I home educate my DC AMA

[PsycheEros]

They are 8 and 6. The 6 year old has never been to school, the 8 year old was pulled out in reception. Fire away!

You don't talk like an experienced education professional, Nimbo. You sound like a Mills and Boon novel.

Home edders are (in my area/experience) about 50% SEN/ND children, about 25% HE by choice/feel they can provide a better education, and 25% indulgent hippy free spirits.

I do get annoyed at the indulgent/free spirits letting their children be annoying in group settings, but having worked in schools and having a child in a secondary school, I've never seen as bad behaviour in home ed groups as in schools.

I also strongly disagree with the idea that childhood needs to be horrible to prepare children for adulthood being horrible, and that's a reason to send them to school.
No one needs 18 years preparation for life being unfair. And a lot of people are so damaged by their schooling that it negatively impacts on the rest of their lives.

There can be poor behaviour in any group of children, and the larger the group and the fewer adults per child is likely to result in more, I suspect.

I also strongly disagree with the idea that childhood needs to be horrible to prepare children for adulthood being horrible, and that's a reason to send them to school.
No one needs 18 years preparation for life being unfair. And a lot of people are so damaged by their schooling that it negatively impacts on the rest of their lives.

Absolutely agree with this. I do however think an important part of childhood is learning compromise and resilience. That shouldn't be through anyone being unkind, but it does have to come about with children being exposed in a sensitive and graduated way to situations which they might be resistant to. None of us like being pushed out of our comfort zones but it's part of living.
As I said previously, one of our 3 children would probably have liked home Ed, he was never mad about school, however, it would have meant dh or I having to sacrifice or at least severely curtail our professional lives to accommodate it, and ultimately I wanted our ds to learn that everyone in the family is equally important. It helped that our dd and other ds loved school! The OP is very unusual in having a very good career which she can fit into a few hours evening and weekends- the reality is that most careers don't. Even with flexible working and even in roles which are 100% working remotely, it's rare to get a scenario when you don't have to work at all during weekdays. Therefore for most parents even if they think home Ed might be a good idea, there's usually a pretty big trade off for the family as a whole

I do work a bit during the weekdays, usually when my DSs are having lunch or otherwise doing stuff independently, or when they're at groups etc. I'm freelance so I'm not required to be online at any fixed point - as long as I'm responsive to my clients and meet their deadlines that's fine. In any case for us it's not a trade off, we see bigger benefits to doing it this way than if I were to work full time.

Not really, I think that stuff is fairly intuitive when they're your kids and you know them!

A difficult question really as so much will depend on the personalities of your kids. I know a lot of home edders say you don't need to begin any kind of formal learning til age 7 (if at all). For me I think the problem with this is if they've had 7 years of free play and then you expect them to sit at a table and do maths, that's going to be difficult. With my younger son we introduced "table time" at a fixed time each day which was a very gentle type of sit down learning - time sat at the table reading a book, looking at letters, playing a little game together or looking at poems, and then just gradually built that up.

Oh and I too find the connection people make between school and work odd - maybe they don't mean it this way but it almost feels like they are saying "doing things you don't like at school will prepare you for doing things you don't like at work". That's not a lesson I really want my kids to learn. Of course we all do some things we don't want to do out of necessity - housework, tax returns, smear tests - but I can honestly say hand on heart that, with the exception of working in the Sainsbury's cafe aged 16, I've never stayed I'm a job I've not liked. I knew from the start I didn't want to sit in an office from 9-6 with an hour for lunch. I knew I wanted to work towards becoming self employed as quickly as possible because that suits my personality. That's what makes me happy. I feel like a lot of school was very much about learning the supposedly essential life lesson of "life is hard, get on with it". Yes some parts of it just are, and you have no control over those things, but many things you can control and you shouldn't have to do things that make you unhappy unless they're essential.

we dont exclude children for previous behaviour problems, we accept anybody. Anybody at all, of an appropriate level course, depending on their previous qualifications and current assessed attainment. Which does not automatically mean immediate places on A levels courses.

We DO expel children from the sixth form for CURRENT poor behaviour and disruption.

why? because I dont enjoy seeing children and parents distraught and sobbing when they realise they are not going to be able to progress onto the courses they were banking on?

I can't imagine this is as common as you seem to be implying it is. For a start, I know several home educated teens personally who have gone on to further education and this has happened to none of them. For another, I have not once seen it discussed in any of the online groups where such things are routinely discussed and advice given.

no need to take my word for it, just make sure you do your own research properly, and dont become one of those furious, distraught parents when their child is turned away from their dream path of A levels and onward, because they have done their GCSEs too spread out, or with too big a gap in their desired subject, or turned up to enrol at sixth form too old, or what ever, and missed their opportunities.

It's almost as if this only happens 'all the time' in certain poster's imaginations as no home edder has ever heard of it...

The only connection I've seen on this thread between home Ed and work is that it's not possible unless one parent doesn't work or has a totally flexible job which can fit around being with the kids all day Mon- Friday.

Certainly not seen anything along the lines of 'school gets you used to doing boring and pointless tasks so that you're prepared for a dull work life!

As I've said, there are many professions which are simply not possible to combine with never being available until after about 7pm. That's just a fact and unlikely to change even if it becomes the norm to work a 4 day week, or wfh. I'm thinking things like medical professionals, many types of management roles, senior positions, lawyers... plus of course many self employed people can't just work in the evenings.

Not a criticism; I'm just pointing out facts. Home Ed is a great option if you feel it's better for your children, or they don't cope in school and if the home educator parent either doesn't work or has complete flexibility in their work life

This might be in reference to my earlier question to OP. I don’t for one minute think children should go to school and be bullied or have awful experiences to toughen them up. However, when my child has worked hard on an art project but someone else wins, a child with behavioural difficulties gets a reward that my child doesn’t, these are all exposing my child to the unfairness of life (well to my child they feel unfair) or at the very least, gently helping them to be resilient and learn to deal with disappointment. May question was how can you replicate this at home because I do feel it’s important to have disappointments in order to develop resilience.

Do you think that home edding families don't research entry requirements?

We worked out exactly what DS needed to move on to where he wanted to be and focused on that.

As does every other family I know who home educates.

You don't need to go to school to get the right qualifications to do A - Levels or have the right behaviour or ability to learn independently.

My son now does much better at his A - Levels than many of his schooled friends because he has much better independent working skills gained through having independently studied for 3 of his GCSEs with zero external output.

I think that there are some ways of doing HE that make it relatively difficult for a young person to transition out of it into their next stage - whether that is into a school, into a college, into university, into employment/vocational training. For example, wholly child-led unschooling, where no demands are ever put on a child, may make it difficult for that young person to transition into an environment where there are some demands within specific timescales. Conversely, very focused 1:1 tutoring with the next step, support and external motivation always immediately provided by an attached adult may make it difficult for the young person to manage less structured, more independent or group learning such as university lectures.

Those aren’t applicable to the OP, nor to ‘all home educated young people’ entering the adult world/ further education’. Just possible pitfalls of some more extreme approaches that are present, if not common, within the HE community.

My kids have disappointments all the time, if they lose a game or a race with friends or if they're not as good at something as they want to be, or if art they make doesn't come out as they wanted it to and so on...

OP I hope you don’t mind me jumping in here. I’m a home educator too (although I find unschooling is working for my DC as they’re getting towards their tween and teen years).
In response to the building resilience questions popping up, I think it’s naive to assume that school is the ONLY arena in a child’s life where challenges arise. You have to remember that children who don’t go to school are not sat at the kitchen table 5 days a week. Most home educating families I know are out and about doing a wide variety of different things most days. I know for my DC they are still finding themselves in challenging situations whether it be at a home ed group, at a scout group, at swimming lessons, at a friend’s house, at a family occasion etc. We still have to navigate tricky situations and do the emotional regulation/education stuff. They still find themselves in situations where they are disappointed at not winning a competition or not coming in the winning team or at having a dispute with a friend or acquaintance.

I am not only available during after 7pm.

But actually I'm not really sure how relevant this is to home ed, unless your argument is that home educated children won't be equipped for a job where they can't WFH.

In terms of the parent's circumstances, it's irrelevant really. If the parent's jobs are not set up for flexible and remote work they can't home educate without giving up work so it is neither here nor there really.

Surely that is part of just living life though? You don't need to replicate or engineer negative experiences.
Children live in families and communities, they have siblings and friends, neighbour children, they do clubs and hobbies. They lose board games or football or auditions, they don't get the present they want for Christmas, the cat gets run over etc etc.

Perhaps they were dismayed because your particularly bigoted college has decided to persecute home educating families and their children for reasons unknown?

You don't sound like an effective educator though, nor do you sound concerned about it. For that reason alone I think any disappointed parent (if they ever existed) is probably unaware that they've dodged a bullet.

good, very pleased you are doing careful research.

I am writing from the point of view of annually dealing with distraught home educated children and parents who thought they could walk into an A level course but can't, because they have not researched the entry requirements, and are heartbroken because they have missed the opportunity they had all their hopes pinned on. Sometimes it is redeemable, for example doing a level 2 course first, then moving on to level 3. Sometimes it is not redeemable.

And of course, we have the ones that have so little self control and self discipline and social awareness that they are accepted at first but then asked to leave, or cant settle and make friends and take themselves out.

And then of course we have the ones who are fantastic students who come prepared, and do amazingly well.