AIBU to ask for your opinions on home education?

[MooMooTheFirst]

For background-

I am a primary school teacher that currently teaches nursery and have felt increasingly uneasy about the school system in the UK over the past few years. I've got a 13 month old DS. I am confident I can deliver education at primary level up to year six.

The idea of home education has always seemed 'other' to me but I am slowly starting to feel like it would be right for us.

This isn't a goady post, genuinely looking for a variety of opinions.

I'm sort of hoping that SATs as we know them now don't exist when DS is that age ha.

Well, as you are a teacher there is not doubt you could deliver an education but isn't school about so much more than that? What about the social aspect? Learning to respect authority, having to get along with those you don't like? Then what about when the child gets to secondary school age, they would be right in at the deep end. Most school education 11 year olds find that hard as it is.

*school educated

Also OP, I think that the parent child relationship can be very intense. You will need your space away from each other. My DC will scream and rant at us when stressed etc but are angels at school, accept criticism from a respected teacher figure better than they would from us as they know we love them unconditionally so they can show us their awful sides. It probably sounds way off now but they do go through horrid phases.

I don't home school but I am an academic and have often wondered how parents cope as it seems a massive task to me! It takes me a lot of effort and time to prepare my lessons and there is no way I could cope with a variety of subjects at the depth required. I imagine it will be easier to follow a curriculum at primary level than secondary level so you may be able to do it for the earlier years.

With my own DCs I also find that they do not take instruction from me easily. I don't mean that they are badly behaved or don't listen in general but that the parent/child relationship seems to be very different from the teacher/pupil one. Obviously people do find ways of home schooling successfully but I wonder how they overcome this issue.

This is the problem with HE. People assume it is school but at home.
It really isn't. Of course that's an option if that's what you want and your family can manage those dynamics, but usually it's more a mutual learning curve. If a child is free to follow their interests, and you can make sure they have access to information, it's less about teaching and more to do with opportunities for the child to learn in their own individual way, without the rigid structures and lessons aimed at them and all the other children in the classroom, along with a lot of crowd control and chopping and changing subjects throughout the day as they move from subject to subject at a pace dictated by a timetable. (Btw, Im not meaning this to sound negative against schools, and if it sounds like I am, then I'm wording it badly!)
I do appreciate it's difficult to understand how different HE can be, and how it works, but it really can't be compared to school with qualified teachers, planned lessons and mostly rigid structure.

ScooterOnTheMotorway Sat 10-Jun-17 11:52:13
"The socialization thing is a myth. A group I am part of has multiple events every day of the week that you can choose to go to. Please can we stop banging that drum."

That doesn't make it a myth for everyone. It depends on what groups there are where you live and how accessible they are. It's a thing that is worth looking into. For me, this would have been a real problem due to lack of transport. I'm not a myth any more than you are.

But absolutely don't think the OP should be held back if she finds good resources where she is.

CloudPerson

I definitely see that argument, but do you not believe there is a set of skills and a body of knowledge that children should learn? Is it not a bit naive to think you can give them 'access to information' and not disadvantage them in comparison to children who have been taught how to read, write and calculate numbers correctly (just as examples)?

I home educate my 6 year old ds and have done since the beginning. The results are phenomenal

But you don't have to prepare lessons catering for xyz number of pupils as a home educating parent BooBoo...surely you can see the difference?

Besides, unless everyone here loved school I think it can be very easy to cast it in a glowing light when having this discussion. For many school is a place of anxiety and insecurity. I don't know about you, but I would struggle to be receptive to learning in that instance.

Likewise, unless you spend all your time in a forced setting with peers randomly selected due to your date of birth I can't see how the school experience of 'socialisation' is in any way representative of 'the real world'.

I spent nearly 2 years training to teach, before quitting in disgust at the NC. When my own children came along the options were home ed or private. I have nothing against schools or teachers but I believe the NC is ridiculous and seems to ignore all we know about how children learn, really poor at covering the foundations.
We decided to home ed until they were 7 and then reassess regularly with children's input. One chose to enter formal education later on, no trouble adapting and top set for pretty much everything. The other has no inclination to go, is just reaching secondary age and will possibly sit first GCSE next year.
We love the life and freedom it gives us.

It isn't all fluffy and lovely, we all struggle and wobble at times but we've found our stride and I have been doing it such a long time now that we are happy and confident with our choices.
I second all that corythatwas said.

I have friends for whom HE has provided a brilliant outcome. Other friends for whom it has been less successful and/or whose children have asked to go back into formal education.

For us, it did seem attractive at one time, but would probably have been unworkable for both the dc I actually have:

dd is disabled and I don't drive so would really have struggled to get her out and about to as many socialising/educational opportunities as I could access simply by taking her up to school in her wheelchair in the morning- tbh I was pretty shattered even by that

ds is possibly the laziest person I have ever met and has been since before he started school. He has never wanted to make the effort to listen to a complex explanation or read a book or research a subject, or to learn any practical skills. He is not much of a joiner and has never enjoyed being part of groups. It is not that he is unhappy around other people; he just doesn't like the idea of making an effort. He is happy just lying on his bed for hours at a time. If left to his own devices, he would be pretty unemployable by now. And if I had been the one who had to badger him into getting basic qualifications I think I might just have lost the will to live. He is a lovely lad, kind and personable, but he does not fit the mould of your standard HE child who gets so excited by his own interests that he pursues them spontaneously.

He is beginning to recognise this himself now and is leaving his academic Sixth Form college, where students are expected to do a lot of study on their own, and opting for a BTech programme with far more timetabled hours.

I tend to think people who are against it probably have little idea of just how many children there are out there with additional needs or personalities that just will not thrive in that environment. I home educate my eldest child and had no choice in the matter for various reasons. I have another child in mainstream school who is doing well. I live in London and there are loads of us home educating. I think if then"against" people knew just how many and what is available, they'd be quite surprised.

Trifle I do see what you mean, but in turn I think you're being naïve to think that school can provide this for all children.
Some children thrive best in school, others don't.
Many families find that phenomenon based learning and allowing children educational freedom actually accelerates the child's learning.
Of course it isn't for everyone. I don't think my HE 12 yr old is doing as well as he could be doing academically, but he's far more stable and is progressing emotionally now he's out of school, and this can't be underestimated.
It's not for everyone, but if a parent decides to take this route, and the child is happy and progressing, it must be understood that this is an option that can work well and shouldn't be dismissed without a deeper understanding of how it works for lots of families.

I would be very concerned I was denying my child an almost universal experience.

CloudPerson

I am not dismissing it. I support the right to home educate. I wouldn't do it myself unless I was confident I could deliver strong academic as well as social outcomes, unless my child was not coping with school at all.

One of the great success stories I know is a friend of dd's, who is on the autistic spectrum. His mum took him out of school when she realised he was learning absolutely nothing at all. Since then, he has done well in his A-levels, made plenty of friends through am-dram, and is about to start university. It's completely changed his life. I don't think there can be any doubt that they made the right choice.

She used to go on at me to do the same for dd, but I was never convinced that it was the right route for dd. And in the end, what decided it was that dd herself did not want to.

Caly, if you had doubts of the universal experience, or it was destroying your child, you'd think differently.

Trifle, again, you don't need to be a qualified teacher to home educate, it doesn't work like that. Well, you can, if that's how you choose to do it, but it works very well when you embrace the child's interests and natural propensity to learn.
I know so many ex teachers who now home ed their children because they grew disillusioned with the way education has become. To a person, they have all found that their attitudes towards education and how it should be carried out have changed dramatically.
It is difficult to understand though if the mindset is that school is best and a child needs to be taught things rather than learn things.

Reading that back it read some as though I'm being arsey, that's not my intention!

Some people HE and get it badly wrong.
Some children go to school and it goes badly wrong.
Lots of people choose to HE and feel it's the best decision they ever made.
We're all different and we all have different needs. All I was trying to say was that even if a parent isn't a teacher, it doesn't mean they shouldn't HE, because it isn't usually a case of parent teaching child.

Cloud, what do you do if you have a child who is simply not inquisitive? Or who hates effort?

Oh I'm sure I would cloud (you didn't sound arsey by the way )

But I suppose in this case my worry would be starting him before any issues occur seems extreme to me. HE can work very well but in a strange way I think OP being a teacher might be harder than she thinks!

CloudPerson

I didn't say for a moment that you did need to be a qualified teacher. I don't think you sound arsey, but a bit assumptive, maybe. I am just giving my opinion, which is slightly different to yours, that's all.

Have taught several children who were previously home educated. They were all very different in the school setting.

I do agree if affects socialisation and conformity too.

Not saying that's bad. I would never consider home ed for mine but I do support it.

Different relationship parent vs educator.

I have a child who was like that. Mainly because he was so traumatised by school. If a child isn't doing well it's because there's something going on that's preventing them from doing well. In a HE situation it could be that that environment just isn't working for them, so school might be the best place or, like my son, it's because years of school have inadvertently taught him that he was worthless and couldn't do anything. He spent a year being unmotivated and unable to do much at all, but going back to school wasn't an option. It was a difficult year, with loads of doubts and worries, but he's through it now and doing ok.
It's about knowing the child I suppose and making sure that they are happy and thriving, and if they're not, work out why and change it if you can.
I know HE isn't for every child, there is no one size fits all, no environment works for everyone.
I have a dd who is in school, doing well. She would hate to be home educated.
It just needs to be addressed that for those who choose to, it can be the best choice, and you're not setting up a child to fail. Most of us want the best for our children. If the op goes down a HE route and it isn't working, like most people, she will seek other options.

I've known children who have been home schooled. Some successfully, others not, it depends on the temperament and personality of both child and parent, and the commitment and enthusiasm of both to succeed.