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

@Whattheother2catsprefer - I'm not sure not being able to get DC to school on time is a reason to home-ed!! If you don't have the motivation to get your DC to school on time - I'm not sure you'd have the motivation to home-ed. Generally home-ed parents are very concientious about our DC education - otherwise we'd send them to school! (Not saying school parents aren't conscientious but if you weren't you wouldn't want a bored kid hanging round the house all day!). I think lots of parents that want to do it can if they're determined. But no - everyone shouldn't do it! We want to keep the parks and art galleries quiet!

We're not in a city - but a large town. We do go further afield to access opportunities. These are not the kind of things you do at weekends - these are properly organised educational activities/workshops/classes/lectures.

I meet Lots of home Ed parents on a professional basis.

In life in general I don’t judge people but professionally I’m afraid I do - the vast majority of home Ed kids I work with end up with psychological issues and underperformance in terms of quantity of GCSEs.

IME children are home schooled because the parents priority, when you dig down deep enough, is not the child.

You will find exceptions to the rule but in general home Ed does not prepare kids for the real world.

And I imagine what I say here will be vociferously argued against, because most parents who home Ed find having their belief system challenged very hard to deal with - the reasons for home Ed are usually very deep seated.

@buckeejit - yes museum visits = downtime but what I'm refering to is educational activities/classes/lectures/workshops. This is not the same as you do as a family in school holidays!

I do a lot of 1:1 with my schooled DD. I can't quite put my finger on it but the way school works you need to put in quite a bit to support it. For example - we had to do reading with my DD a few times a week. I did much less with my DS and yet he picked it up easily. Happened with all his friends. So the 5 hours doesn't suprise me but the 8 hours of home-ed you can achieve much more. I honestly don't know why 6 hours is so concerning!! I remember often on a Saturday - reading and studying for hours! Same in the evening!

Grasspigeons, absolutely understood - and I was going to add a comment to that effect to my original post, apologies.

OvertheUnicornrainbow - when you say Generally home-ed parents are very concientious about our DC education, I wonder whether you are speaking particularly about the subset of home educating parents that you meet / know? Is it possible, do you think, that there are other subsets that you don't come into contact with and thuis don't really know?

Where I used to work, 100% of girls from the local GRT site were withdrawn from school to 'home educate' at 11 - so that would have been c. 15% of our school roll who went on to home ed after Y6. That was a community that was not at all conscientious about the education - in a non-GRT sense - that those children received. Their education from 11 was wholly in the GRT way of life - childcare, looking after trailer / other facilities and being prepared for marriage within that community. In that local area, this community formed the vast majority of HE families very different from your HE community, and very different to the HE community I belonged to .

Do you think that it is possible that you have local HE families who you never met, in which parents don't care about their children's education, and who HE for reasons that you might not necessarily be supportive of? So do you think HE is ALWAYS a good alternative for children?

@Shineynew - if it wasn't for the DC and something deeply psychological in me - why would I home-ed one DC and not the other? If my DC wasn't my priority - wouldn't I just send them to school - much easier!
What capacity do you work with home-ed parents?

@cantkeepawayforever - it's not always a good thing, no. The specific community you mention is something very different. And of course I don't speak for all. I've mainly spoken about my own experience. However I don't just interact with local parents. But it's fair to say the less contentious parents I would come across much less. I do know one local parent who I felt was screwing her kids up but that's because of dragging her DC into all her dramas.

not sure not being able to get DC to school on time is a reason to home-ed I don't think most people would think so either but I can pretty much guarantee that any thread that complains about schools in any way shape or form will attract HE proponents saying 'you don't have to send them to school you could home educate'. Complain about the cost of holidays outside of term time - you should home ed. Complain that little Billy has a detention - you should home ed. But for a vast number of parents the reality is out of the house 8.30-6.00 pm Monday to Friday, very few places a 12 year old can get to under their own steam, a lack of skills, patience or desire to be educator. It works for some but for most schools need to be a viable option and if every child that falls outside of Joe average was pulled out of the system it would get worse not better. Our local primary is fantastic and deals with my son's SNs brilliantly - we need all schools to meet the needs of all pupils and sadly at the moment many don't.

OvertheUnicorn, I think that's fair. Some HE parents are so determinedly pro HE that they will defend it regardless of quality, context or suitability for the child. On the other hand, some people are so anti HE that they cannot see that sometimes it can be a really positive option.

Done well, for some children, it can be great - like school, done well, for some children, can be great.

Done badly it can be awful - as can schooling, when done badly.

@Whattheother2cats - I've never seen that on here. But yes, schools are failing some DC.

@cantkeepawayforever - yes, agree.

IME children are home schooled because the parents priority, when you dig down deep enough, is not the child

Sweeping generalisation there. I'd be interested to know what capacity you work with home ed children too.

I’ve worked as a Youth Worker for 3 years, an EWO for 10 and manager of an FE programme for learners without the requisite number of GCSEs to get onto their FE courses at 17 for the last 5 years.

Yet you still see fit to make sweeping generalisations about whole groups of people? Did you ever consider that you only see a percentage of those home ed children? Not all of them actually require your 'services'.

@twilight - I often see this when someone works with home-еd kids. Once you find out the context it is obvious they are making sweeping generalisations from interacting with a particular set. There is a much higher number of autistic kids in home-ed circles. Does that mean home-ed causes autism?

No it means that children with autism are often let down by schools.

You can make assumptions about the kinds of parents I have met but i assure you I have met and worked with young people from all types of families.

And sorry I should have said I exclude those with SEN from my initial statement. Totally different reasons for home Ed.

@Shineynew - as I thought a particular set. You really can't generalise from that. You work with home-ed kids with few GCSEs and from that claim the vast majority of home-ed kids I come across have few GCSEs! Bit of a logic problem there...and you were no doubt educated in a school?!

@Shineynew - you work with a particular set whether from 'all types of families' or not - that means nothing!

I’m not going to keep arguing the toss here - as an EWO I did hundreds of home visits to home Ed children.

As I said before, there were exceptions to the rule but in general the reasons for home schooling were the parent/s not the children with the children disadvantaged later on in life.

If this doesn’t apply to you, that’s great but my heart sinks a little every time someone tells me they’re thinking about home Ed.

As an EWO I can confidently say you really have no clue! There's a reason EWO get such a bad name. If you think about what your job was I'm sure you can see why it is not a representative sample. If you can't work that out....well it says it all.

As I said before, there were exceptions to the rule but in general the reasons for home schooling were the parent/s not the children with the children disadvantaged later on in life.

And this is the reason why the majority of home ed families do not allow education officers to visit. Because they arrive with negative preconceived ideas about home ed. The people you have seen were a tiny proportion that allowed you in. And your mind was made up before you arrived, and thus your actions were based on that. Very poor. Very unprofessional. And not the right sort of person to be working in this role.

@Shineynew - out of interest - what training did you do to prepare you for your EWO role?

out of interest - what training did you do to prepare you for your EWO role

I'd be interested to know that too. When the education officer wrote me a rude and misleading letter asking to visit, I checked out her credentials. And discovered that her experience was mainly admin work and a bad attitude to home education. They beauty of modern technology to discover these things. Needless to say, her request to visit was refused.

Maybe there’s a reason why we have negatively preconceived ideas after hundreds of home visits.

Maybe you guys are some of the exceptions to the rule and I can only speak from my experience, which yet again was wide and varied, whatever you may say.