talking about children with no additional needs, then it’s not just the school failing, it’s the parents. You can’t just hand kids over to school and job done, you have to put in the work at home as well.

Same with home ed. The children I knew who were vastly behind (and yes, not being able to read and write at 8/10 would be anyone’s standard of behind), it was their parents who were failing them.

I have my first starting in Sept. Already considering the idea of flexi schooling. We will see how we get on.

Home education/homeschooling situations vary so much because there are so many different types of kids and so many different types of parents, so I think YABU to disagree with the essential concept. I agree that there are a lot of people who do it who aren’t equipped for it, though.

I am in a few homeschooling groups online as I like to get ideas for my day flexischooling DD1, and I have noticed a rise in people who seem to have taken their child out of school for various reasons but, and I’m trying to word this diplomatically, don’t seem to have had much of an education themselves or really have the ability/capacity to educate someone else. They come on not really seeking advice on how actually to home educate but on how to argue with the school/local authority, generally. That type of ‘home education’ is miles away from forest schools and tutors and trips to the museum.

Some of these children are pretty much doomed to failure, either through school failing to meet their needs or parents being unable to.

I think the answer to your question is yes. Of course most people worry about safeguarding whatever the age of the child.
Which is why there are (inadequate probably) structures such as health visitors, social services etc who do try and safeguard babies and young children.
There have been many dreadful examples of children all ages suffering abuse and worse, how could anyone not care.

I completely disagree. It's not until youve been in a situation where the school system is destroying your young child's mental wellbeing that you get it. My child was early primary, mild sen needs, we were told she would never achieve due to these. Shes learnt more since home ed than she ever did in school and has more friends as well as being emotionally well. I wouldn't judge a situation you've never had to live.

I understand in some circumstances- SEN, bullying, school refusal- parents probably don’t have much choice. These families are really let down by the system and I feel for them.

But let’s be honest most other people do it cause they are flakey and odd. Certainly the ones I know IRL are.

Did you see my post about the Ofsted report for one of our local secondary schools?
60% start year 7 with reading below what is expected.

I agree with you OP - they can become ‘hidden’ from safety’s mechanisms such as safeguarding- because there is so little opportunity to keep an eye on an ‘at risk’ child.

Just like to add. You can’t be a teacher in a Scottish school without a) a degree and b) a teaching qualification.

It’s appalling that this is allowed.

It's 'spent too much time sitting down', not 'too much time sat down'.

That's exactly the kind of situation where I can see home education being a good idea, when children are being failed by the system.
There's no streaming where I live now but classes are smaller and if children can't pass core subjects they have to repeat the year so they can get up to speed, so there shouldn't be the situation like that, with a large percentage below minimum expected standards (unless on an altered curriculum due to learning difficulties but those children will likely be spending a lot of time with the special ed teacher rather than struggling in the main class), ideally none below standard though there's too many teachers that give mercy passes so children go onto the next grade.

I have done both. Our two boys went to mainstream senior schools until end of year 11 and although they didn't enjoy school I don't think educating at home would have made any difference to their successes and failures.
My daughter became home school halfway through year eight because she couldn't cope with school, was being bullied and was desperately unhappy. I'm so glad we took the decision to teach her ourselves, together with a local home ed group we joined.
We made sure she wasn't isolated and although she still finds life hard she is working a good job, has her own place and a cat! She has always felt positive about the experience and so have we.

Absolutely. They generally don’t make better educators though.

It really isn’t when kids can’t read at 12.

Unless in extreme cases (ie SEN, extreme mental health or other complex needs)

I don't have stats of course, but IME a very high % of home educated children would fall under that umberella.

That's interesting. Is it a skills based test or does that engineer an expected curriculum for homeschooled kids to follow?

Hm. In my state (VA) the home ed kids still have to prove progress by August. Most parents have them sit the standardised Iowa tests (not just for Iowa but a national test) so the state can ensure home ed kids are at least keeping up with their peers.

I don't think it's that common for teachers have masters degrees, in fact in state academies, you'd be surprised how many teachers don't have any teaching qualifications at all.

Most home educating families have been badly let down by the school system with children who's needs can't be met in school. Those children you see who are struggling, would have been struggling, probably more, if they'd stayed in school.

However, there are a minority who remove children to get away from any scrutiny/safeguarding and I don't know how you protect them without damaging the families who are doing their best for DC.