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 .

Er, lovely rosy picture there, but my mother used to read it. (And the Guardian, Daily Express, and the Mirror.) They sent her vouchers. She probably still would read the DM but she doesn't like the disability-bashing. She buys the Morning Star now, but the amount of times I've caught her reading the DM in shops, you wouldn't believe. Believes every word, except the stuff about benefit claimants.

And she was a member of HEAS and Education Otherwise.

Extract from a Home education article from 2008. Don't worry it's the Guardian

"The Brookes parents, from Gloucestershire, have also home-educated their three children: Joe, 18, Freya, 16, and Lindsey, 13. Joe is about to study for a diploma in interactive games design at college and Freya starts her A-levels at college in September. Their parents, Fiona and Peter, earn enough as foster parents to stay at home to educate them."

I'd be interested. We live in the middle of an area where any school that is even halfway decent, is massively oversubscribed. I also have one DC in a year of extremely high birthrate. So just a little screwed where school is concerned! We will see what happens, but I have taught to Y6 and tutored to GCSE level, so if we cannot get a reasonable school place we will Home Ed. I would prefer school for lots of reasons, and would stay on waiting lists etc.

Shit, I nearly added a disclaimer to say that of course, I do know HEors who read the DM. And the Sun. But I figured everyone would see that that was a joke, given the grin and the daftness of the statement!

It's not a joke, if it's what you think underneath.

There are jokes, and there are serious opinions dressed up as jokes, so that the speaker can say "it was only a joke, lighten up" afterwards.

I missed out on various subjects as a result of HE, but that kind of thing wasn't one of them.

I've just asked the person I know who fosters and home educates their fostered child. They were approved long before the child was school age, apparently, and think that might have something to do with it. It may also vary depending on LA.

Wtf Tilly? I was adding a HE stereotype to the long list of HE stereotypes already on this thread. There was no malice involved, but I'm not really sure I understand your complaint about what I might really think underneath.

I just want to be very clear about something. If you are presently home-educating a child, I was reading issues of EO's magazine-thingy-majig before that child was born. I have been member of HE clubs both as the child of a member, and as an adult on my own behalf, as someone planning to HE my children one day.

I know the little in-the-club, self-praising things.

I like education. I am fine with home- education. I don't particularly care where it happens. Knowledge about the world is fulfilling. If I live to 95, I will never have enough time to understand all the things worth knowing.

And I know HE from the inside.

Atia was only joking about the Daily Mail!

Hundreds of children just disappear from care settings every year and no one knows where they are (that was published last week, sorry can't be bothered to search, it's quite easy to find).

Despite the arsey tone of your post, I did google it and the DM article was the first hit. Sorry if taking your advice resulted in your arguments being undermined, but that's what happens when you don't reference your claim yourself.

channel 4 that's where I saw it Rhonda. Excellent use of the DM in order to undermine a valid point though.

What was your valid point again, OP?

I wasn't one bit arsey. I felt you were so didn't particularly feel like engaging with you, I still don't tbh because that is not what I wanted from this thread but somehow seem to have been sucked in .

I've got loads out of this thread actually, mostly that I have decided to follow a more structured approach for ds now, because while it might feel like we have got all the time in the world, we really don't and with his ASD and HE being viewed so negatively he is totally on the backfoot.

Tbh I would LOVE to send him back to school but I can't so I just have to make the best of it and accept how we will be judged not to mention feeling terrified that I am failing him every single day

magical As previously stated, I see the subtext. Years of hearing/reading self-aggrandizing comments from one HEer to another, does that for your radar.

TillyTellTale

I'm not sure that "brilliant" HEers turn into "sort of" HEers by outsourcing the actual teaching to an internet based secondary school. Mainly because despite the echo chamber, I was finding it harder and harder to deny to myself that I was providing a sub-optimal education for him. Officially, legally, I am an HEer. We still HE a couple of subjects not on the National Curriculum. I still have to make the same massive efforts to maintain his social inclusion in his peer group rather than let school do it for me. But is "sort of" an HEer really an HEer at all ? I think I might be a sort of, kind of, ex-ish HEer

And I know what you mean re I know the little in-the-club, self-praising things.

Fair enough, OP. I get drawn into these threads because I get fed up with people slagging off schools and school systems, when what they don't seem to realise is that most teachers would give their eye teeth for more flexibility to decide how and what to teach (mostly the older teachers, tbh).

And in my very inclusive school, we work very hard indeed to support children with additional needs, so when I see a general slagging-off of teachers with respect to children with SEN, I feel compelled to respond.

I have no beef with home education and in your situation I would have done the same.

Mammuzza The most essential thing in the world is to know and accept your limits. It applies to DIY (like those DIY SOS programmes where a house needs complete renovation because the couple had a go themselves, and turned a series of £350 jobs into a £45,000 job, after knocking down supporting walls, and drilling through pipes) and it applies to education.

If you're capable of looking at your own limits, and bringing in outside support to deal with them, you go on my "brilliant" list. Soz!

It would be interesting to know if the Brookes family from Gloucestershire were HEing the foster children. I can see it was an ideal arrangement for them,but wonder if the foster children didn't feel they were just a means to an end.

I think there is a bit of what came first ?chicken or egg with home ed really. If your Dc is a bit quirky/aspie/ unusual then they are less likely to thrive in a mainstream school ergo if you have the resources then they are more Likely to be home educated. Hence perpetuating the image.

OTH there are some bone idle parents who deregister their dcs so they don't have to get them to school in the morning and/or to stop social services poking around.

Kim, it's probably hard for teachers because they don't know children as well as their parents.

Yesterday, my son's reception teacher photographed some simple addition sums and wrote that he "made these number sentences all by himself!" She was obviously impressed, and doesn't know that he habitually writes sums much harder than this at the breakfast table just for fun - and she is a particularly lovely and talented teacher.

She was obviously impressed, and doesn't know that he habitually writes sums much harder than this at the breakfast table just for fun

She couldn't possibly know this unless either (1) you told her or (2) she lives with you

The most essential thing in the world is to know and accept your limits

And that is why I think the Echo Chamber is such a self defeating thing.

By and large the vast majority of HEers I have spoken to on line and off genuinely want the best for their kids. But ... how do you measure your best to see if it's good enough when the community yardstick is superglued in the "yay for for HE, tis GREAT!" postition ?

It is not a stretch to say that HEers as a group tend to lean away from critical self examination of their practices. Not when the only "cooked" examples (adults who were formerly home educated) that get paraded, interviewed, plonked on the conference stage, waggled at the prospective parents, listened to ... are the ones who did well, or only ever talk about the undisputed super dooperness of HE. Typically using exactly the same phrases/keywords/slanted perspectives I have heard endless parents use. In a rather parrot like fashion.

With a healthy dose of internal questioning of the Articles of Faith and a more critical examination of practices being permitted, I think you'd get happier and more effective HEers. Not least becuase it would be far easier for those who'd chosen wrong to work it out and try something different rather than be "supported" into believing they were doing a stand up job. Which as a secondary improvement might even go some way towards lessening knee jerk reactions about the practice from the gen pub.

I have Googled various things to see if foster parents can HE children they are fostering and can't find an answer. It is put forward a lot as a solution to being able to afford to HE your own children. Does anyone actually know the answer? I expect that if they could it is one case for having very close supervision from LA which leads me to think it doesn't happen much, if at all.

I think it is likely that they were the parents own childrens' names Delphinium. It didnt state otherwise, and foster carers have to be careful what is written in public about foster children.
Also they were average spaced age wise so again likely to be their own kids not fostered children.

In answer to the OPs original question, my instinctive response when I hear someone is HEing their child is that they are a probably veggie, organic, fond of lentils, leftie, and liberal. I have no idea why I think that as it is obviously ridiculous.

If I thought about it a little more, I'd assume the parents had little faith in the school system, and probably had good reasons for that personal view.

It's a massive task, and I have great respect for those who choose to HE.

My instinctive response is : I wish I was clever enough to teach my DD instead of public school.

I also have a lot of respect for those who do home ed.