To ask what is your instinctive response to hearing a child is Home Educated?

[NickiFury]

I am really interested to hear general opinions from everyone and hoping for some from professionals such as teachers etc. I really want to know what people think because in the main in RL, the response is overwhelmingly negative. I've had people threaten to call SS on me because ds isn't in school, been told it's "weird" and seen this face a lot.

Now to me home education is a totally normal thing but I suspect this is only because we are immersed in this world and know lots of other HE families (you'd be surprised how many are out there).

What has made me think about this was a friend telling me today that people in our community know of me and ds without ever having met us because we are notorious as that woman who doesn't send her kid to school .

Btw I also have a child who does go to school and is doing well but no one seems to gossip about that.

So what would YOU think if you someone told you their child is home educated?

Thanks .

Yeah, I thought "the boys have long hair" and the families "eat loads of veg" were particularly damning - what fucking weirdos! And as for the cohabiting parents ... it shouldn't be allowed!

I would wonder whether it was for the kids or the parents. I have enormous respect for someone who homeschools a child because it's right for that child, less so for someone who wants to homeschool 'her' children IYSWIM

Yes we cohabit as well

We're also married but we cohabit. That's generally what nuclear families do, cohabit.

Ironically we no longer have an allotment, not directly as a result of HE but of the move that precipitated HE. That's one stereotype down the drain.

Do HE'ers mix with the same wide range of children they would mix with in state school, or do they mix with a small group of very similar (middle class?) families with the same ethos and values?

My gut reaction is cor blimey, that's a lot of work/ responsibility. If they are at school then at least you get a break and can blame the school if it goes tits up.
I find it hard enough to encourage/ bribe my daughter to do 5 mins piano, can't imagine that with every subject.
I think if my daughter was being bullied at school i would pull her out.. but not without trying every intervention.

"The problem is, it rather relies on good quality data collection, and the entire worry is that children are being home-educated to (successfully) avoid intervention."

How are they doing this exactly, Tilly?

Also (more stats!), home educated children more likely to be reported to social services (think just how many are automatically referred to social services on deregistering, for example!) But they are less likely to have concerns or action taken.

Happy to be corrected on that last paragraph as I'm not familiar with the exact wording, it's usually also mentioned on this type of thread.

My socially awkward son loved the allotment.

But that was while he was at school.

Also while he was at school, he once knitted his own woolly jumper

Fail.

"Do HE'ers mix with the same wide range of children they would mix with in state school, or do they mix with a small group of very similar (middle class?) families with the same ethos and values?"

Probably the latter, but we wouldn't use a state school as alternative anyway. Not that I have anything against state schools, I did attend one for a time, but was mostly privately educated.

I would think that they're brave - and rather them than me! And I'm curious about how they structure their learning and their day.

Personally, I don't wish to home educate. I am ashamed to admit in some ways I'm quite looking forward to both children being at school so I can have some time to myself again, do some more work and get the house and garden under control. I also think that they may do better with other people; for example, if I take DS swimming, he just messes about, whereas when he has a lesson he actually does swim a bit. I will try and help them and support their learning. And I wouldn't have the knowledge to teach all the subjects when they get older. I would also worry about social interaction - not that I think that Home Edders don't get any, but because I think the onus is more on the parent to organise and facilitate it, which I might not be very good at.

I haven't met that many home edders. My piano teacher was a former secondary school teacher who decided to home educate his daughter. I also know someone locally who is home educating her son (5) as she and her partner had bad experiences of being bullied at school; another used to flexi-school and is now fully home ed.

So fitting in with the middle class (and rather narrow) group?

How are they doing what? Collecting data accurately? I don't know if they are.

How would home-educated children slip through the net? Home-educated children do not necessarily have contact with non-related adults trained in safeguarding. I'm afraid that just as I know former home-educated children who are happy, and have achieved all their dreams, I know people who should be posting on the stately homes threads. I honestly believe some of the latter would got intervention if they'd gone to a state school.

It was my experience that every time my mother had a row with someone on the estate, they would threaten to report her to the police, but as it was, I don't think I had an encounter with a social worker until I was 15. The LEA did an inspection when I was 7, and then left it until I was 13.

What proportion of parents need to deregister their child, compared to those who had planned to home-educate from the beginning?

"Do HE'ers mix with the same wide range of children they would mix with in state school, or do they mix with a small group of very similar (middle class?) families with the same ethos and values?"

I think that's a really good point/question

Two things

1. My local state primary school isn't socially mixed. Its predominantly highly middle class families. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, pharmacists etc. The odd actor or musician or artist from welltodo for colour. The local secondary is even worse and has recently redrawn its catchment in a very interesting way (it literally goes round two housing estates to the nice middle class Victorian semis beyond . We are middle class, there's no way round it. If my kids were at those schools, they would be mixing with families very like us.

2. In contrast the HE groups are quite mixed. This is for a few reasons. First, they draw from a wider areas. Second, there is a really wide range of people who HE anyway. I know quite a few HErs who themselves had a poor experience at school - reflected in their own situation now- and want to make it better for their children-and those are the people who put a lot of work into it, who are probably doing the best job IMO. You get middle class hippies with kids called Otter (love that!) and Serafina and then you get kids who are HE'd because it was that or being expelled because of a fondness for aromatic cigarettes except their mum says the were being stifled in school. You get the "Euthanasia doesn't need GCSEs, she is planning to open an Etsy shop and live on nothing but her unschooling-derived wits, and our extensive family savings.", and then you get the bible maulers being handed an invitation to the wedding of the lovely two-mother family, and the people who get really offended when you call them Anarcho Libertarians because they are Libertarian Anarchists. And we all have to rub along because there's no choice. Anyone who thinks kids don't get to see difficult situations in HE circles should come to one, if just for a laugh.

It's astonishing given how great schools are at turning out well rounded adults, that almost every fucked up individual in the prison system has attended one, and most have emerged largely illiterate and with hopeless social skills.

And that almost every single femail writer, scientist, musician and mathematician prior to 1900 managed to achieve what they did without attending school.

Children who are well adjusted, well mannered and well socialised are so because of their home environment, not because of school.

Huge, huge numbers of children in the UK go through 5 years of language tuition in school and emerge at 16 completely unable to express anything other than commonplaces in a foreign language. I am absolutely convinced that I could do better with my dc's in two hours a week with a distance learning course.

Femail?

female

I'm afraid I haven't caught up with this thread. It is fascinating to see what others think of my life choices!! though I do not feel in the least threatened by what many of you seem to think. However, I get the impression some of you have a very narrow view of what HE families get up to.

Can I just say my 3rd son who was educated at home - his choice - from aged 12 ish has gone to uni to do a science degree. Just before he was 16 we approached the local FE college and they were happy to take him in!! He did an access course followed by Intermediates and Highers (Scotland), then an HNC in Applied Sciences. A passes. By then he knew he wanted to specialise in Science and he was quite young so the HNC was like the second year of A Levels or Scottish Advanced Highers. We discussed the options at every turn, he had the chance to do Highers at local school but he preferred college. He has fitted right in at uni. HE has been good for him.

As they get older, the fit in HE groups is less good, I find. As others say, lots of small people - Youngsters do tend to find peers in their local area. Events & clubs at local sports centre, library/ies, art classes, music events. It's all out there for the picking. Other HE teens they might click with could live miles away, and just because they are H Ed doesn't mean they like the same things.

"I suppose there has been data comparing results for HE children and non HE children. But you'd have to make sure the groups were comparable so you are comparing like with like."

There's actually not much data, no, or at least not rigorous data.

As a scientist, the data I've seen trotted out by both side regarding HE mainly really offends me. The studies just haven't been done and we are arguing without data really.

Do HE'ers mix with the same wide range of children they would mix with in state school, or do they mix with a small group of very similar (middle class?) families with the same ethos and values?

My boys mixed with a more diverse range of people from all backgrounds when we were home educated, they now attend schools with pretty 'middle class' catchment.

We do fit some stereotypes ie dp and I am not married, my boys have had long hair, ds1 still does its right down his back. I bfed for years, they eat lots of veg. Dp works with children's services... I don't see any of that as negative.

Home educating worked well for my boys, circumstances meant we had to stop and thankfully we ffound schools we like, though ds1 had to change high schools.

My boys thrived with home ed and they are doing brilliantly at school, had no problems getting used to school. At the moment we are happy with school, if we are not in the future then I would home educate again if I felt it would be better for my children.

There are pros and cons to both.

What I am amazed by as I said earlier on this thread is that home ed parents get a slating yet masses of children are being failed by the education system yet people seem to blindly just go along with it. I would imagine there are many more kids being failed by the education system than there are by home ed.

I don't think I misjudged at all ppplease I really thought about it before I posted and wanted honest gut reactions, which I definitely got. Should we not ask questions in case we don't like the answers?

One thing I have noticed though is the entrenched hostility towards HE and no matter how much you explain your beliefs or opinions on it there's a real sense with those who are against it, that "right is on their side", that it's just WRONG to have kids out of school full stop!

I have to say though it hadn't changed my mind but one poster has certainly made me think about HOW I do it. I can't remember her name but the one whose mother would say "oooh let's look in the encyclopaedia!" and go on and on and on about it till she was desperate to get away. I SO don't want my dc to feel like that. I am more of the go and google it and then ask me questions if you need to know anything else and they usually do, so maybe I am doing something right . We tend to work in ten or 20 minute blocks too so he doesn't feel so overwhelmed (vital with ASD).

I've thought of little else but this thread over the past day and I admit it has made me wobbly, the sheer force of negativity. But then I remember no one was educating my kid AT ALL until I stepped in, he reads fluently but his hand writing is dreadful! He's probably year 3-4 maths level even though he's 11 - year 6, but that doesn't matter because we are catching up all the time and we don't have to meet the targets schools do. I can honestly say that in most other subjects he would be on a level with or just below his peers and we did ALL this because it certainly wasn't happening when I was picking him up from school after forty minutes in full meltdown most days and when I DID pick him up after a peaceful day he was usually parked in the corner watching You Tube. So we will continue to take it one day at a time and hope for the best because we don't have much choice to do otherwise.

"sigyn

And your DCs names? Do they fit the stereotype?"

lol, no, my kids have top 20 names as it happens.

I'm personally not of the opinion that you should show off your creativity when naming another person for life.

However I might change my own (top 20 from the 70s name) to Otter, that's a great name.

Gut feeling - reminds me of the good time DS and I had HEing - followed by happiness that through it he became able to rejoin the school system and has absolutely thrived in it ever since. And through it I found that, actually, I like teaching. So I found a career there, too.

What are home ed type names?!!