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 agree that if the system is changed it should involve someone actually meeting the child and speaking to them; and that no child should be invisible. I used to disagree with increasing surveillance of HE but I changed my mind.

You don't have the schoolgate acquaintances who are either using mainstream with support or SS and who are doing it successfully.

drspouse I pointed out to you that I actually do but didn't see you respond to that.

So you do know SEN children in school? I'm confused.

As for not having friends of children with SEN who are in school? Sorry I must correct you there, my youngest child is in MS school and she also has autism. There is a monthly support group of all the parents of children with autism that attend the school, which I attend, we are ALL struggling but there are different levels. Hence me having one child who manages in school and one who could not.

This was my previous response to your assertion that I did not have friends with children with SEN who are in school.

Zzzzz has said she does know people with children at SS, a couple of times throughout the thread.

I know some HE families with both - HEing SN child(ren) at home while a sibling with SN attends SS and is happy there.

I'm still confused - so does school work for children with SEN? Or not??!

Depends on the SEN and the schools available in the local area.

Someone with complex needs and at a special school which can accommodate them will do well.

Someone with ASD at a normal school who doesn't acknowledge that it exists and gives no extra help won't do well at school.

One of my sons attends a SS. I'm very lucky that it is just down the road from us, so he is not sent off on a long bus journey. And they work hard to be part of the community, they are definitely not hidden away. It's an amazing school and my son loves it.

Unfortunately my other sons needs are not severe enough to warrant a place, yet mainstream wasn't good enough to take care of his needs. That's why I think there either needs to be more training on SEN for teachers and even SENCOs - the one we had was pretty damn clueless.

HE was the only choice for us. Oh, and I don't have any qualifications, apart from bad GCSE results. That doesn't mean my son has a thicko mum teaching him, it means school failed me too!

The thing with SEN is that SENCOs in mainstream are trained up across the whole spectrum of specual needs whereas staff in special schools will tend to have specialims eg ASD/PMLD/SEMH based on the school type.
What people forget is that mainstream, by definition, is generalist and then get annoyed when generalist staff arent trained in the intricasies of each additional need.

I'm no SEN specialist and have had training on a range of additional needs but nothing close to special school colleagues and aome of our special needs TAs who know more about their specialism than most teachers. Equally, colleagues in PMLD special education won't have the same training as me on EAL or More Able teaching.

Dont get me wrong the system could be better, but I do feel a bit like some people are quick to claim schools are rubbish at SEN without considering how broad that category is and the other elements of teaching mainstream.

I'm still confused - so does school work for children with SEN? Or not??!

How can I answer for all of them? . But certainly it does not for the ones, and there's quite a few, that I know. You asserted that I did not know any children with SEN who were in school and didn't respond to my previous post telling you that I know many including my own child.

Why do you think that you as a mainstream teacher should be trained in "more able teaching" but not SEN?
Ive JUST said that as a mainstream teacher I AM trained in SEN, just not as much as special school colleagues in their specialisms (PMLD/SEMH etc). Just like all my PRU colleagues do team teach training but only 3 or 4 in my school do. Training given matches the setting.

Maybe read what Ive put properly before telling someone to wobble their head.

*So her parents opted to use follow state curriculum, paid for professional educators and had her sit formal examinations.

Hardly the same thing is it*

This from earlier in the thread is why we don't fit into the HE community where we live.
Ds does online school as although I taught him at primary and some Senior school (would have loved to have known about Interhigh earlier) For GCSEs I know as someone with no qualifications at all I could not teach him what he needs to know.

Saying your child does online schooling is pretty much akin to saying you are Devil Worshippers who practice cannabilism in our HE area.

I wished we lived elsewhere and ds could take part in the HE community.

It is not just me who finds our area a little "odd".
I HEdded ds in Primary and he returned to school in year 6. (Again I wished someone had told me how great the school he returned to was.)
When I pulled him out after 18 months of going backwards in Senior school I had a visit from the LEA. (My area are really nice and very helpful, I know that a certain county next to ours is not as helpful). When the conversation steered itself over to meeting up with the HE community I explained that I had been in the past and we found it not really our cup of tea. The LEA lady whilst not being able to confirm or deny our findings knew exactly where we were coming from.
Having said that we, after a time decided to try a group activity. It was miles away and we thought we might find different people. It was the same group with a few others. I was chatting to someone who was similar age to DD (who sent to full time school) who had been HE because their sibling couldn't cope with school. They had similar specific interests to DD and I asked whether they were considering college. Apparently talking about any form of educational institution I think was the reason why we got banned. I think I put ideas into this person's head.

As a HEdder myself (if you call online schooling hedding) the negatives that people have spoken about on here, the unruliness, the arrogance of the parents. I completely agree with.
We were out with a HE mother and her DC who proceeded to throw their food around the restaurant and eat with their mouth open. The child was not SEN or had any issues. Their DM said she was entitled to not comply with normal behaviour as she had taught them to express theirself.

Having said that I have met with HE communities that were fantastic and we could really gel with. Unfortunately they are no where near to where we live.

As a home educator I can confirm that there is often an element of "fear of the unknown". I believe in our case it is increased as we are not ethnically White. People (whether HCP's or just random people who chat to us) upon hearing that they are home educated often assume that they can't read/write, never leave the house and have zero social skills.

On the other hand.....I have found it really hard to get 'into' the home ed community. In our area it seems to consist of people who are trying extra hard to be speshul, constantly harping on about children in school being sheep and how hard it is to get friends outside the HE community as everyone else has been "homogenized by the system". There seems to be a constant "us v them" mentality. I actually fear for children being brought up like that.

It's sad to read about some communities being so unwelcoming. We have been incredibly lucky here to have a lot of diversity (far far more, incidentally, than either of the schools my DCs attended). Everyone just gets along and shares advice no matter how different they are. I'm not sure if that's purely down to the size - it really is huge here and increasing at a tremendous rate.

I acknowledge that mainstream teachers might not have the in depth knowledge of SN. But the least they should have is some kindness, empathy and a willingness to listen to parents. Frankly my son got more compassion and understanding from the woman who works in our local Morrisons than any of the teachers in his last school.

Oliver our home ed community is a bit hit and miss too. We have attended some groups and left very quickly or never gone back. Luckily we have found some nice groups where DS feels comfortable but there are definitely some people I avoid!

If they have an ehcp and/or diagnosis their parents are likely to be proactive and involved.

That does depend enormously on the particular make-up of the community in which the child is born / lives.

I currently teach in a very 'leafy' area, in a very MN-type school, with very involved parents. In most cases our severely SEN children have highly involved and concerned parents. However, even in our area, in some cases it is the school who drive diagnosis and the application for an ehcp, with parents playing very little 'driving / involved' role. This can be for a whole variety of reasons, but is most often because there is a factor in home life - high deprivation, no English, substance addiction, illiteracy or SEN of the parents themselves, absence of one or both parents through illness or imprisonment etc etc - that simply makes the child's SEN a low priority within the family OR makes the bureaucracy of applying for a child's SEN to be supported absolutely inaccessible

In schools in significantly more deprived communities, or serving marginalised groups, IME the school setting will tend to be the one that drives diagnosis provision / testing / ehcp application in a much larger proportion of cases.

Why do you think that you as a mainstream teacher should be trained in "more able teaching" but not SEN?

I think the breadth of the term 'SEN' is the issue here.

Let's think of a Maths teacher. They are trained, rightly, to teach those who find Maths hard, those who can be taught to do Maths well, and those who are gifted at Maths - essentially a linear progression along the same spectrum.

However, any child at any point in that spectrum could have SEN. Yes, there is the strictly maths=-related SEN of dyscalculia, which I would expect a well-trained Maths teacher to be trained in.

However, is it reasonable to also expect that Maths teacher to also be comprehensively trained in every type of SEN they could ever encounter, ranging from PMLD to severe autism, taking into account all levels of physical, sight-related, hearing-related, attention-related, processing-related, everything that goes under the heading of 'dyslexia' from low working memory to tracking issues and beyond, etc etc needs?

It is in fact more viable to train a primary school teacher, because of the relatively limited numbers of pupils with SEN they encounter each day in any given year - so one can imagine a process by which a primary school teacher with, say, between 10% and 40% SEN children in their class [I have never taught a class with over 40% or less than 10%, though I am sure that they exist] could receive specific training in the specific conditions their following year's class contains.

It would be much harder for a secondary school, in which every member of staff teaching every subject taken by a specific pupil would need training, and each member of staff could encounter many tens of SEN pupils per week.