Attitudes towards home education

[JudgedAgain]

In the last week I’ve had 3 comments about my dd ! In the past we’ve had comments too and I think maybe people don’t understand a lot about it ?

We don’t follow school hours - dd does 2-3 hours learning each day of core subjects and the rest of the time she decides what she does.
We are flexible in that she can switch days round and work on weekends to have ‘time off’ during the week. Last week she wanted to go shopping so we did this - we had 3 comments when out about why she wasn’t at school , one from a taxi driver and 2 from random people one of which said I’d should be careful as we ‘could be reported ‘ 🤦‍♀️ it’s not a legal requirement to follow school hours !!
We had gone on a weekday early as dd has many health issues and ASD so we like to go out when it’s as quiet as possible for her .

In the past I’ve had comments basically saying home education is an inferior option , that we ‘gave up’ that dd isn’t socialising enough (she doesn’t want to !) and how I should be following school hours as she’s not doing enough but if you factor in break times and moving between classes, assembles etc the core learning hours are very similar.

It’s just frustrating to feel judged and like I shouldn’t be out 9-3 with dd people think she should be in a classroom or at home at a desk working I think.

I should also say that we home educated my dd part time from 3 to 5 on a specialist home programme. It did involve working when she wasn't keen. It involved doing stuff that was hard for her. It was v successful and she achieved more than she could have achieved in school or nursery. I had loads of evidence and photographs. I invited the LA Ed psych to attend our house! If you are doing a good job you should be happy to show this. If you are not then yes people will be defensive and unwilling to show the work or lack of it. I have also read about unschooling. It is letting kids down.

When I homeschooled mine we did an hour of literacy based, an hour of maths (bizarrely had to limit it to an hour because dd1 would have only done maths) then each week we worked on a different project, one week it would be for instance plants, the next a country, the next volcanos etc etc. at the end of the week they would present their project to their dad as a PowerPoint (teaching confidence, presentation skills, ict etc ). They had individual music lessons and went to orchestra plus sang as choristers

There seem to be 2 premises to anti - home schooling attitudes.

1. Children receive a superior education in school.
2. Children are safe in school.

For some children, mine are 2 of them, those premises are false. For a lot of children with SEN, especially neurodivergent children, these premises are false.

If children are not safe and their needs are not being met they simply cannot learn. There are swathes of children with additional needs in home education and this is not a coincidence.

I said upthread that I find it fairly laughable that LAs claim to be concerned about the welfare of the child because, as a point of fact, if the LA were concerned about the welfare of the child IN SCHOOL there would be far less parents of children with SEN who either deregister to keep their children safe or whose children learn at home (like mine) with an Alternative Provision, which the LA fight tooth and nail to avoid putting in place.

Schools need to do better with children who learn differently. SATS are horrendous for children with dyslexia, they are literally set up to fail at age 10/11. Mainstream secondaries are hellish for most autistic children with co-morbid sensory processing difficulties. These children don't learn in the wrong environment, you don't teach them resilience to force them to put their bum on a seat and suffer.

It is hard work home educating, even with a bit of funding when the LA recognise it is an AP because schools don't work. But it can be done. My eldest gained better GCSEs that he would have done in school which was making him want to kill himself. He's now in an academically 6th form doing A-levels, working really hard but again, finding the environment a challenge.

The stories of home educating successes don't tend to be celebrated, there are many children who go to university before their chronological age because they haven't been held back by the rigidity of school.

Equally the reasons FOR homeschooling and the ways to reduce numbers are not adequately considered, which would imo be better interventions for SEN and more specialist settings for academically capable kids who struggle in mainstream secondary.

I work with children with SEN in a mainstream secondary and I honestly think school isn't always the best place for every child.

If my dcs are ever seriously struggling with secondary, I wouldn't hesitate to let them learn remotely from home.

In my school, the policy is that all students have to do a language GCSE, and usually do a minimum of eight GCSEs. Really, some students struggle to cope with this and should be allowed to focus on subjects they genuinely need for their chosen career path. Some students can agree to drop subjects at GCSE but it takes some negotiation and only the most obviously struggling students manage to get that.

It simply doesn't suit every child to be part of mainstream school. There are alternative schools, but they aren't always the right fit either. I have no problem with home education and think it's probably the best fit for a lot of children. Remote learning is easier these days too.

Quick question re homeschooling. Do you ever get time to yourself during the day? I think that would be one of the main things that would put me off. But I can totally see the advantage of homeschooling and it sounds like you're doing a great job.

In my school, the policy is that all students have to do a language GCSE, and usually do a minimum of eight GCSEs. Really, some students struggle to cope with this and should be allowed to focus on subjects they genuinely need for their chosen career path. Some students can agree to drop subjects at GCSE but it takes some negotiation and only the most obviously struggling students manage to get that.

It's the same in my daughters school. She doesn't have an aptitude for languages at al and whilst she got 6, 7 and 8s in all her GCSEs.

She also has a 3 in a language, had to be allowed to do part of it in a room on her own because she was so distressed and cried before every assesent and exam because its important that the students focus on a language.

Her dad tried relentlessly for her to be allowed to drop it but the school wouldn't allow it.

In the end, we told her to just forget about it. It wasn't important to her or what she wants to do in the future but she was. We actually told her not to sit the exams but the school had scared her so much she felt she didn't have a choice.

There seem to be 2 premises to anti - home schooling attitudes.

1. Children receive a superior education in school.
2. Children are safe in school.

Yes and that is the problem.

Children are safe in school. Really?
I was bullied for 10 years, 30 years on it still affects me on a daily basis. And I can see no evidence of improvement in the local school here. If anything, it is worse as schools have narrowed the definition of bullying so much, so they don't have to record most incidents.

Plus peer on peer sexual abuse, isolation as punishment, detentions which mean children have no safe way to get home, or have to miss medical appointments. Spending the day in the care of "strangers" who the family do not know, or know whether they are 'safe' adults. Plus the general rough and tumble of school.
Piloting 'resilience' as a virtue, instead of care from adults.

Children receive a "superior" education in school. Really? They seem to be being taught to pass exams, rather than being given a wide education on many subjects. They seem to be drip-fed information to regurgitate in an exam. And many kids stll don't manage to pass these exams.

They are not introduced to the whole wide world of literature., culture, and thought (or even the whole-wide white British world of literature, culture and thought) my kids primary only had Roald Dahl books for KS1 class reading for example. Literally no other authors.

How can they learn about the world when stuckn in a room all day with the same 30 people. (Also I live in rural white england, diversity isn't found in school, my home Ed kids get to mix with pagans, wiccans, traditional Catholics and evangelical Christians as well as atheists at their home Ed groups. Also because we have time to be involved in other things, they involved in country wide groups, where they have to get used to being in a minority as a white person. They didn't get that at school!)

I could go on, but this is too long already.

That's very annoying @OldChinaJug . I have only seen children who already get extra help from the SEN unit be allowed to drop their language. It is one of those subject areas where some people just have a natural aptitude for it or not. I don't understand why everyone is supposed to do it. It's actually really niche... and I say that as someone with a degree in languages.

I think because other countries learn English so well it seems we should be able to.do the same, but children in non-english speaking countries are exposed to English from ab early age. It's too late by secondary age to say you must learn French or whatever. Most primaries only offer one language or sometimes none. And there us no say when you get to secondary over which language you will learn. There isn't in my school at least. So a child could work hard at Spanish all through primary and then suddenly need to learn German.

Apologies for derail!

The problem is that if you give the power to an LA and the LA become overloaded with caseloads then the easiest way to discharge their duty is to do compulsory school orders. This is why they don't want all the observation, because they don't trust the LA to not just do the easiest thing.

I totally see their point.

At the same time you need observation because of what people have said above, some will abuse their children.

There's no way to know what the bigger problem is now nor what it will be in the future.

I home educated from Reception to Year 2, now she's in school and loving it. I would 100% do home ed again if school did not work but for now we do basically both, school gives her the basics and I build on it at home.

It can really depend on your home ed officer and how they feel about school, and their case load, and their KPIs. It can be luck of the draw.

If you use Education Otherwise to form a report it's really easy to do and you can just send the to the LA and decline work samples or visits.

I hear you, OP. I took DC out for lunch after a hospital appointment (no time to go back to school) and we got a couple of comments about why they weren't at school!

I'd love to home educate. DCs were home with me until age 4, then home school during lockdowns was fab for us. It all went to pot when they went back to school - behavioural problems, exhaustion, constant illness. I would home school if it wasn't for the fear of other people's reactions and concern about being labled a concern by social services! We live for the holidays!

My experience with the EHE community has been very negative. My child is autistic and struggles in school when they forget to make the adjustments they legally should. The HE parents on the SEN pages I'm on have crucified me for sending her to school. I've been called a child abuser for sending her to school. Home educating is a 'privilege' not all can do - I simply can't afford to give up work without it being catastrophic for the needs of our family and I'd be letting my children down too.
HE is not accessible to everyone. I've found the HEs I'm in contact with to be agressive, lazy and clueless and judgemental. More so that those who judge home educators!
Some of you sound great though!

I'd love to home educate. DCs were home with me until age 4, then home school during lockdowns was fab for us. It all went to pot when they went back to school - behavioural problems, exhaustion, constant illness. I would home school if it wasn't for the fear of other people's reactions and concern about being labled a concern by social services! We live for the holidays!

My home ed kids hated the disruption, limitation and sudden isolation of lockdown. They soon came to hate zoom lessons and only seeing their friends online.
It was only well into lockdown that the govt remembered our kids existed and made provision for them, then the winter one came along. The only time ever we felt like we might be under suspicion was for getting them back together!

For what it's worth, we've never felt under suspicion at other times, sometime felt people didn't understand but I came to realise thats totally ok. Lots of people are genuinely interested too.

A PP makes a good point about LAs being overloaded. I think monitoring of home education is a bit like breastfeeding. So many families are failed by the message that breast is best, while the actual support or understanding of individual circumstances is not there.

The good la's will have worked out how to provide a tiny amount of understanding and support - on a shoestring as there's no budget. There is a stick though that comes along with a budget.
Most organisations in all walks of life seem to forget that people outside of them don't know their motives or how they work. People don't know what they don't know.
Having a letter from a faceless organisation, often from a group, not even an individual can feel intimidating. They need to understand this and be able to explain the simple things that are just run of the mill to them. More transparency would help a lot.

Buzzinwithbez
I honestly think that a lot of EHE LA teams could help themselves by being truthful about their remit and respectful of parents.

For example the EHE guidance for parents from the government states:
5.11 Local authorities have a general duty to make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children (section 175 of the Education Act 2002) in relation to their education functions as a local authority. This applies equally to children who are being educated at home, as it does to children attending school. This duty does not entitle a local authority to insist on visiting a child’s home, or seeing the child, simply for the purposes of monitoring the provision of home education.
5.12 As outlined in the sections below, the local authority may decide that circumstances justify applying to a court for an education supervision order or even a care order made under the Children Act 1989. Both of these give the local authority the right to contact with a child. In order to obtain information in preparation for an application for either type of order the local authority may initiate an investigation under s.47 of the Children Act 1989 if it has reasonable cause to suspect a child is suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm. If this does not yield the information needed, the local authority may ask a court to grant an order under s.43 of the 1989 Act for a child assessment to be made to
gather further information in order to determine if the significant harm threshold is met.
5.13 Your local authority’s published policy on elective home education may explain the circumstances in which the authority may decide that use of the Children Act powers is justified. The Secretary of State has no power to intervene in relation to unjustified use of these powers. In any event, parents should not be using home education as a way of preventing proper oversight of children

(my bold)

Yet there's lots of parents who are repeatedly told otherwise by staff from the EHE team. Families get doorstepped and then have email/letters that are deliberately written in a back-covering way that suggests that family have done something wrong by not being present for an unannounced visitor. Unless the LA has reasonable reason

It doesn't cost extra money to be truthful and professional.

Great thread OP.

I home ed my autistic 10 year old. Like you we do formal work for a few hours in the morning and then whatever he likes in the afternoon.
For example, on Friday we did some maths and handwriting practice (my choice) and then watched history documentaries, drew maps and played scrabble (his choice).
He also goes to art, philosophy, history and drama classes.

I agree with pp's who have pointed out that individualised one to one tuition is more efficient and that you can cover more in less time. OP's schedule seems pretty rigorous to me.

As a home edder, I also have concerns about the culture of the community, especially online. I know of the facebook group mentioned above, where you can post what your child is doing and people will suggest what they might be "learning". If you posted a picture of your kid playing Tetris they would tell you to describe it as a maths lesson in tessellation!

In general I'm quite sceptical about "unschooling" approaches. I think to do it well you would need to be incredibly tuned into your kid and have the kind of relationship where you tend to bond over intellectual collaboration. You probably wouldn't need strangers on the internet to guess at what your child was "learning."

A lot of people seem to think "unschooling" means leaving your child to their own devises and expecting them to figure out what they need to know by themselves. And, sadly, some of the online culture encourages parents in that misconception.

I also believe that home ed is under regulated and that a register would be a good idea. Home educated children have been abused and sadly even killed. Sometimes by parents who were very involved and respected within the home ed community.

Heres a link to a very sad case for people who think it never happens: homeeducationheretic.blogspot.com/2012/06/more-about-why-some-local-authorities.html

Child abuse are everywhere and safeguarding is for everyone.

If anyone is interested in how dynamics within the home ed community played out last time there was an attempt to regulate it (The Badman Report circa 2009) I'd recommend the blog I linked to above: Home Education Heretic by Simon Webb.
I devoured it when I first started home educating and it explained a lot

It depends on your kids' ages and personalities, as well as what opportunities there are to send them off to other people.

I did find that hard until my eldest was 6 or 7. They were super sociable, never stopped talking, and never played alone, whereas I'm an introvert who needs some solitude and peace! But I think my kid would have found school especially unpleasant at that age, as they loved to move around and play and sing and talk, so they wouldn't have sat quietly and happily listening or working. So we muddled through.

For a few years I worked very part-time from home while my child went to childminders who also home educated and had four kids. That was brilliant for both of us. My DC got to play and go to home ed activities, and was able to see how another family lived. I took my child to loads of activities - most weren't drop-off and were only for an hour or so at a time, but I could sit at the side enjoying a book or zoning out. We also did all-day playdates quite often: sometimes I dropped my child off at a friend's house, and even having the friend come to us was still quite good because they'd be off playing together and leaving me in peace! Or I'd borrow one or two kids to take them all to the park. The elderly ladies next door often invited my little one for solo visits, because they didn't get to see their own grandchildren as much as they would have liked.

My eldest did eventually accept the idea that mum needs some alone time and that meeting my needs was part of the deal. We live in a busy town, so they could also get out and do things under their own steam: seeing friends, running errands, going to the library or swimming pool. On the other hand, my younger one was always content to play alone for long stretches, didn't talk much, and never presented the same challenges in that respect.

Because my eldest had such a very strong social drive, my main focus in home educating them was to meet their social needs. The academic side took care of itself. (I'm one of those "neglectful" home ed parents much maligned on this thread who lets their children learn whatever, however, and whenever they want to learn. DC1 is now 23 and is top of their class at university. DC2 is 16 and has very low academic attainment, but I think she is also doing brilliantly. She's happy and confident and is learning what she needs to know for the life ahead of her.)

This was the bonus for me in putting my child into school. She went into Year 2 and I loved home educating her, taking her on days out, museums, doing work with her for a couple of hours, going for lunch and learning all the time.

She's ahead of her peers in reading and spellings and brings home work we did last year, which is great.

But I did not want to give up work, I work from home but it was becoming a toss up between working and educating her and if I was to carry on HEing and working I would have had to neglect her. I could have given up work and done HE full-time but I don't want to. I earn a nice amount for my work and enjoy it and that's life's gold dust.

So I put her in school and because I get all my work done while she's in school I can still do the same amount of structured home ed as before.

But I'm finding the time at home alone to be so blissful. She began needing constant input, she's very clever, and I do like time to myself.

So in short I think HEing becomes a more than full-time job and you have to be willing to do that, which is great if you are, but it became too much for me. I could no longer give her what she deserved, but the two years we did it were brilliant but I like working more and having more free time alone now for sure.

Actually you do and that is quite appropriately the legal position. Unless there is a specific cause for concern (in which case of course you don't assume) you have no starting position of suspicion. Home Ed guidelines for you state that home ed children are no different - it is not in itself a reason for suspicion. I'm afraid you are making a great case for why parents would not want you in their homes.

unlimiteddilutingjuice
Like you, I'd also be in favour of a register so that authorities know where each child is and how they're educated.

I also think, perhaps cynically, that cash strapped councils try to go for low hanging fruit, regardless of whether there is an issue or not. I think the same about schools and attendance procedures as well. It's easier to try and intimidate the nice family who are doing their best, where there's no real concerns than it is to deal with the ever growing list of complex cases.

I'd also be concerned that some LAs would use a register as an excuse to start dictating how parents educate and what their curriculum looks like. Just looking in schools at the level of control that's being grabbed from teachers and schools should have home educators concerned. I don't think the concerns my home educating friends have are unreasonable. Given some LAs have form for overstepping any register should also come with very explicit lines of responsibility and those LAs who overstep should be reportable to a higher ombudsman.

The problem clearly demonstrated on this thread is that LEAs don't know if they're safeguarding (no parent is happy to be flagged up for SS without a reason) or education standards. They know nothing about home ed and pretend they can assess work when home ed children learn differently and at different speeds. As another teacher upthread has pointed out, a sample of work tells her nothing about where a child is really at for a number of reasons. And often these LEAs have an acknowledged bias that the best place for children is in school and gather info with that agenda.

Added to that parents are often traumatized from watching their child's mental health being destroyed be unchecked bullying or from fighting with schools to provide an education remotely suitable for their child's special needs. They have gone from being their child's advocate to taking the weight of their welfare entirely on their own shoulders, often because they couldn't watch their child suffer any longer. Being pursued by suspicious, ill informed officials who offer to support (more often than not this is a link to the Twinkl website and nothing else) but take the first opportunity to try to persuade the child to state they'd rather be in school.