If you home educate, do you think parents those who send their children to school are misguided?

[mistyhills]

Just interested. We go to a weekly outdoor forest playgroup and it is run by someone who home educates so a lot of families who go are home educated. I always wonder if they think I’m a really bad parent for sending mine to school!

I follow a couple of home educators on Instagram and they go OTT about how their kids get to experience so much more than school kids (the one that made me laugh was someone saying how lucky their kids were having books about their hobbies because they’re home ed, because the rest of us don’t buy books).

I don’t think that it is that they’re judging us for sending our kids to school, I think they’re trying to stop people judging them for home educating.

Of course. Lots home educate by choice. I know a couple of families whose children have never been to school.

I’ve known a number of er of families who home educate out of choice for various reasons, it’s not always because kids can’t cope in school.

That’s probably fair - I don’t; I really admire them as I just couldn’t do it.

My youngest was home educated. His siblings went to school, both mainstream and special schools. So I definitely not against schools. He has SEN, but not enough warrant an EHCP, but enough to mean mainstream was overwhelming for him, plus didn't deliver the things that were promised in his IEP. Most of the home ed families I know had the same problem.

A few were rabid unschooling anti-schoolers. I tried to avoid them as I know school is fine for the majority. And as they go on about hibernating in the summer holidays because of the kids everywhere they must secretly think school is OK for the majority too, as they'd obviously hate it if everyone was home educated and everywhere all the time.