to wonder why teachers are so sure school is better than home Ed for all children?

[IceBeing]

An acquaintance is thinking of removing her 5 yo from school as he has started self-harming due to anxiety about going.

The school seem to be all over themselves to tell the parent that there is no way home ed would be preferable to carrying on in school.

What makes schools so very certain on this point and what would it take for a school to admit a child might be better off being taught at home for a spell or even entirely?

Ha ha ha at schools being able to access support & agencies for a self harming child. Theoretically yes, but have you tried accessing CAMHS or a CDC recently? Those services are on their knees.

My 3 are all at school but I wouldn't hesitate to take any of them out if they were being made ill by school.

It's a long way back in the thread but when l said about neglect these were children who hadn't been taught to read. Not some who replied ' nothing" when l asked them what they learnt. l am very familiar from my own dc with that reply after a very busy day in school. The older child had boasted to me that she was finished learning at 15 and there was no plan for further study or training and no plan to get a job. There was no special needs involved. My own dd said she felt so sorry for our various friends children who were home educated when she though of all the fun she had in school every day. I think schools should be more supportive of a child been taught at home if school is becoming an impossible place for them. I'm just totally for the parents making their own decisions about the individual children and own capacity and desire to do it. There is a new movie out about a dad in New York who educated his gang of boys and kept them secluded from the world as didn't trust anyone. Haven't seen it but want to. That is the extreme end of the line.

Ice you say your from the NE?

In that case the child is 5 so has just started reception? So the child's been in school what 2 days at most? Or hasn't even started yet?

When did the child start school?

I couldn't possibly comment on the home ed Vs school and I have little knowledge of home ed.

However I can say when doing my degrees to become a social worker no longer in this field that home ed children were at higher risk of safeguarding issues. I found doing the job also that a few of my more serious cases some where home educated, but then so was some in private schooling.

Quite intreasting really (this way a good 10 year ago mind) would love to see the stats on this now.

Most teachers I've spoken to are often quite pro-he.
A good 1/3 of the home educators I know (100s) have a background in education and this increases when you consider those home ending from the start.

I have a lot of respect for teachers, I dropped out of a teaching degree, but a large part of their job is classroom management. I don't think I can do a better job than them. What I do is very different.

I've had one chose to go to school and he's slotted in fine top set for everything academic despite not following the national curriculum at home. It is the fact that I think the national curriculum is a disgrace that led to my decision to HE.
Locally most home educated children sit at least 5 GCSEs or fOCUSes. Those that don't often have reasons why this isn't the right path anxiety, autism and this would still be a factor probably a bigger one at school.
Home education isn't easy and Isn't right for everyone, just like schools there are the good and bad. Most people do it in response to school not working for their child and they have to contend with quite damaged children. It's all very well saying they should socialise but for many children who have been bullied they are terrified of groups of children. There is high prevalence of ADD in home ed community. Comparing home ed children to schooled children is hard. What it would be good to know (and what we never can) is has this child achieved the most they could have. After all that is what HE is about meeting individual needs.

Autocorrect made ASD into ADD

Some teachers can be very defensive and see a teaching qualification as some sort of Holy Grail that means they and only they have the right to educate a child.

Try to tell them that it doesn't necessarily mean as much as all that and feathers are ruffled very quickly indeed (hence the outcry over cover supervisors).

Home education, unless also administered by A Qualified Teacher, is therefore Bad!

I have done both with dd.

She was bullied or several years, the school were rubbish at dealing with it. In year four a boy grabbed her by her hair and restrained her so she couldn't go get an adult when he was calling her names in the lunch queue. We arranged another meeting, we had already decided if they couldn't give us a resolution we would home educate her. During the meeting the school wouldn't admit any billying was happening or had happened. So informed them I was removing her, her teacher then threatened that I would be fined if I kept her out of school. I gave her the de-registration letter and pointed out she was talking rubbish.

Dd was so effected she was hysterical about having to go to another school. So we did he. After a year she felt ready to go back and asked to. We found a school that was great and she hasn't looked back. The fort school nearly ruined mainstream education for her. But the new school has really shown her and us that all schools aren't the same.

We were inspected by the LA, which I was happy with. I believe if you HE your child you should be inspected to ensure your child is receiving a decent education.

We also joined the local HE group, the kids did lots together and parents helped other parents in bits they may be struggling with. I would do it again, but both kids are now happy in school.

I wish I knew how to quote on here!
There have been various little hints or downright accusations that Home Education is a safeguarding 'risk' - it is not but those hints stick in people's minds and then trotted out as a reason Home Ed is 'dodgy'

I also agree with the person that said if an adult had those same feelings about work they would be advised to change what they are doing.
I have Home Educated for 8yrs. Son now 19 and daughter 14. Worked really well for us and I see lots of other children it is working well for too. I also don't feel negativity with school being right for some children, it really is the best choice for SOME children - but not all!
Oh, and GCSEs completely doable at home. My daughter has just got a grade C in her GCSE maths :-)
Home Ed children do socialise in a different way, but just different, not wrong!
Teachers will be supportive of a school environment as they are part of that system

I'm a teacher, home ed is right for some children. School is right for some. There should be more choice of types of school / education for different types of children.

There can be safe guarding issues with some forms of education, there can also be things that are not in the child's best interest too. If a child receives an education in an environment of a certain ethos then they may not be exposed to other ideas, this is true of some faith schools as much as it is for home ed but with home ed it can be a total immersion in the parents, or even one parent's views.

Link to article in yesterday's independent. This is about a school attended by Hassidic Jewish boys, but the same kind of biased view can be found in some faith schools and home educators.

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/threeyearold-ultraorthodox-jewish-children-told-the-nonjews-are-evil-in-worksheet-produced-by-school-10481682.html

Having said all that home ed can be a wider education than any school.

In the end we should be offering children the best education available that suits them.

Funnily enough one UK home-ed student I know has two parents who work in education, one as a teacher. She was taken out of her secondary school when the school failed miserably to deal with bullying. All her siblings are in schools including one who has special needs for which his school isn't making adequate provision (school in special measures, but his "outstanding" primary school weren't much better). I mention this to show that the parents aren't anti-school, they have just been appallingly served by the local schools.

Another friend removed her daughter last year for similar reasons. Again, several siblings all in mainstream schooling.

Home-ed is not particularly "right" in either case, but it's better than the alternative, due to inadequate safeguarding at school.

Those Hasidic schools are on my professional radar. Some of the stuff that goes on there is eye watering and people would be absolutely horrified at what is happening in the name of education. It is especially difficult for men who need to flee the Hasiduc lifestyle and get jobs. Many intelligent men end up with no qualifications and are unable even to speak English. This is after a full education in English state funded schools! The expectation is that they only need to stay home to study the Torah and only the wives will work. So if their relationships break down and/or they want to leave the sect they lose their children and are largely unemployable as well. Refugees in their own country, with all the problems that entails, Great job, Hasidic schools. Surprisingly however Ofsted loves them. Somehow the normal rules don't apply to these bastions of racism and isolationism.

Unfortunately, many teachers and HT's are not good at identifying anxiety in a child and, therefore, equally hopeless in putting interventions in place to lower that anxiety. In their defence if you have thirty children in a classroom or 200 in the playground then it is easy to miss until the signs become extreme. Mind you even when ds2 started hiding under tables when it all got too much it was still put down to "attention-seeking"!

I also know that as a parent of two anxious children I myself get very anxious and we get into a totally vicious circle so I am sure I come across as a totally over-anxious parent. Thing is when every Sunday night your child becomes totally oppositional or is a different child in the Summer Holidays when the pressure of school is long in the distance it is not so difficult to make the connection between school and the anxiety.

Whether in the OP's case I would be HE would depend on whether the school were prepared to work with me. If they are refusing to make adjustments or even acknowledge there is a problem then I would try to find a more supportive school or home educate if this could not be found.

Ha ha ha at schools being able to access support & agencies for a self harming child. Theoretically yes, but have you tried accessing CAMHS or a CDC recently? Those services are on their knees.

I work in a very large LA area and it's true it's hard to get a referral accepted by CAMHS these days. Partly due to systematic underfunding by government over the past 5 years.

So what works for us is to train staff in the TaMHS approach and in addition I have termly consultations with our primary mental health worker (I am a home school link worker). We also have a CAMHS school nurse with whom I have termly consultations, and have a BACP counsellor in school once a week.

Not perfect, but we do our best with what we have funds to do. To say schools don't support children's mental health is simply not true.

I honestly think your LA is the exception *SuburbanRhonda". The mainstream school my ds's attended had access to none of that & believe you me they tried. Eventually I think they had one telephone conversation with a CAMHS psychiatrist probably about eighteen months after problems started - too little and far too late. This was primary perhaps the secondaries have more but I doubt it.

You have a better chance of success with CAMHS if you know how to put a "good" referral together. Our CAMHS teams have advisory lines where you can discuss a referral before you submit it to maximise the chances of success. "At risk of permanent exclusion" seems to open doors. Though, tbh, CAMHS intervention is not the magic wand for every child so just because CAMHS won't get involved doesn't mean the child won't be supported in other ways. I do think it's unreasonable to expect school staff to be mental health experts though. At the moment we're far too busy following government instructions to prevent extremism to take on much else

You can access CAMHS via the GP, which may be the best way.

It's also worth mentioning that not every child is home educated because they didn't get on with traditional school education. In some cases it is just the best fit for the family or the child.

Totally agree that school staff should not be expected to be mental health experts but they should be able to access more easily help from those that are. I do like the sound of the model in your LA SuburbanRhonda one of the frustrating things for us that we actually had agencies having the time and willingness to help but being terrified of doing the wrong thing so that the support was not given.

It is an irony that the most advice we were ever given about managing the anxiety was in a 1 hour session given by a child psychologist to a support group for parents with children with an ASD rather than all the 1:1 assessment interviews we had from social workers, educational psychologists, psychiatrists and paediatricians. It was an extremely efficient use of her time and is a strategy that CAMHS could use to help support more families.

I know it's s popular view that GPs do good CAMHS referrals, but they often don't liaise with schools to find out how the child is in school and don't include that information in their referral.

Schools are staffed by professionals who have studied education as an academic discipline and have extensive practical experience with hundreds of different children and their needs in dozens of different situations. Parents usually only have experience of their own children.
Teachers know that it would be impossible to offer the depth and breadth of the curriculum, and the social experiences of school, particularly as children get older. They also have, in some cases, experience of children who have been home educated and then rejoin the school system; they can find it hard to adjust.

I think many teacher's are unhappy with the notion of HE because they see first hand what opportunities a child will miss if they are not in school. A wide social circle of children from a large range of backgrounds, visits from 'experts' in their field, opportunities to learn in creative ways rather than from a text book and to participate in group activities, not least of course the opportunity to learn to become autonomous individuals away from their parents.

And yes, children educated at home are known to be at greater risk- the opportunity to abuse is far greater when away from the watchful eye of a team of adults.
No one adult is knowledgeable about all things. If you are HE beyond primary school age there is surely going to be a point where you either restrict your child's learning to the things you know about or rely on text book teaching. To home educate at primary age means missing out on so many experiences and opportunities- almost too extensive to list.
If you aren't happy with a school then follow complaints procedures and ultimately find another school. Home educating shouldn't be the first alternative.

We had CAMHS referals from school, paediatrician & social worker. I still had to email the chief exec & copy in MP saying we were being left to manage anxiety with a boxing shield & it wasn't appropriate to get anywhere.

Because my son's needs are so high (& frankly because he's dangerous) - we pretty much get the gold plated CAMHS experience. It's still rubbish - eg 2 weeks of calling to try & get a prescription sorted. I fully blame the government. The learning disability nurse we see is wonderful -truly excellent & knows her stuff - and utterly overrun with work

The idea that there's all these mental health resources available to help young people is laughable.

If I had a child who was being made anxious by school, who would be much happier at home I wouldn't hesitate to home ed him. Especially given my experience with support services for ds1.

Singsong - and the kids who go through school without a single friend?

Goblin, I HE my ds presisely because I don't want him to have the social experiences of school. I don't think they're positive or helpful. HE offers a different, more natural social experience and he has friends in the HE community as well as those who go to school, of all ages, not just those who happen to be born in the same chronological year. Forced association is not socialisation.

Devilish- a decent school would support that child through encouraging attendance at clubs and activities as well as creating buddying support. Of course a parent has a role to play there too outside of school. Why would a child who struggled to make friends at school be any more capable of making friends in a HE scenario?