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?

I am astonished at the number of people on here who feel they know a statistically significant number of Home Educators. There must be many more than we thought. I HEd for 7 years and belonged to several groups and networks, and yet don't feel I can claim to know enough people to use terms like "most" or "too many" !

Because if someone is being starved or beaten after the 6 week holiday someone just might notice. It might save their life.

It's a parents way of hanging on to the control they have over their child. By keeping them away from school they have the power to influence their young minds & keep them from questioning the wider world.

I think HE should banned or closely watched by the government as currently you can teach whatever you like. Why do parents think they are better than countless qualified teachers in our schools?

but you know what? I am terrible at doing things I find dull or compulsory because I never had to growing up.

I hate going to work and have never really enjoyed any of my jobs because I can't just stop doing them when I don't want to.

Me too!

Except I went to private school and had a dad in the army who banged on endlessly about duty, responsibility and things being "character building" and expected high levels of commitment and engagement in all areas of life. I couldn't wait to get away. I've a good work ethic but changed jobs a LOT as I always got so bored so have never built a career. So there you go.

Why is it that on this thread people are using the successful examples of HE children who've grown up to be solicitors etc as proof that HE worked. But then someone who was HE says they think it hindered them in the workplace and you're falling over yourselves to state it can't possibly be anything to do with the fact they were HE...

Child benefit is not proof of a child's whereabouts. There is no requirement to register a child with a doctor or dentist and take them for checkups - if there was then the absence of any controls on HE wouldn't be an issue for the problem of children disappearing from the system.

However the problems of entire communities sending their children to illegal religious schools or deciding that literacy and qualifications are optional extras for girls, whilst the LA shrugs and says "not our problem" (inwardly breathing a huge sigh of relief)? That could only be addressed by increased monitoring of HE. Why do you think the current system is acceptable zzzzs?

Confirmation bias cruel

The debate needs splitting into 2;

1. the HErs who HE because of SEN or social/emotional issues; whereby their kids are effectively excluded from school attendance

2. Those that have chosen it

It's 2 very different discussions

Have not rtwt, but lots of people don't seem to understand that people unconsciously fear things that are unknown/ different to them.
It's how prejudice works. When someone is for eg, homophobic ( phobia meaning fear), they don't think that gay people will harm them, the " phobia " part of the label means that the can't be rational when thinking about or reacting to gays, as they are threatened by something so outside their own experience. They are prepared to react with vitriol , and extrapolate their initial feelings onto what they think are likely outcomes, then tend to believe those ideas as "facts".

It's a really common psychological phenomena. And yes, of course people having a snap reaction against something is fear based.

More anecdotage- a relative of mine went down the well worn "well, if you need the qualifications you can do them later" route, decided later that she wanted to be a barrister, and has been playing catch-up ever since. And has had to make a difficult decision between career and children, because she was 7 years behind her peer group when the time came.

Get all the bits of paper you can. They are utterly pointless- until they suddenly turn into keys to a locked door you desperately want to get through, and which you will have to tunnel under with a teaspoon.

Bang on painfulpain.

absolutely bertrand
I'm also concerned about 'perserverance'. not teaching something because the child 'doesn't want to' what if that's something essential like basic maths or reading?

UnaPalomaBlanca I supported my child by pulling him out of school because it was the school that refused constantly to address the issues!

You think I should have left my son to be bullied? To not recover the extra help he needed? He was already hating school but very compliant there meaning he had huge meltdowns the moment he walked out the gate.

I suggest you actually RTFT and see what some of these kids have been through before deciding we just pulled them out on a whim.

Perhaps parents should support the child by dealing with their issues rather than pulling them out of school and leaving their issues unaddressed?

was it at school where you cultivated this astonishingly small mind?

I don't think people fear HE but their choices why they do it.

I know one who removed 2 DC as the elder one had an issue with school (which was unclear and kept changing)
Now the eldest one is in school and the younger one is still HE - through an online school.
I can't think that if they didn't have an issue being educated being educated online is a good choice. She says he has lots of social activities- all organised by her though.

She is the HE that told me if they wanted to learn about maths they baked a cake, if they wanted to do physics they went to the park and if they did history they went to a museum - it did put my back up, assuming as a working parent I did none of this

Child protection is not conflated with education it's linked to monitoring. If you don't know a lot about safeguarding then it might be wise to hear the concerns of those who do. There have been numerous HE s on this thread who stress the importance of safeguarding and monitoring because of their own childhood experiences.

unapaloma, please never express that view in RL. You sound astoundingly ignorant and while it might be a good thing for you to be roasted for holding such a view it might be hurtful to a fragile parent.

We moved 200 in the middle of our 7 years HEing and the difference was profound. Where we started off we had a group of about 12 families who met up at least once a week in a hall we hired, we would also meet up in each others homes and in smaller groups. Some of us also went into the local city where there was a big group and much more diverse, our group were all primary aged and in the city there were lots of older children and some of them had been excluded from school. We mixed with people who were really hot housing kids, people who didn't do much just let the kids learn what they wanted to and of course many in between. Both groups were friendly and welcoming and non judgemental.

Well we moved to an area with lots of HE families, quite an alternative area, and it was very different. We found the "alternative" community wasn't very welcoming if you weren't vegetarian or preferably vegan, they didn't believe in any discipline for the children. I asked them once what they would do if a child was climbing up to the roof and they said they would let them do it as the child knew what they were capable of. I asked what if they were repeatedly shoplifting when you were shopping. Again they wouldn't tell them off or stop them, I suggested that when the local police and social services got fed up of the complaints and the children were placed in care it would be a bit of a learning curve for them. I dropped out of that group.

People get into HE for various reasons, in our case we just didn't feel 4 was the right age for school so ours started school in year 4, we figured that gave them time to figure it all out before moving onto senior school. Mine did very little work at home, if they were interested in something we facilitated them being able to do it or find out about it or whatever. My DD went into a two form entry school and we were told she was way ahead of any child in her year.

One of the things my kids said was that they didn't feel "burnt out" with school the way lots of their friends did at 14 or 15, they felt they hit that in year 13 and that was positive.

There are good schools and bad school, academic and non academic kids, it is very hard to compare one HE experience with one school experience because neither will by typical of all.

I suspect paloma is one of the "there is no such thing as ADHD, it's just poor discipline" crew.

I do think LAs could encourage parents to interact with them by doing things like offering facilities e.g. a room for meetings, loan of books or equipment. I do remember when we were HE there were some authorities doing this, don't know if budget cut backs have reduced this. Why shouldn't the children get some help, if they were in school there would be a budget for them.

Child protection is not conflated with education it's linked to monitoring.

Absolutely.

A schooled child spends 6 hours per day, 190 days a year, in an institution full of adults trained in child protection. This is obviously insufficient to keep all children safe or detect all abuse, but it does, IME, detect some.

An HE child may spend no time at all in the company of anyone trained in CP. Even if a system of monitoring - or at the very least registration - is set up, that contact is far more minimal and more easily circumvented than in daily school.

Monitoring of actual education is a separate issue, and as a society we have to decide what we think is most important.

What i mean is, within the HE community:

• The majority of children will be both safe and receiving appropriate, even if unconventional, education.

• Some will not be receiving an adequate education, in terms of allowing them to make progress in all aspects of life.

• A tiny number will be being abused in some way.

The question is, do we go for:

• No monitoring / regulation / registration (essentially the current situation)

• Monitoring that seeks to establish basic provision of adequate education (in risk management terms, a risk that affects a larger number but has less severe effects)

• Monitoring that seeks only to establish child safety (affects a tiny number but has very severe effects)

the thing I would want to emphasise is that none of this assumes that 'All HE families are abusers' or 'All HE families provide an inadequate information' any more than the CP processes in schools and the Ofsted inspections they are subject to assume that all children are being abused and that all schools are inadequate. The aim of any type of monitoring should be to root out the few 'bad apples', in the same way (as I have said before) that modern inspection regimes have largely eradicated the worst end of the boarding school sector.

As a teacher, I do not see the fact that I must pass through the vetting and barring process, or the fact that Ofsted inspectors could arrive at any moment as 'assuming I am an abuser' or 'assuming I am a bad teacher' - but I know that in a population of teachers / schools, there are some 'bad apples' who should be identified - indeed I was taught by / in some n the 1970s.

I should also add that schools actively encouraging HE for SEN pupils and using this as a way to 'get them off their books', as mentioned above, is APPALLING. Still trying a) to get my head round it and b) think of a way to prevent it happening. Perhaps requiring schools to report 'pupils leaving from this year group, not to another school' as part of the data collection / DfE reporting process, and making this data visible along with other key indicators, would be useful?

I don't fear home ed, but I don't think it's always a wise decision. The social aspect of school - navigating your way through friendships, fallings out, disageeements with teachers etc.... teaches you so much. Having to adapt to systems and schools which are not always effective in every way, teaches you skills needed for working in institutions and organisations later in life. The hardships of school teaches resilience. Kids also benefit from the rules and boundaries of school, and understanding sometimes they need to go along with others rules and the world does not revolve around them.

As parents we want to protect. I know several parents who have taken their kids out of school to home ed because they don't agree with school policy and want to protect their child from the school rules and environment and rewards policies etc.... however, imo, this doesn't teach resilience or show kids how to cope in difficult situations, it just removes the situation back to the protecting arms of the parent. But kids need separation and to experience the world separately from mum and dad

I do get what people are saying about children with severe anxiety, SEN etc. And frankly if my DCs were like this then a break from school would be something to think about before looking for a better one.

But how do some children with these issues nonetheless find a school that suits? And what about children whose parents cannot HE? What do they do? Presumably they do find a school that suits?

And while I also appreciate that you may not have the energy to pursue a school that has been avoiding addressing bullies, or an abusive teacher, in the moment, but a) lots of schools address bullying properly and b) why would you leave the situation to stay the same without taking it higher?

I really have little time for the "my child's too special for school" (one family I know) and the "school represents The Man and it's too difficult to try and find a good one, they should be falling over themselves to have my child but they aren't" (my relative).