Why does home schooling appeal ?

[SeptemberFlowers]

I myself would be far to scared to do it with my dc's as I'd be needing to reach for the most weekends of having to teach them curricular that I was shit at at school.

Why does it appeal to so many people ? There are a few children in the next village (live in a rural location) who are HE but only because their mother doesn't trust other adults with her children. I know this an extreme case but the only one I know personally.

How would you know your child is learning all the correct syllabus for different subjects ?

Teacher - no can't find any comparable Data - suspect it was difficult to filter for part schooled / complete HE ?

Thanks Tamer and ilovesooty.
I will get onto it now, or soon.

And with some communities the HEing of girls consists of their having to look after their siblings and help keep house. I know someone who has lived in the UK all her life and speaks frighteningly poor English. She was removed from school and effectively her education ended. Now she feels cut off from society and even her own dcs.

Gypsy / Roma / Traveller - and lainie's description of "the HEing of girls consists of their having to look after their siblings and help keep house" is scarily accurate.

Individuals can inform local authorities of concerns of lack of education, just as they can social service for abuse or neglect.

Teacher - I agree re the education of girls within certain communities but I think calling this cultural custom Home Education is not very helpful as such.

Every home schooled child I met was a bit twitchy and not very well rounded. Why oh why would anyone want to deprive their child of the experience of school, setting them at a clear disadvantage for the rest of their lives. You can educate your own child the rest of the time i anything you like but why not let experts teach your kids. Plus, why would anyone want to spend every waking minute with their kids? One mum I know who home schools her child convinces herself that hse provides for him a proper education and she doesn't, she so clearly doesn't. She thinks that taking him around the market and paying for bits is maths, yep right! He can do that any time. He's naughty and under stimulated and the mum is over protective.

I suppose the interesting question would be how outcomes differ from schooled girls from those communities, teacherwith2kids.

To a certain extent I feel round here HE is kind of the equivalent of 'turning to private education in despair' which plenty of affluent urban parents obviously do. And I guess there are many of the same disadvantages - the dc tend to move in social circles with 'people like us' to a large extent, don't get the life experience of a mixed comprehensive school etc.

The flip side being if you have a not-quite-SN-enough-to-trigger-help child (not me, but a friend also considering HE) you may feel your dc is getting rather too much life experience for his own good in such circs.

I wonder how many HE dc you have known, appletarts? Because I wouldn't say that was true of the HE'd adults I know. (Made me giggle a wee bit when I found out my lovely but very Mr Average n-d-n with a tech-y job was a HE & Steiner grad - he definitely doesn't fit the stereotypes!)

lainie

this has been the case with some travelling communities and has always existed. It was mainly to stop the females gainig anything more than a basic education. they weren't given opportunities because it was inacceptable for them to work.
It isn't really indicative of the majority of H.ed families.

appletarts How many HE kids have you drawn your conclusions from ?

Empirical evidence constantly shows that HE kids have better outcomes socially and educationally than their peers - so my question would be WHY would you want to send your kids to a place where they will under achieve :)

Also perhaps if you spent more quality time with your kids you might like them more and be able to stand their company ?

appletarts do you not think that there are children out there who are clearly disadvantaged by attending school then?

How about my ds with autism, who was informally excluded from his mainstream primary far more than he was ever in and spent his time there either on headphones watching YouTube in the corner of the classroom, being chased around by teachers who quite rightly should have been spending there time actually teaching or being restrained by sometimes up to three adults at a time and ending up covered in bruises and abrasions.

Personally I think your post to be a judgemental and ignorant load of tripe to be quite honest. You have posted your opinion strenuously but clearly know very little about situations where school simply won't work. There's some good links and information on this thread to get you started.

Their NOT there

Morethan, I know that you and I have discussed this before - the point is that even if it is not really 'Home education', it is enabled through the same legislation that allows HE.

So to say 'HE is only to be called HE if it is good, and if bad it isn't HE' is rather missing the point. The [non]-education of girls, under the legal protection of the right to HE, has bad educational outcomes for those children, and that is as worthy of being mentioned as is the spectacular success of HE for some other children IYSWIM.

I've yet to meet anyone who is actually well rounded and every person I know who was school educated complains of issues in teachers not knowing their subjects, subjects being taught in a way that nothing was learned or massive holes in it (maths, RE, and languages being the top complaints), issues with sudden changes to the system that caused them problems personally, and disliking the 'experience' in general. Seriously, it took my partner's school an entire year to figure out one of the teachers was teaching the wrong year of the curriculum. Living in an area where less than half in schools will get the standard 5, the disadvantage isn't actually there. And home educating doesn't mean being around them 24/7.

appletarts

I am interested in how/why you consider an alternative way of learning as disadvantaging children.
In what way are they disadvantaged.
My own experience has found may advantages and if this ceased to be the case we would re register.

Teacher using that guideline - how about all the girls who disappear from the educational system into forced marriages and have FGM who are in the school system, or the teachers that abuse children ?

School of itself does not guarantee a good outcome neither does HE -you need to look at cultural/social change for these issues not lump it in with genuine elective HE. School sytems and legislations has its own issues

teacherwith2 - it doesn't have legal protection under the right to HE, there simply isn't the manpower now to manage the kids who are registered never mind those who aren't (mine are, there were over two years between visits). Missing education is illegal, even if registered to home education.

If individuals were as happy to inform the LA about concerns of education as they are to social services [and in my area there are large posters about doing so], then maybe more action could be taken about these concerns. But a register and more powers to the LA won't work when the current measures aren't even being done.

Home education and missing education are two separate things, legally, and it would be better if LAs had more funding to actually work on the latter, not busy work on the former.

teacher

I realise this, of course I do.
I was born into this system and make no mistake it is a caste system.
Luckily, I didn't grow up with this, but i have relatives who did. It may be that it exists under the same banner as H.ed, but I refuse to see it as typical of most H.ed dc experience, nor as common place as I feel some comments intended.
As it is a small minority I don't think the discussion does warrant mentioning this as a disadvantage of H.ed as most people won't experience this either first hand nor from friends.

Takver, that is of course the interesting question - if those girls stayed in educationm, what would they achieve?

I can only speak of the other end - just before those girls left education, a number of them were at nationally expected levels for their ages, or in a couple of cases above. Some were below, some had SEN. Had the trajectory in their primary education been continued in seciondary, a proportion would have been expected to achieve average GCSEs. As it is, none of them did.

The Spork has it - registration is just' BUSYWORK for LEA's' - but then again many are better at busy work than real investigation of actual problems and abuse etc. many posters seam to favour the tick box approach as well - I personally think this is how SS and Education have become so endemically not fit for purpose.

Morethan in some Romanichal communities "it was inacceptable for them to work" might have been true, but from WW2 onwards, while a woman who doesn't have to work, is considered to be higher status, and her husband considered more succesful, in many, a woman who isn't able to work if needed, is considered a poor choice indeed and likely to have to marry down.

I would fully expect HEed children to have the same mix as schooled ones, those well ahead of their peers, those moderately ahead, the average, the slightly below average and the very much below average.
Some children can work their socks off and yet they just don't have the ability to get into a top university, some can be laid back and even down right lazy but natural ability will get them a place when it matters. There will be the late developers, in fact there will be all sorts.
Home education is just an educational choice, suiting some children and some parents and not suiting others. I would like to see it treated as such with LEAs giving it equal weighting and equal checking- the checking to be done by someone who is enthusiastic about HE.

"Bunbaker - if she can do functional maths what's the problem?"

Because that isn't enough to get her through GCSE maths. It is my understanding that having GCSE maths is a requirement for gaining a place at university. Her teacher has said she is A* material, she just needs to work at it.

Interesting point about children from low achieving families doing well with home education. Who educates them?

"Also perhaps if you spent more quality time with your kids you might like them more and be able to stand their company"

Not all children are school shaped and neither are do parents have the skills or inclination to home educate. DD and I would end up hating each other. I take my hat off to parents who successfully home educate, but it isn't for me.