to ask if you would consider home education?

[SundayBea]

Have read a lot of articles recently on how the numbers in home education have 'exploded' and it's on the rise by 80% a year apparently. I know of three families I think quite highly of, two of whom are ex-teachers whose children have never been to school and their children seem to be having an exceptional upbringing and education with so many fantastic experiences and opportunities. Also know of two other families who have withdrawn their children from school because of problems with their respective schools and I'm less certain of how successful it is going to be for them. Also know of several colleagues and DH's cousin who have DC under 5 who are debating not registering them when the time comes. Is this a big thing now or is it just coincidence I know of so many families like this? I was just wondering what the general consensus was.. when I mentioned socialisation one of my ex-teacher friends showed me the Facebook group she is in for her local home education community and I was amazed at the plethora of groups, classes, meet ups and outings with hundreds of members.. just for her local county! Have been debating with DP what to do about schooling at private school is unfortunately out of the question on our current salaries.. I'm now feeling like I've discovered a whole new option I hadn't considered? Sorry if this is rambling, only getting a 5 minute lunch break today!

Absolutely not. I just couldn't do it i don't think. I just can't se ehow it works unless you have biddable, well behaved motivated kids and know how to teach! Plus most kids enjoy the social aspect of school, I think understanding the idea of working in groups and being in a larger environment important. I think it works for some fsmilies in soecific situations with health, remoteness, odd educational beliefs etc well though.

Very true that you will always gain some things but miss out in others.
A lot depends on the child. I think it all depends on the child,but too often it all hinges on what the parent wants to do. I have seen posts that start 'I want to home educate but my DD loves school....what should I do?' In tnat sort of case I don't know why they ask- it is about their child and not about them.
Some children are just not suited to school and are better off at home.
It is just an alternative, and as such I would like to see it properly monitored. It needs to be by someone from LEA who is enthusiastic about HE and then the parent needs to cooperate. Someone needs to check on it for the sake of the child. Some home educators are excellent and some are hopeless. They need to be at least of a 'good enough' standard. If they all worked together there could be a sharing of resources and expertise.

There is already adequate provision for monitoring and parents do already work together to share expertise and resources. This last doesn't need formalising by an outside agency.

The family with the teens/early 20s who aren't doing anything - that sounds awful, what a waste. The current economic climate and jobs market is horrible for young people, which must contribute to their situation and those of the previously schooled young adults in the same situation. I have read studies of the outcomes of unschooled/autonomously educated children showing that the proportion of such people 'not in employment, education or training' - NEETs - is lower than the national average. Still a tragedy for all those, however educated, affected.

Pteradon, please could you link those studies so I can show DH? Thanks!

I'm rubbish at remembering where I read stuff, I know I read a few bc we autonomously educate and of course get those 'wtf are we doing?!?' moments sometimes. But this was one, quite wordy but worth it:
www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201406/survey-grown-unschoolers-i-overview-findings

Looking further, i suspect I read a lot about how HE'd kids are less likely to become 'neets' because lots of research and analysis was published to highlight inaccuracies stated by Badman in (I think) 2009. My first was a baby then and most of it passed me by.

There isn't adequate monitoring. Parents do not have to allow inspectors in and they know it. A lot of parents want nothing to do with LEA and so they are not sharing resources and expertise.
Some belong to HE groups but some are in isolation, either because they don't know any others or they don't fit in.

I've always wondered how it is that I have to have a qualification to teach children but any parent can do it.

There isn't adequate monitoring. Parents do not have to allow inspectors in and they know it. A lot of parents want nothing to do with LEA and so they are not sharing resources and expertise.

That's bollocks. Having contact with LEA is not the way that HE parents share expertise. You don't know what you're on about

I've always wondered how it is that I have to have a qualification to teach children but any parent can do it.

Well, teaching 25-30 efficiently is a whole other ball game in crowd control and being in a million different places at once, adjusting for the needs and learning styles of 25-30 kids. Also, the government has decided you need a learning qualification. You might not need a learning qualification to teach your own child. Crucially, you are not an expert on 25-30 children so you need to have a lot of knowledge in communication at your finger tips. Parents are experts on their own children and have been honing skills at getting through to them since they were babies.

In addition to that, any parent can do it because it's the parent's responsibility to educate the child, rather than being the state's. So any parent can do it providing the child is receiving an adequate education - which, overwhelmingly, it has been shown that HE children are.

Having said that, with apologies if this is goady at all (I do have PMT so not entirely sure) I have been taught by teachers who should never have been in a classroom, and by non-professional teachers who just have the gift. A teaching qualification does not, unfortunately, mean that you'll be any good.

That's why!

Parents share resources and expertise outwith LEAs, in local groups and online.

Parents don't have to let LEA inspectors into their homes but if asked they do need to provide evidence that they are giving their child an appropriate education.

BTW, I have a relative who home schools for the education board. She goes to children, in their own homes, who were ordinary school going children, who won't get out of bed. Just won't. Or won't pick up a pencil. So for all those worrying about how parents get HE kids to accomplish anything, this is not a problem that school-going children are in any way free from. (And it's a lot harder to sit staring out of the window when there's only one of you!)

Autonomous educating is the most controversial and sort-of glamorous kind of HE that goes on, but it would be a mistake to have a debate about HE as if it were the main kind of education. Many, many HE parents have removed their child from school because they were failing to keep up with the national curriculum and need one-to-one that they're not getting in school.

Personally my preference is for my children to go to mainstream school. However if they were deeply unhappy and hating school, I would consider home education as an option.
While I would have concerns with my ability to teach them, I wouldn't have any concerns about their sociability as I think this is something which is not dependant on a classroom environment.
Like many aspects of parenting you will always find those who cannot grasp that the decisions they make for their children are not necessarily the the best for others.

Interesting article here about Nadia Sawalha who started to home-educate her girls a year ago

She clearly balances it with her TV job but uses family and friends to deliver learning experiences in some areas. I listened to the interview on Loose Women and she said she would enter the girls for maybe 2 GCSEs when the time comes but never 8-10 like schools do. Also, she had looked into how many home-ed teenagers were getting into university and the % is rising each year.

My friend's son has home-educated his child who has ADHD for a few years. But he does intend to re-integrate him into the secondary school system next September. Knowing the child and seeing how he is very 'clingy' with his Dad after so much 1-1 time, I am not sure how successful that will be.

There isn't adequate monitoring. Parents do not have to allow inspectors in and they know it. A lot of parents want nothing to do with LEA and so they are not sharing resources and expertise

In addition to the PP's points the LEA rarely share resources or expertise. Home visits often consist of a box ticking exercise intended to do nothing other than gain safeguarding information from the family with little giving going on.

LEAs recognise that some children are withdrawn from school because of abuse. I guess they are simply checking that DC being HE are not HE to hide abuse.

Re the LEA and sharing info..yes predominantly the info we share is online or at groups, but when the LEA did our visit we were chatting generally and I mentioned a resource. She immediately grabbed a pen and jotted it down an said she knew a family who were looking for exactly that! So it does get scared via LEA sometimes. I must point out here that we are extremely lucky in our county. We are appalling for SEN but fantastic for home ed. it isn't hard to see why. Home ed is on the rise...

Cleaty

In almost every single SCR regarding a child who has been HE that child was already known to services usually prior to HE. So abuse was either being covered up before HE or not acted on as it should have been.

There is not much research around about it but going by several fairly recent FOI requests made by a group of interested home educators and I understand considered to be fairly respectable collating the % of HE children refered to CS is something like twice as many as schooled children but the % of those children ending up with further action is much much lower than the % of schooled children.

We know there are a not insignificant amount of teachers in schools who get convicted of abuse against children yet we don't tend to view schools with as much suspicion and often when parents complain about adult to child behaviour within a school the vast majority of time our first instinct is to rubbish or attempt to rubbish the claim as opposed to saying perhaps they are using their position to hide abuse.

I forgot to add even the NSPCC has stopped linking one of the most well known about SCR linking HE and apologised for making that error in its campaign because the child was not HE she was a CME they are totally different.

Appropreate legislation already exists that allows fairly robust CME identification and rectification

I would feel very angry if I'd only been entered for 2 GCSEs. It would make things harder if I'd have wanted to go on and train to some careers which have more as a requirement. I know it might be possible to do them later but it does leave you a little behind and that's unfair.

My nephew is trying to do them as an adult, and it's really difficult in terms of study time as he cant then work whilst he studies for them.

To not give opportunity for your children to take GCSEs like everybody else I think is unkind.

I don't think 2 hours matches what's in school either (although sufficient, but to say its equivalent isn't quite true). 20mins of writing is 20mins writing whether on your own or in a larger group. When I've set mock exams they take an hour and a half regardless. I learnt brilliantly being taught at the front by experts (grammar school admittedly)

I was answering Claire's question about the primary stage, future. You are muddying the issue by making a comparison to an older an age group.

It IS true that 2 hours was plenty for my DC (they raced ahead of their schooled peers, in fact) at that age. I've discussed this at length with primary-teaching family and friends and with tutors to try and work out what approx four hours lesson time per day in school does reasonably equate to in one to one teaching time. Not least because the legal requirement of tuition that local authorities must provide to non HE DC out of school (so a different group) is much lower than 10 hours a week, which is shocking. So this has been vigorously discussed by those of us who have done it.

But yes we increased in at KS3. Your example of mock exams etc and the more independent study of older learners is precisely why, but equally when an older learner is 'set' work they don't require one to one input while they complete it and a really bright child who is curious, reading and thinking anyway can make fabulous progress on the back of concentrated one to one tuition sessions.

Re. grammar schools; We were very lucky to get a grammar school education. It is available to far fewer now. For some parents it is precisely that kind of issue which drives the decision to HE in the first place and that drives a proportion of the people you see leaving the mainstream at 11. Some people mourn the demise of the assisted places scheme and the crumbling of the grammar system for that reason. I really don't know the answer.

It IS true that 2 hours was plenty for my DC

And for plenty of others too, of course, but I'm trying to stick to true first hand knowledge here.

There isn't adequate monitoring. Parents do not have to allow inspectors in and they know it. A lot of parents want nothing to do with LEA and so they are not sharing resources and expertise

I think the LAs who do their job well, understand the law properly and approach their brief professionally get a far friendlier reception from from HE families than the aggressive, flailing LAs who exceed their remit; Not surprising, really. Some areas have very positive, formalised relationships between LA and HE community and some do not.

Middlemarch is absolutely right that expertise is shared in the HE community. LAs are not needed for that and they have no interest in performing that function anyway. HE parents are a very educated, creative, dedicated and talented bunch between them. That expertise gets shared around.

Tbh most LAs have very little expertise because they're usually ex-teachers, HTs, EWOs or otherwise linked to the mainstream education system, so they have little practical understanding about what HE is about and how it's done apart from the legal definitions. Some try to encourage links networking between families known to them and the wider HE community, so that information can be exchanged that way. Home educators widely share resources between them, either at meet-ups or online.

Remember, there is no designated budget from government for LAs to support HE, and those that do manage it by shuffling things around so that they can provide some sort of service. But it's very much a goodwill thing, and because there is no legal obligation for them to do it very few of them do.

I'm not sure if this has been posted yet, but if anyone is interested it's worth reading the current legislation so you know exactly what the rights and responsibilities are on both sides. You can also see where some LAs misinterpret the law to give them greater powers of control.

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