I home educate - my DS has never been to school - AMA

[OvertheUnicornRainbow]

My DS is almost 13, always been home-educated and is thriving. Ask me anything

. I have 2 full days with my DS a week and his dad has the same*

Does that include the weekend OP? I'm wondering why you still operate Monday-Friday if not, given that the school week is irrelevant.

@Nearlyalmost50 - thank you. You make many valid points - better than I have done.
As an example many on here choose private education for the small class sizes but the thought of a home-ed going to small classes makes people panic they won't cope at Uni! It is a bit strange.

Since when do the state pay for a ten year old (say) to be in FT childcare jane?

@isabellaswan I have no personal experience of this, but I have seen HE parents post on MN how you can get financial help with childcare while you work. Always in response to a parent who wants to HE but says they have to work.

@atankofskunks - leaving a 12 year old at home with a text book while you go to work! He has a lot more resources than that. Not like school where you're lucky to get a textbook atall! And the sexism is quite something too. All the angst about me working but what about his dad? Noone is interested if he works! Anyway, I never said he is left home alone while I work. I said that sometimes he is home alone. Perhaps when I pick his sister up from school or their dad has taken her to a party, or I'm doing errands. My DS does as he likes which often involves reading, studying, researching. At 12 he is perfectly able to be home alone for a while. I'm not sure how old your DD is - but is she not ok to even be left for a short while? I appreciate my DS and friends are more independent due to home-ed but this still suprises me. I know I managed at home on my own for a while when 12.

@janemaster - do you home-educate? I don't recognise your description of being left to use khan academy home alone every day with one meet-up a week? I don't know any DC doing this. There are enough mert-ups to do several a day if wished along with the usual sleepovers, parties, days out. No lack of socialising. Socialisation is different of course and stems from parents and other adults - not peers (the blind leading the blind)!

You can always buy your own textbooks for a child at school OP. The two things aren't mutually exclusive. Text book teaching is pretty poor teaching anyway to be honest. Teachers will strong subject knowledge will rarely resort to text book based tasks.

My comment re your child learning at home while you work related to my question earlier where I asked you whether this happened and you replied "sometimes".

You haven't answered my question about weekends OP?

Re the sexism- your title is "I" homeschool, not "we"- the assumption being therefore that you are the main "tutor". I'm wondering about your other child too- as a pp mentioned. You said that they attend school. Why is it good enough for them?

My DC are too young to do classes, but of course they will in the future if they need them. I suppose my point is this: I teach just one subject. To be able to do that takes most of a full time job (assuming that some of my working life is spent on pointless admin). I have enough general knowledge that, with some support from the internet and a lot of preparation time, I could just about teach primary aged children, but there is no way I could do that at secondary level. If you teach your DS 2 days a week, when do you prepare? I do some things at HE that are not needed at a lower level, like lectures, but other things like seminar lesson planning, keeping up to date with literature on the topic, keeping up to date with educational methods, etc. are common to both levels of teaching and take an enormous amount of preparation time. The only thing that saves me from year to year is repeating the same courses with some updating, but in HE the teacher has to teach an entirely new curriculum every year. I think it is telling that outside of HE no one does this. There is no teaching job where you would be required to teach a new curriculum, at secondary level plus, every single year, across a wide variety of subjects.

I take HE to be the parent doing the bulk of this teaching work, which seems to me possible at primary but a huge ask at secondary level. The only people I know who did this successfully were teachers themselves who took this on as a full time job. Their DCs had similar academic interests to them and for other subjects they brought in outside tutors.

@OvertheUnicornRainbow I think there have been some very rude assumptions and questions here. People are very fixed in their mindsets and can't conceive things out of the usual path. I get it though. I home ed my autistic son for a few years. In a mainstream school now and he is doing well, but I can see both the benefits and limits of the school he is at!

@overtheunicornrainbow. Thanks for wishing DD well. Things aren't great at the moment, many tears this morning about the sheer amount of homework she has been trying to get through this half term.

Wish I could home ed, but I'm not up to it, she wants to stay in school and quite frankly one of us would murder the other and it could go either way🙈.

@janemaster - again sorry but incorrect. Lots of parents have ouside assessment of their DC. Aside from that I find it strange that parents need school to tell them how their child is doing. I mean, if a child can complete work of a certain level easily and well - you must have an idea how they are doing? I also don't know HE parents who don't want their child to reach their potential. And again - yes you can visit museums at the weekend but a home-ed DC has more opportunity for doing this kind of thing and to learn from real experts in their field.

@OvertheUnicornRainbow I was HE and know a lot of HE adults. And I have already posted about why socialisation with peers is so crucial and totally different to socialising with adults.
IME and those of a lot of HE adults, parents tend to be more involved at primary level with days out, etc. But by secondary a lot of us ended up sitting at home with khan academy and a few textbooks and a weekly HE meet up. I assume because the kind of activities and meet ups that seem to appeal to a lot of HE parents don't work as well with 13 and 14 year olds.

I am very critical of HE. I have seen it done well twice, some okayish and a lot of inadequate. And as I have teenagers in school I find a lot of HE parents ideas of what happens in schools is outdated, or based on their experience of 1 bad school. It would have cost me a fortune to reproduce the experiences my teenagers have had at school.

I do agree with you with regard to HE jane, although in some cases with special needs it’s the best choice - however believe me, there is NO paid for childcare for parents who choose to HE!

@OvertheUnicornRainbow Who is doing all this outside assessment of HE children?

@recordbox - as it happens she did have expertise in autism as have other professionals he sees. The point about 5 highers (like a levels) is that no parent would need that level of expertise. There are lots of options - studying with the syllabus at home - using varied resources beyond just the parent, private tutor, college. Socially for my DS - home-ed has been better.

And again - yes you can visit museums at the weekend but a home-ed DC has more opportunity for doing this kind of thing and to learn from real experts in their field.

Pupils in secondary school get to learn from knowledgeable "experts" every day OP! People with degrees in their subject- years of training and experience. Pupils get 13 weeks holiday a year and two days in seven off. How many museums do you need to visit? "Experts" in museums are often volunteers who may have some knowledge and sometimes may just have learned a script.

OP I think each to their own and I also think some children probably do fare better being home educated. But I think it's difficult to have a debate like this when you say things like:

Your DD may do all sorts but the fact is it will never equal what a home-ed kid can do.

Especially because you have another child who is taking the traditional schooling route.

Just as HE might be better for some children, so too might the school system for others.

I was highly academic and went to a grammar school, uni - top grades throughout. I know I personally needed the socialisation of school to build my confidence and coping skills. As a naturally anxious child I grew in to a confident borderline gobshite adult who still loves learning - it didn't inhibit that side of me, it grew it.

I think it's important for both parents of HE kids and school system kids to both show some respect for the other.

With that in mind, I wondered what the biggest challenges / worries of home schooling are?

Because the debate gets so heated I think both "sides" tend to focus on the positives of their own and negatives of the other so I'd be interested to hear what concerns you might sometimes have about home schooling.

Hope the AMA hasn't made you stressed, I know it can feel overwhelming with rapid fire questions!

Life is undoubtedly easier if you fit in the box, do lots of GCSE's and then A levels, and get great grades. If school fits, and you fit school, free school, that's easier all round. One of mine is exactly like this and will come out with amazing grades.

Not everyone, indeed probably the majority, are going to tread this path. Lots of parents are not engaged and do not do extra trips to museums or NASA or whatever- the person who listed the skiing trip and trip to NASA at their school, great for you- these trips are 100's or 1000's of pounds and most ordinary people simply won't be doing these trips or anything like that in their time in state education. Money talks, and you can pay your way to get a reasonable education out of state education by paying for the extra trips and the tutors, but that's not what's on offer for free, nor what most can access.

I am not a HEdder currently, and I agree state education is the best option for lots because their parents couldn't provide high quality alternative provision. Some of the things stated on this thread though are blatantly untrue about blocked careers, unable to access university, and so on. It's important to challenge these because others might be desperate, have a child who simply can't or won't get on in state education or doesn't have enough provision for SN and think their life chances are ruined for ever if they HE. This is not true. I would not recommend withdrawing them from getting qualifications, but this can be done in different ways and not always is best done by going to the local comp where not all the teachers are specialists or the teaching stable at all. Nearly 50% of students do not get the A-C 5 grades (or their levels in numbers as it now is) to go on to higher education. Nearly 50%. So- are these pupils well served by current provision?

I have a horrible suspicion that it is the parents that make all the difference, and that's why HE works well for engaged intelligent parents with money, and school works best for engaged intelligent parents with money. There are some schools that can compensate for this by being brilliant across the board, but most are not able.

@Isabellaswann That is interesting thanks. As I said I would never consider HE. But I have read on here when someone posts about how HE is just for well-off people, twice someone has said you can get financial help. I did not check it out. But after lots of googling this morning I believe you.
So yes it is for the relatively well-off, I would never consider it. But actually that would mean I could not afford to anyway.

@atankofskunks - when he was very young - it was paediatricians and psychologists. I didn't say he was too bright for school - but there were concerns that were more complex than one issue - but yes, that was one of them.

I have a horrible suspicion that it is the parents that make all the difference, and that's why HE works well for engaged intelligent parents with money, and school works best for engaged intelligent parents with money.

I think there's something in this. Schools have funding to support pupils whose parents have less money though and to enable them to access opportunities they wouldn't naturally get. Schools are also monitored and checked in a way that HE is not. HE could be dire, little more than a trip to Tesco once a week and no one would comment. Ask any teacher how much they are observed and monitored and you'll see the difference immediately.

OP- they thought he was too bright for school before he set foot in one? I find that very difficult to believe to be honest.

@Coolcucumber2020 - the classes, trips, activities etc have been set-up by home-educating parents. The best way in is to attend a group and speak to the parents about what is available. Can you find a local home-ed group on FB?

Are the classes subject to Ofsted checks OP? DBS? How do you know that they are good?

Lots of museums now run workshops for HE families. It is basically the same as they run for schools. The City I live in does this. It is good that some HE children are getting access to the same workshops that school educated children do.