Why do people fear Home Educators so much?

[sebumfillaments]

Not a TAAT but inspired by the other thread, I was stunned by the level of vitriol aimed at home education. Is it all borne from fear and ignorance?

Home Ed isn't about replicating school. And education isn't (in our case) about gaining qualifications from an institution to increase their value in the workforce!

So why so much animosity?

Have you name changed recently Twat? Your posting style is so familiar. Apologies if I am wrong.

Twat it wasn't just that one post.

The sheer volume of "Eat your crusts because of the children in Ethiopia" style, globalism-top-trumps posting on MN is ridiculous (and generally practised by posters who don't actually listen).

@MargaretTwatyer it wasn't just that post.

The sheer volume of "Eat your crusts because of the starving children in Ethiopia" style, globalist-top-trumps posting on MN is ridiculous.

(Wouldn't you know as soon as I wrote it all again, it would finally post )

I'm a qualified teacher who now works as an EHE "officer" part time for the Local Authority. I have seen a huge range of families who home ed.

99.9% of parents who home ed want the best for their children and believe absolutely that they are doing the right thing for them.

I absolutely agree that there are a growing number of children being failed by mainstream schools - severe bullying, mental health issues, high functioning Aspergers or Autism or other forms of SEN who are awaiting diagnosis and support and simply cannot cope being in a mainstream school. There are no provisions available for these children. Home Ed seems almost invariably, to be the best option for them. Not a choice the families take lightly but it is almost forced upon them.

There are also a large proportion who do it for their religious or cultural beliefs. A lot of Christians, Muslims and Travellers. There are also your 'stereotypical' home edders, of course. Who have no faith in the system, etc, and are 'alternative' types. You might also be surprised to know that many HE parents are qualified teachers themselves who hate what is happening to state education in this country and are well qualified to home educate their children.

The law around home ed is vague at best really and gives Local authorities little to no power to act on any concerns. I do not have the right to demand to see a child or to see evidence of any kind of education provision - unless I have evidence that the education a parent is providing is unsuitable. But what is unsuitable? Who decides? And where do you get this evidence from if the parents do not have to engage with you?

The vast majority of home ed parents do a decent job, with varying degrees of success really. All the ones I have met have, without exception, been focused on doing the best they can for their individual child.

However - there ARE some parents who chose this route to avoid prosecution for non school attendance. To avoid concerns that have been raised with regard to safeguarding. To cover up things that they don't want anyone to know about. They may well be a minuscule minority but current laws protect these parents and not their children! To give one general example - in Irish traveller culture, women do not need to learn to read and write. They have to learn how to keep a home and raise children. The law says the education they receive must be suitable for them to grow up to be functioning members of their own communities. I have met with traveller families who tell me they teach their daughters to cook, clean, change nappies, etc and are unconcerned about the lack of ability to read and write. I believe this is a direct contradiction of the child's human right to an education. But I have no power to prevent it from happening because a judge would say it meets the criteria for a suitable education. I have had anonymous referrals from home ed families about other home ed families - but until I can gather evidence there is nothing I can do. And I can't gather evidence because parents are not obliged to engage with Local authority in any way.

Current law around home ed rightly protects all home edders, but at the cost of that tiny minority of children who receive no education and parents get away with it.

Of course, being HE'd means sitting at home with only a parent teaching you and never going out and meeting anyone else ever.

"Me neither. In fact we are all so busy pumping each other for information on stuff that's going on that we can get out kids involved in that there's little time to discuss anything else and that's the truth. Honestly not one Home Ed person I know could care less about people choosing school for their kids. If that argument does ever come out I would lay money on it being a defensive one."

I have absolutely had HE'ders trying to explain to me that dd's problems would be solved if I would only HE and refusing to listen to my explanations. On social occasions, evenings out. Not all HE'ders are so busy talking to each other about HE'ding that they don't also find the time to talk to other people.

I have never criticised HE to same friends; in fact, I have been and still am convinced it was an excellent choice for them to make, for their children. Just not for everybody.

@MrsTWH, my BIL's DW is a qualified teacher and they put a lot of work into doing Home Ed with their children. It was down to their concerns as Christians about sex education in primary schools, and I don't agree with them at all on this, as the children are worryingly naive and sex education is important to protect our children. (I'm a Christian myself but I differ with them strongly on a lot of issues.

That said, their children are turning out very well in other ways and they are all successful academically.

And I agree with you about the safeguarding concerns.

The purpose of HE for my son is to keep him safe and make sure he actually gets an education because that certainly wasn't happening for him at school. Why would hiring specialist tutors negate that? When I send my son to his science, coding and language tutor groups am I somehow doing home ed wrong?

For me the point of HE is to provide education suited to the individual child in question. This means providing support at the right time and in the right way for that specific child to learn.

It has nothing to do with who is giving the support at any moment in time, be it parents, other adults or tutors. Any of those might be appropriate.

The idea you need to be an expert in a topic to support a child learning it is utter nonsense....and something only someone with no experience of real education would think.

This doesn't just apply to children....I've started learning Spanish via duolingo online. I've gotten further in a week than I did in a year of study at school because I'm doing it on my terms because I want to, when I feel in the mood for it, and with absolutely no professional help whatsoever.

What I hate about HE is that if you never put your child into school there are no checks at all on what you are doing. It is simply unacceptable that children can just not turn up to school with no follow up from the authority. HE needs more, and certainly more informed, regulation.

officer I think the problem is more the confirmation bias you are exhibiting.

My neighbours child has been in our garden without permission, but I didn't assume it was due to failures in the school system.

I do think there are potential problems in lack of racial diversity, but living in the whitest place in Britain means that while we have low racial diversity in our HE group it is still marginally higher than that in local schools.

I haven't really seen that so much of a lack of socio-economic diversity. Our ~10 child sports group spans the range of 'unemployed' to 'runs own successful business and recently swanned off to Hawaii for a month'.

This is such a depressing thread. I dropped out of the last one because I've literally being listening to the same arguments against HE since I started educating my eldest son (now 30, has a first from a Cambridge, functions perfectly well within society) and people are still saying the same things too often without bothering to find out any real facts about HE

Probably 80-90% of the HEers I know find themselves doing so because their children have been badly let down in schools and/or their SEN were not met; often it is a last resort after years of fighting with their LEA. I've never experienced any kind of hostility towards, or judgement of, parents who send their children to school within the HE community - the first time I encountered the term 'sheeple' used in this context was in this thread.

I don't know where this idea that all HEers claim benefits and are grossly under-qualified came from, either. Again, it's a kind of irrelevant argument, but for the record I'm very well-qualified, thanks, and in a higher tax bracket; and I'm not unusual. Do HE families sometimes have to make sacrifices to accommodate HE, yes, just as other families make sacrifices to allow their children to attend a private school or do something else that they value. You would be surprised how many people who HE are qualified teachers, disillusioned with the system.

As for the 'one bite' argument - my third son attended secondary school throughout, and was failed miserably, belated diagnosed with ASD - he's now getting a second chance through the OU. It's never too late and it's possible to have second, third and fourth bites, as required.

It's also worth noting that the UK is not an homogenous whole, the law relating to HE is diffierent in England than in Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland. The HE community in Scotland was instrumental in the successful supreme court battle against the hugely invasive Named Person legislation (which would have affected every family in Scotland), and is still generally under a lot of pressure from local authorities who persistently overstep. I'm sorry to say that it looks as if England is going in a similar direction.

Child protection is, of course, of critical importance, but I'd hate to go back to the days when 'school-refusing' children were dragged to school in their nightwear and threatened with all sorts - which was happening in Leeds when I first started HEing. Okay, I'm old, but it's not that long ago.

wow lifeinthecountry. if you have genuinely been campaigning against better checks on the home ed community you are indirectly supporting the abusers 😔

how can your wish to be left alone be worth that??

I agree that many HEs do it because their children are having difficult experiences in schools. Because of a succession of government policies and Ofsted, schools are dependent upon results, targets and data. They have to be unfortunately, so little time left for a creative curriculum. In turn, that requires that the pupils are able to fit into that system. If they don't for whatever reason, they are certainly at a disadvantage and may therefore be unhappy and unable to flourish.

Differentiation was the war cry for some time. Now it's mastery. Square pegs in round holes. In an ideal world there would be as many sues school catering for additional needs as there are needs. Obviously that's not going to happen. There are some schools that cater well for children with autism, SPLD, MLD, PMLD. They are available to the few, not the many. In addition, each child with one or more of these conditions is affected in different ways, behaves differently, has different needs. How could all of those be accommodated.

So yes, I can see why parents faced with those issues would HE. But that's not all of HE. There are those who simply choose alternatively for their children and I don't think that people fear it, but I do think that humans are often wary of things they don't understand. I know that there used to be teachers who were designated LA representatives for ensuring that HE children were offered what was regarded as a broad and balanced curriculum. I don't know whether they continue to exist. I suspect not given financial constraints and the prevalence of academies.

The only HE parents that I am aware of would regard themselves as living an 'alternative' lifestyle and I think that makes people wary too. I'm sure most HE from a belief that that is offering the best for their child or children, but there are some who are doing it because they can't be bothered to do otherwise. I worked with a family who HE simply because they couldn't be bothered to get out of bed in the morning and it was easier to withdraw from school. The minority certainly, but they do exist.

I expect i touched a nerve mentioning the lack of racial/class diversity among the HE community. Maybe to some that's part of the attraction deep down, athough they'd probably die before they admitted it.

So now Home Ed people are doing it because they're racist too? Right.

Sorry you don't like your neighbours officer but to extrapolate as you have on the basis of this one family you know is just silly and actually makes you sound rather ignorant and bigoted yourself.

How do those who are unemployed or on low incomes access paid tutors and colleges?

Ummmmgogo - Named Person was never about child protection; the government themselves have said it was only ever supposed to be an information service for families.

In the Liam Fee serious case review, it was found that the NP legislation “may have contributed to confusion” in Fife. One of the main arguments against the legislation was that by treating all children as 'at risk' it obscured those who were truly vulnerable and in need of urgent support.

I dislike home education because I was a home educated child and damaged by it.

I have no doubt that there are children who find mainstream school hard and would do better in a home environment.

But for children who have never had the opportunity to try school, or who are pulled out by the parents because of the parents' own wishes/feelings, then I am extremely dubious.

Home education set me socially apart and kept me socially delayed (as strongly evidenced and contrasted by those of my siblings who were home educated, and the later, younger ones who were sent to school).

It also served as a convenient way for our father to abuse us without any way for us to even have an opportuntiy to speak to anyone outside the family.

I wish someone had checked on us, and I hope checks are made on all children that are kept from socialising with the rest of society (I know some home educators do facilitate socialising).

Oh wow PatriciaBateman, are you me??!! I could have written this post myself virtually word for word. UnMumsnetty hugs to you for surviving home ed and coming out the other side.

I am now a university lecturer so being home educated obviously worked all right for me academically, but the social isolation and the abuse made it a disaster. As a result I would never home educate my own children in a billion years. The opportunities they have to interact with other children at school and to form bonds with their teachers seem priceless to me. School is about so much more than academic learning.

You may want to look at this website for adults who were home educated as children; it's a US website, but it's full of interesting (and troubling) stories:
homeschoolersanonymous.org/

Like you, I desperately want home educating families to be monitored, because for the small minority of parents who are abusive, the effect on the children is devastating.

zzzzz
My nieces and nephews are all on FSM and get many school trips, music lessons and musical instruments for free. They would have far less opportunities if HE.
Obviously different if you have the money to pay for it.

Ummmmgogo, why would penalising the majority to protect a tiny minority be sensible or fair?