I'm a radical unschooler AMA

[OutOfControlSpirals]

I'm a radical unschooling mum, which basically means I've taken the principals of unschooling, where a child is free to learn what they want, when they want, and applied it to every aspect of our lives. So my children have the same freedoms that I do when it comes to eating/sleeping/learning etc.

There's been a recent study of the abuse stats. It's only based on foi requests, because that's what "normal" people have access to.

It found that referrals of HE children to social services in UK are double the rate (per capita) of school children, but that HE children are less than half as likely to be placed on a child protection order afterwards.

Obviously this only catches the children who have been considered to be at risk by someone and reported to social services. It doesn't include those who failed under the radar at school or at home; nor (iirc) does it catch those abused in school.

Oh, and referral rates in general are way higher among pre schoolers (and child protection plans too), which is a life stage when there isn't a differentiation between school and home ed (obvs), hence my argument above that if we really want to stamp out abuse and radicalisation, it's at preschool level we should be doing registration and state monitoring, only of course that's unacceptable because it threatens everyone's civil liberties, not just those of a small group.

Haven’t read whole thread, so apologies if ithis has been asked/answered before. Do you think your style of education places more emphasis on teaching children to be more caring and compassionate towards other children/adults/living creatures? Does it curb the competitiveness with others? Does it encourage children to think for themselves and question everything they read, hear and see? Personally, I don’t think formal education, especially for younger children, encourages their growth and I don’t think academic success is a measure of how well balanced and educated a child is. I’ve not heard of this style of education before and I’m interested to find out more. Thank you for posting.

The guardian had quite an interesting viewpoint recently - www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/15/the-guardian-view-on-home-schooling-in-england-a-register-is-needed

I agree with this - as it points out, there is no evidence to suggest that HE kids are more likely to be abused but, for those families that wish to go under the radar it makes it scarily easy to do. The Turpins in America is another horrific example.

Yes these are a small number of cases but the fear of anyone reading them is, how many more like this?

The vast majority of Home educators are great I am sure, there are certainly a lot of parents on here who clearly put their heart and soul in it (as do equal numbers of parents with kids at school...). For me, I think people get riled up and outright worried about HE because it is "behind closed doors" - statements from the OP (who I appreciate is an unschooler) like not brushing a child's hair for 2 years or allowing 4year old to choose supernoodles as main meal does trigger safe guarding worries - are those things abuse? Not really, not great but it's not even in the same book let alone the same page as the horrific things that deliberately done to children.

But they're not great and they are things that she has, quite proudly stated on a public forum. It feeds into the worries people have.

I guess I'm just saying I think supporters of HE need to showcase their success stories of course but acknowledge that there are different levels and the really dark parts - they may be few but they are amongst the darkest of our humanity. Abuse of a child by its parents is the unthinkable - and schools do play a huge part in safe guarding (and for the adults, schools often make referrals to the DV department).

I feel regulation/registration should be embraced as a way to show, actually look how brilliantly we are doing. This is something we are rightfully proud of and so far removed from the horror stories.

There's a lot of concerns at the moment about unregistered schools. If it's behind closed doors then of course it's a worry.

Unschoolers are of course just a fraction of HE but it does heighten more emotions by the nature of it. I like the French way of raising kids - you give them all the freedom they want within a safe structured environment. Many HE and Traditional school families do this naturally without knowing that was a thing of course

How sad that some teachers seemingly have no insight into problems in their school and choose to blame students rather than look at ways to improve. I suppose it is easier to get away with when the children are from more complicated and disadvantaged backgrounds. Even sadder they would accuse anyone that challenges this of ‘ignorance ‘. Ofsted is far from perfect, but they do tend to be pretty good at picking up this sort of thing. So fingers crossed it will change

Re. the abuse. I kow it was many years ago and safeguarding has completely changed (I am a church safeguarding co-ordinator), but I was abbused for many years as a child (aged 5-when I left home at 18). I was also raped and sexually assaulted repeatedly IN SCHOOL by boys in my year. No teacher ever noticed this or did anything about it. The closest anyone came was my English teacher in 5th year. One of the boys walked up behind me, squeezed my breast and made a very lewd comment in the teacher's hearning. The teacher told the boy not to do it again! I dreaded going to school and, despite being the top performer in the school, my attendance was shocking because I couldn't face walking along the corridor and having hands shoved up my skirt into my knickers or being pushed into the boys toilets and raped by the same group of boys.
The school put my less than fabulous attendance down to being bored because I was so far ahead of anything they could give me academically. That academic performance was, by the way, the thing the boys thought gave them a right to abuse me. I was smarter than them so needed to be put in my place.
No-one has any idea how hard it was for me to send my kids to school, especially when it came time for DS1 to transition to secondary. But I did it because I felt that school would provide the best opportunities for my kids to be educated. Then we were let down so badly that it drove my husband to a nervous nreakdown and made several of my children ill with stress. I also had 3 kids made ill be the amount of bullying that they experienced. Ill to the point that a doctor signed them off, all at different times and different stages of education. The schools did nothing. Apparently, bullying doesn't exist in those schools.
So, abuse seems to me to be likely to happen in schools just as much as anywhere else.

Anything is better than nothing isn't it? If Jordan Burling had been seen once a year for assessment of some kind may be that would have highlighted safe guarding concerns?
As a HE (and many do support regulations of some sort or so is said on forums and indeed this thread) what do you suggest?

The constraints on local authorities and the health service is part of the problem. We got seen once by my HV just after DS was born and then nothing. No info or any other checks. We were in touch with out doctors as he had health problems but no HV checks or on the home. My friend happened to mention their HV had come at 2 years to do a review on development - and had one at 1 year as welll as 6 weeks so I phoned ours. She did come out and it was very useful for us but said they didn't have the funding to do the previous visits and only came now because we asked.
I said I assume as we've been under the docs /hospital we're low risk. She had no idea that we were under the docs and said no one in our area had received a visit because they didn't have the money - unless there had been a referral from nursery /police. I was dumbfounded, we're obviously naice people but she had no idea of that. Domestic abuse is across all walks of life and things can change dramatically in two years.

I don't blame her, she was great and thankfully she said they had obtained funding going forward but we were unlucky to have fallen in to that two year gap. Our child was luckily not at risk but we did learn a lot in that meeting even though we would consider ourselves to be very hands on involved parents.

Checks can provide safe guarding for the child but also support for the parents they may not know they needed

Yes what is always trotted out is that children who attend school are abused too. It is a way to divert the discussion. It is known that some abusive parents choose to HE so that their abuse and neglect goes under the radar. These children matter. At the moment those fighting against some kind of regulation are throwing these children under the bus.

@psicat Jordan burling was known to the authorities, and known as a concern. Their failure to recognise the gravity of the situation and act on it (and I completely understand the resourcing challenges) over YEARS of that poor boy's life cannot be taken as justification to throw everyone else's civil liberties under the bus.

I absolutely agree with you: the resourcing problem is at pre school level.

The rest of this post is not aimed at you, and is shameless thought experiment reductio ad absurdam.

If it was culturally acceptable to do ongoing monitoring and intervention for all preschoolers, then abusive or neglectful parents would be much more likely to be identified and dealt with before compulsory school is even reached. I mean, that's the point where a lot of them ARE identified, going on the FOI stats, and none of us naice engaged middle class parents would mind having our feeding and other parenting choices scrutinized, with state intervention if they were deemed substandard, by a complete stranger, if it saved one child, would we? In fact, probably better to make it compulsory for every parent to use their free hours of childcare, and in a state run nursery, to make sure that no child can fall through the net (apart from those who get abused in nursery or school, but that would have to be taken as collateral damage for the greater good).

It's all a question of whether the State is parent of first resort or last resort. My preference is for last resort, because the State is really pretty bad at bringing up children (ask anyone who has been through the care system), and on average, children are much more likely to be abused by non blood relatives than by their nuclear family. That means that I would advocate leaving parents to bring up their children according to their own values and priorities, unless there are grounds for concern

What I genuinely Don understand in the argument about registration and monitoring is why it's apparently ok for children to be unmonitored until the beginning of the term after their fifth birthday, but after that it's too dangerous to assume their parents are not abusive. It makes no sense, logically.

grounds for concern How do you know there are any grounds for concern if an abusive or neglectful family are HE and keeping kids away from anyone? The truth is that it is unlikely concerns will be raised by anyone.

claire Your place does sound amazing.

omm The issue is resources. HV are supposed to be the monitoring arm of under fives.

I also agree that children in schools are better safeguarded. There's no hint here that children in HE families are more likely to be abused, that is nonsense. But it is common sense that teaching staff can and do pick up on abuse and are often the instigators in abuse investigations.

This is all an interesting debate and I think there are many complex factors to consider. Mainstream education has created such a narrow channel for children to be filtered through, there is no room for diversity and this is creating huge difficulties, especially for children with SEND.

Claretree1 your college sounds fab.

There are also issues with families that have rigid sexist views HE children. Some Roma families HE girls from secondary age and basically teach them to be a housewife and mother.

HV are indeed supposed to be the monitoring arm for under fives, but they have nothing like the power of entry, monitoring or intervention that is proposed for home educators. HV are a service that people can choose to avail themselves of (where resources permit); it's not compulsory to engage. I have no objection to that as a model for home ed; it's exactly how the law stands right now!

See this is where I think it gets a bit totalitarian. I don’t think the government should be social engineering Roma culture (or anyone else’s). Especially given Roma are not particularly well represented in the state and it is a case of one community doing something to another rather than a community deciding on change for itself.

We can't have state intervention where we don't like the culture of a minority community (like Roma) unless we are willing to have a defined and circumscribed national culture and set of values. There are all sorts of aspects of different British subcultures that I don't particularly like, including some of what is expressed and prioritised in state schools, but I'd much rather live in a country where I can choose what subculture to identify with, rather than have the State decide.

NB current case law says that it is legal for the education to prepare a child for adulthood within their community, as long as it does not prevent them from having other options. I have not worded it perfectly but that's the gist.

dieant I put kids first. Education gives kids choices. That is its key outcome.

omm If you have an under five that is never seen by anyone including Drs, then turning down seeing a HV should raise alarms.

And people post on MN all the time about HV who are saying their under five does need to be seen by someone. Basic checks are important.
And if you are HE properly, what is the big deal about an inspection service? I don't see why there is so much resistance, unless you know that you are failing your kids.

There’s always choices. I think it’s fair enough to expect an education results in a literate and numerate child (assuming the basic ability to achieve that is there) but beyond that there’s always options to supplement childhood education as an adult.

omm It does prevent them having other options in reality. But there is nothing legally that anyone can do. Educational neglect is a real thing that is basically ignored at the moment. I think educational neglect should be recognised as abusive.

zzz Thta is what I said upthread that abusive and neglectful families choose to HE to hide what is happening. And of course those kids are being HE. Parents choose HE for good and negative reasons.
I have read too many stories of HE adults who suffered educational neglect and their struggle to get an education as an adult. Yes this is possible, but it is difficult. many have to work full time in low paid jobs and try to get an education on top of this. Possible, but not an easy path to take.