To disagree with JSP re Home schooling debate on Loose Women

[Stickladylove88]

Don't normally watch Loose Women but caught a bit of it today. They were discussing home schooling - Stacey Solomon decided to home school her children after the school system didn't work out for them.

Janet Street Porter was very critical of this saying that children need to learn to be resilient and shouldn't be removed from schooling because it's a bit difficult. They need to be prepared for the real world not in a bubble. She said that we don't improve the state school system by withdrawing our children from it, parents need to take an active role in improving it.

I personally feel a little bit that home schooling is a last resort and needs to be monitored so that children are being educated properly in the same way that schools are monitored. However, parents should always have the right to do it, the school system doesn't work for every child and I'm not sure it makes a child more resilient being stuck in a situation where they're miserable and powerless for years on end. I think the government have far more power than parents to make the state school system better. Do others agree or is JSP onto something?

Don't want this to be a home school bashing thread, I respect whatever choices a parent makes.

There is actually many support networks for home schooling. It isn’t just kids squirrelled away, there is a huge community.

We seriously thought about it before trying out private school.

Some state schools are dreadful - your very lucky is you get a good one. Most teaching is designed to fit one type of teaching so if your child learns in a different way they are likely to slip through the net due to over subscribing.

Our whole state education framework is rubbish and some people are not prepared to throw their children under the bus just to follow suit.

there's been cases of both locally, the worst being 40 kids aged 4-11 crammed into a small room gender segregation curtain with no outside area and 1 untrained iman/teacher and the books were supporting radical Islam funded by Saudi Arabia

But similar has also been reported happening in a faith school.

You will always get cases from both sides that fail the children.

Raspberry88

But accessing an education is a human right. I'm not sure that assuming that a parent is doing the best for their child is enough.

Why isn't it enough? We assume that parents are looking after their kids in other ways without monitoring them. We investigate if there's a report. It's an important distinction imo.

Look I'm not exactly opposed to registration, but I do think it's important that the state is subordinate to lawful parents, and that the bar for the state stepping into the bounds of the family is set high.

Don't normally watch Loose Women

That old chestnut

I agree with you OP

If you had a relatively bright kid I'd say you could rattle through the state curriculum at a much faster pace than they go through at school.

“We assume that parents are looking after their kids in other ways without monitoring them”

Well we don’t actually. Babies and children are monitored by midwives, health visitors, nursery and pre school workers and teachers. And rightly so. Why should HE children not have some sort of oversight? Parents do not necessarily have their children’s best interests at heart-even if they think they do.

Tunnockswafer

Parents have a right to educate their child in a way of their choosing but children also have a right to be educated. I’m not sure how a local authority can claim to know that both are happening without any form of monitoring.

The parents are the authority. The government can investigate if they are presented with evidence that education is not happening.

MAybe her comments were more based on how well she knows the mother involved, and is aware of her own shortcomings in education? Dunno, don't watch it as it's crap.

I think there should be a register. I know of a fair few families who have chosen to home school and I can't imagine any of them are providing a suitable education. I work in Alternative Provision which is why my experience is of families who are unsuitable. In these cases, the children have been taken out of school to avoid prosecution over attendance or because they have become so violent towards staff that the parents remove them before it gets so bad that a member of staff presses charges. For many of these children there are significant safeguarding concerns and it frightens me to think of what happens to them once they don't have someone checking on their welfare every day.

I am well aware that this is probably a very small minority of families who home educate. Those who do it properly have nothing to worry about but it may help protect those children where parents have take them out of school yet have no intention of educating them.

BertrandRussell

Well we don’t actually. Babies and children are monitored by midwives, health visitors, nursery and pre school workers and teachers. And rightly so. Why should HE children not have some sort of oversight? Parents do not necessarily have their children’s best interests at heart-even if they think they do.

The government doesn't necessarily have the citizen's best interests at heart, even if they think they do.

I'm not in the UK so maybe those agencies 'monitor' more there than here. The midwives I had were there to support me, and that was only as needed/at my request for a few days post birth. I had a health visit twice total (over 4 children). Nursery and preschool are not compulsory here. Barring any actual red flags, why should a faceless state be assumed to care more about my child than I do?

Schools are monitored because they are being delivered by the state/a company according to legislated standards. The schools keep records to allow them to implement their curriculum. That's not the same as the state monitoring the children because they are suspicious of the parents!

@Drogosnextwife that was my experience too - bullied to hell and not back at school. I would have loved to have been home educated. I have pitifully few decent exam results from school, and the experience damaged my entire education, I never caught up really. My life would have been very different if I'd reached anywhere near my potential.

I'm not saying that's a common experience, but I also don't think I'm alone. For some children, home education means better exam results, better mental health, and better life-long outcomes.

I don't know anyone who home educates, but it seems to me to be far more common now than when I was young (a looonnnnnggg time ago) and what I see is that it's shaking off the lentil knitting oddbod image, and folk should accept that it's a positive decision for some.

So fair play to Stacey Solomon for doing what's right for her and her children. She's presumably well off enough to afford the best resources (though this isn't the be all and end all of course.) She can hire tutors and buy books and software and not have to do it all herself, where her own knowledge falls short.

I think it's only a problem if the children are miserable, not learning, and would rather be in school.

As a former home edder who may do again, I am always wary of using the 'parents' right to choose education' as an argument. Tbh, the rights of the parent come waaaaay under the rights of the child to receive an education. Where the sticking point may come is in what constitutes a suitable education, given the wording at the moment just says that it has to be suitable for age and ability. Different LAs interpret that differently.

Also, isn't this a discussion show? So it wouldn't be much of a discussion if everyone agreed. Isn't the whole point of it to showcase various opinions?

Given that JSP has had the privilege of a very “selective” girls CofE school, I don’t think she is in a position to comment. Not only was it a while ago, but it in no way reflected the norm.

Very easy to wax on such subjects when they’re theoretical.

We went to the same school, and I’m quite used to being called a champagne socialist. If there was ever a bubble, it was the school she attended. I would also suggest that however high your expectations for society at large, there are very few who would use their own children as guinea pigs if they thought they would genuinely be better off at home.

I am currently dealing with letters and threats because my youngest is off school so much. He has been unwell, but underlying he also has ASD issues, which mean he finds school hard work on a good day.

A lot of the comments on here really remind me of our situation, and once again I’m wondering if I could possibly make his life any less difficult by home schooling (which feels as if it would finish me off, but maybe I need to make my peace with it).

It’s a very private and difficult decision and JSP is a twat.

We battled with the school system for over four years after ds2 first started saying at age nine he hated school and didn't want to go in. And no he didn't build up resilience in anyway or form but sank deeper and deeper into depression and mental health difficulties. With the benefit of hindsight we should have taken him out of school much, much earlier. However, good the school system was for JSP it doesn't mean it was right for ds2.

Programme should be re-named Loose Bowels’ given the shit that comes out.....

Teachers and other people involved in the education of children are expected to flag up any welfare concerns they might have. And children have the right to disclose their own concerns to someone who can help them. And they do. These people are the face of the “faceless state”

HE children have an equal right rhe protection this gives their school educated peers.

Home-schooling is a luxury which can only be afforded by a few.

If this trend continues we'll be back to the 1900's where the rich educate their children themselves and the poor have no education to speak of at all.

We need to support our schools - use it or lose it as they say!

I personally don't think home-education is best unless you have a child with some form of SEN like autism. I couldn't give my daughter the opportunities or teach her what she learns at school. Its about so much more than academia- that can't be recreated elsewhere.

School can be crap. But so can HE. I realise that HE is one of Mumsnet’s sacred cows-above criticism. But I’m not going to say it’s all wonderful because it isn’t. It can be amazing. But it can also be insular at best and damaging at worst.

The rich have always opted out via the thriving private sector. You could argue that home educating gives normal people a shot at a more personalised education when they can't afford private.

Many children are homeschooled by whack-a-doodle parents with either low intelligence or weird religious beliefs. This is child abuse

FGS.

The parents of James Bulger homeschool their (other) children and I can't say I blame them.

My cousins homeschool their child who has slight behavioural problems due to being sexually abused as a toddler by a relative of ours.

Most homeschool because they know what's best for their child.

People make choices to homeschool for a huge variety of reasons rarely just because they are "wack-a-doodle".

YANBU, I have had to do just that after my son (14) had a complete meltdown and said he felt like dying due to relentless bullying at school and the school not doing anything constructive about it. Parents should do what is best for their child.

In the peak district it's very common for children to be homeschooled for about 1-2 days a week and go to a school only 3-4 days a week because eg in Castleton the school there has fewer than 20 children in total.
While they're at school it's practically 1-to-1 tuition!
The children grow up beautifully.

YANBU.
There are pros and cons to school and to HE, children can thrive in both. JSP is paid to rant, essentially, and usually about things she knows literally nothing about. She often attacks parents, she’s not one herself. I don’t watch Loose Women as it really is pretty crap tv.
I’m supportive of parents doing what’s right for them and their children. It’s a tough job and everyone is doing what they think is right, in a world that likes to criticise every move parents make.

Our children only have one childhood and I want that to be happy, loving and hugely educational. Ours have thrived, are incredibly social (in no way awkward as some one wrote earlier), and at the top of their game academically. We have a weekly timetable, so in effect we 'go to school'.

It works for us, other ways work for other people. My three are close in age and are close friends/siblings. So it has enhanced family life. I HS'd when they were little, went to school at for 2 years. Eldest was horribly bullied and now we HS again and it is brilliant. His confidence is back. No SN's, just normal children.

It's a completely individual choice. I felt JSP's statements were archaic. Also, the concept that parents can change schools, whilst may in some ways be correct, I'm not prepared for my DC's to be there whilst the powers that be try to improve matters. The crucial 12/13 years have then passed and they would have been one of many guinea pigs.

The difference is that JSP doesn't have children, so she never actually had to make educational decisions.