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.

free

She's very gifted and dyslexic. She will only scrape a pass whoever teaches her.
School are happy to let the children coast along at a level the children are happy with, as apart from a few GCSE's and the compulsory A level subjects their Higher Ed is pretty much sorted from their programmes of study.
So an old C at the core subjects is enough for her future course, languages though are a different matter and she self studies a lot for these as well as attending her ss elite private school

I don't see how we could have supported her and her future any better tbh, but all children are different and different schools of thought suit different children.

As for ds, he does find maths concepts very difficult to understand, but would probably admit himself that his main problem is that he switches off and refuses to engage mentally when anything gets difficult or abstruse. You can encourage or punish him into putting in the hours but it's very hard to force those little cogs to turn. Having made some effort to tutor himself lately, I am a little taken aback to find how difficult he finds some of the logical thinking, though, so suspect it's not entirely a problem of laziness.

Tbh, having qualified as a teacher the majority of the training was crowd control and planning for differentiation. As you would expect when you have to deliver to 30 odd kids. All of that is unnecessary when you are only dealing with your own kids, in a setting where you get as much or as little time as you want on each subject, and have no statutory tests to adhere to on a regular basis.

cory

My dd is the same and the amount of extra time she would have to dedicate to achieving a slightly higher level, just wouldn't be practical at her school.
They have such little free time as it is, these children have to be able to cope with a regime that many others couldn't.
There are some academically gifted children there as well, they obviously get outstanding results and push the school higher up the league table. Last years managed 68 places, so they are currently doing very well.
However, it isn't due to extra support, time, resources etc it's just down to innate ability.
Academic and other nc subjects are of the minimum acceptable requirements. We did know this when we agreed for dd to attend.

Use of the word "maladjusted" is pretty offensive actually and also a very old fashioned descriptor. Can't really take much else you say seriously after that.

I think the term is typical of the usual rubbish spouted about H.ed
Well, I'm off to do the school run now with my "maladjusted" child.
There are several previous H.ed children who are similarly "maladjusted"
at her school.

I expect free would have regarded my friend's ds as maladjusted. Completely ignoring the fact that he has come on socially and educationally in a way that nobody would ever have dreamt of while he was still at school.

It's good to know that the school understand her maths is so far behind that she needs 1-2-1 help in numeracy. Doesn't this suggest that you failed her in a core subject? Why didn't the help you sought help get her to a level where she could at least fit in with a lower set group?

Hmm, my 10 year old dd, in mainstream is falling rapidly behind month to month in all subjects, in a school with an Ofsted rating of Very Good. She too has 1-2-1 in order to try and catch her free fall. Falling behind so much so that we are now applying for an EHCP as she has autism, something that the school strenuously deemed unnecessary for the past five years. Shes never been home educated, been in school since nursery. It's a real puzzle isn't it? Any ideas ?

I recently chatted with someone whose (HE) son is studying to do iGCSEs (nominally about to finish yr10). He is one of the few HE kids I know whose parent switched him to HE b/c he had a LD. They are having a hard time finding somewhere that will invigilate the exam for a cheap price. I think looking to pay £150 per exam.

I didn't think that was so expensive for what it is!! But the family don't have much money. HE does tend to mean reduced family income, too.

I home ed my dd9. She was utterly miserable in school, never wanted to go in and went from being way ahead when she started school in Y3 to being way behind in January of Y5.

My ds23 flexi schooled from 7-11, then spent five miserable years in grammar school. He found his niche in 6th form and went to Cambridge, but reflected that school had been such a lonely place for him. So for him it wasn't the social panacea so many spout on about.

As for SATS. I am really hoping dd doesn't choose school again before Y7. We avoided SATS with dd14 as she was home edded that year. Schools use this information partly to predict GCSE grades. They have predicted dd ridiculously low grades, no doubt do they can say what a wonderful job they have done with her. I'm relieved as it means she is exceeding her targets as she is very bright and hardworking, so she's not put any pressure.

Must admit I am laughing a little at the barb implying that one-2-one means the parent failed. Does that mean that all the children receiving intervention in schools have been failed by their supremely qualified teacher? Or does that only apply to parents?

I have a reasonably varied experience of HE - I have HEd my DS (through which i met a number of other HE families); I have taught children who have left school to be 'home educated'; and i have taught children coming into school having been HEd for the early years of their education.

IME, the success of HE depends very much on the reason for HE and the specific parent / child combination. Simply because it is so individual, it is MUCH more variable, both in terms of process and outcome, than standard state schooling. There are great successes, and theer are great failures, and in between a range of those who end up following round about the same path as they would have done had they been schooled, just via a different route.

I HEd because my DS was damaged by being in a particular school, to the point where he was a selective mute being investigated for ASD. My initial target was to HE him to get him ready for a school transfer we were anyway doing due to a house move, but if that wasn't successful, no further than the end of primary. My reasons for that? DS was - still is - spiky in profile, and while some of his strengths coincided with mine, others would, by the end of primary, undoubtably have reached a point where he would benefit from being taught by a specialist in that field. As it happens, HE mended him and he returned to a very different school, where he thrived.

Those children I taught who left school to be HE? They were from the Gypsy/Roma/ Traveller community, who at least where i taught were willing for their girls to attend primary school but did not support them attending mixed secondary schools. Unfortunately, the very low educational attainment of the parents, particularly the mothers - there was a single literate woman on the local settled site, but the rest were sub-literate or wholly illiterate - did mean that the main education received was in preparation for early marriage. While this could be seen to be a success by that community - keeping their particular culture alive and enclosed - I'm not certain that it is a success by any other definition?

The children i have taught who have entered mainstream primary schooling from HE have, without exception, been very far behind their schooled peers. This does not mean that HE doesn't work - just that it hadn't worked for those families, which was probably why the children were then entered into school. Interestingly, the problem was absolutely not socialisation, or SEN - just that the methods used to try to teach them had not succeeded up to that point (a child who could not read despite parental efforts but had never been taught phonics, for example, learned exceptionally rapidly with systematic phonics teaching, a method unknown to their parents). I am not suggesting that such children are in any way representative of the HE community - those who make good progress in HE will tend not to enter school.

However, some would say that much of what is taught at primary school is taught early. So if you are at school and fall behind in reading etc, there is nothing to say that by 13 you haven't levelled out. So if a HE child doesn't know the same stuff as a schooled child when they start, that isn't much of an issue to me provided they have been given the tools and curiosity to learn.

witsender,

I agree, in principle - as in, if I was talking about a 7 year old who had not been taught to read or do any form of counting, but who loved books and was wildly curious about the natural world or dinosaurs, or whatever, then it is obvious that whether taught at school or at home, they will catch up.

If I am talking about a 10 year old who cannot read, or do any form of maths despite parents 'teaching' this for a number of years, but using methods that really didn't work, and who was at risk of becoming wholly disengaged, it's a bit different.

I suppose what I mean is that primary is about skills and attitudes - basic reading, basic writing, basic number work, basic socialisation, curiousity - and the body of knowledge to which this is applied is definitely less important. However, genuinely botched teaching - whether at home or school - of those basic skills IS a disadvantage.

I've not yet met someone who was home schooled (long term) who a)got good qualifications b) didn't end up having to go in to formal education later in life to either learn skills they never picked up or to get qualifications to go to uni or get a career and c) wasn't a bit weird.

But I've only a very small sample!

i would also say that there is a small minority within the wide spectrum of HE families who do not seek to develop curiousity or interest or will or tools to learn in any way, under the banner of 'they will learn when they are ready'.

It is an extreme minority viewpoint, but it does exist in small numbers, and it really can fail some children very badly.

I have encountered it - and encountered the children / young adults it has failed - but in smaller numbers than those for whom HE has been a success or been broadly neutral. It is non-zero, though, IME.

The thing is, following a child's lead is absolutely brilliant - IF the child is exposed to a range of things they might be interested in and can choose between (happy memories of spending a whole afternoon following a snail).

If a family's limited life experience and circumstances are such that the child is never exposed to anything outside exceptionally limited horizons (in the GRT families i came across, the vast majority of women had never been to the nearest big town,

For us it was important to let dd determine where her interests lied.
Her education starting at KS2 has been totally led by her, even at her present school this is the case.
She feels lucky to be able to choose her own subjects at such a young age at school and I think this was the main attraction for her tbh, as it was something she loved about H.ed.
The fact that she chose what she wanted to study when H.ed allows her now to be focussed on what is important to her and the ability to learn independently without the need for spoon feeding.
Sometimes her teachers are surprised at the detail she goes into and have commented about this on her reports. If she is interested in something she will study it until she has had enough of that topic, rather than what is required to pass the test, gain a particular level etc.
A love of learning is important whether a child attends school or is H.ed

I think my dd would have struggled going into a normal state secondary, it wouldn't suit her at all. This would/will never happen though, so not a problem.
Now, she just needs to work hard at the subjects important for her future, which will be part time studied at school and pt at home during the long holidays.
It has worked out fine for my dd, but I don't suggest it's the best way or suitable for all children. If a child has ambition, drive, determination and knows what they want to do from a young age, I think it's important to allow them to do what is necessary to get to that place.
I realise that every parent doesn't have the the same choices we have had, and they chose the default of school, and if possible the best fit for their child.

cantkeepforever's point about a set of parents who were not aware of phonics is exactly my worry. There are many ways to teach reading, ideally a teacher knows many of them, has access to other teachers to aks for help if an approach is not working and is able to adapt her approach to the needs of different pupils. You may say this is unrealistic due to the massive underfunding of education and I would agree with you, but equally how realistic is it to expect the parents to have all the skills the teachers are lacking? Across a wide range of subjects?

My issue with one of my friends who is 'homeschooling' (child isn't old enough to start school yet, but will be HE) - is they have partly decided to HE on the basis they don't teach enough art/nature in the curriculum - what if DC isn't interested in that?
They aren't qualified/interested to teach science/maths/music etc. They're dictating what they learn - which I know the curriculum is but at least gives you a taste of most subjects.

It is my dream to do it. Dp was dead against. Also financially I couldn't. Watching with interest. we have had some difficult with school recently and I feel like de-registering. I work in Higher Ed.

I wouldn't be worried about a parent not knowing about phonics, why is this so important if the child isn't going into a system that teaches that way.
If the parent isn't bothered to help their child read and write that's a different matter.
If they are H.ed it doesn't matter if they start at 4 or 9, it is irrelevant.
Mine all started off at school, with dd being the one to h.ed for a few years, they all learned with different approaches and methods. Their schools were all different even though state schools.

Gilly,

Having raised the phonics issue. It genuinely wouldn't have mattered if this child had been one of the c.80% of children who learn to read when taught other than by phonics. In school and out of school, research shows that around 4 out of 5 children will learn to read pretty much whatever method you use.

And as you say, once they can read, it doesn't matter how they have learned - as long as they have a way of deciphering unknown words, and encoding the ones they want to write, then whether or not they were explicitly taught phonics doesn't matter.

However, I am talking about a child who, after years of being taught to read by their parents, could not read - so they fell into the 1 in 5 children who other methods fail. As their parents didn't know about phonics teaching, they couldn't use it (over and above the basic 'a is for apple' level). Once in a school that had staff (who usually taught much younger children) who were well-trained phonics teachers, and the child was taught that way, they learned to read.

Once they could read, then phonics again became unimportant - they had crossed the reading / not reading threshold and could then access what they needed to learn other subjects.

It's the same with maths, though perhaps not so stark. There are less and more effective methods of teaching mathematical understanding - well-informed teachers and well-informed parents will seek out those which work best, especially if faced with a child who doesn't 'get it' easily. less informed educators, both at home and at school, may well not, and that child will then have gaps in their mathematical understanding.

If you think about it, it's a bit like learning ballet, or to play a stringed instrument, from an interested parent who has done some dance or some music.

Yes, a parent alone, with books or videos and guides, can teach a child ballet up to a point. However, if the child doesn't 'get it', or has difficulty with a specific move, then it can help to have an expert teacher, who both knows the move well and knows how to teach it. Otherwise, moving forward, the child may end up with gaps in their basic technique, however keen the child is to dance and however much the parent is bothered to help.

Gilly the point was not that phonics is essential to reading but that different methods are essential to reading and you may need access to a few of them to help a particular child, plus the different methods relevant to maths, science, history, character education, etc. And this is without going into overall approaches to learning like disarable difficulties, the role of failure, goal or non-goal oriented teaching...all things I know tangentially through my research into character education, I am sure a qualified teacher would make more pertinent distinctions and come up with better examples to illustrate the complexity of teaching.