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.

As a teacher, if we could manage on one salary I absolutely would home school.

The fact is the curriculum, with progress 8 and all that goes with it means that kids are effectively being judged by one standard. The Einstein quote ‘if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its entire life believing its stupid’ is so pertinent in todays education system.

I teach maths, and the amount of kind, funny, artistic, emotionally mature, inquisitive, creative children who believe they are thick because they can’t master trigonometry, or quadratics is so so sad; most adults don’t grow up needing half the crap that’s taught on the curriculum yet for most of their teenage years they are made to feel like it’s the most important thing in the world.

I don’t know what the answer is, but there has got to be a better way than how and what we currently teach, and assess. If I could give my sons a different education and still allow them the same life choices they’d get from a ‘normal education’ I absolutely would do it in a heartbeat.

Fireandflames666 I am so sorry to hear that, how awful for all those situations. And for all those bullied at school and made to feel they are stupid because of school. So sad.

Loose women is a discussion programme . Everyone is entitled to an opinion .

Teachers have years of training to teach lots of the parents aren’t teachers that home school .

Teachers have years of training to teach lots of the parents aren’t teachers that home school .

That makes no sense.

The sense is clear to me - possibly because as a teacher I am used to interpreting work!

Yes, must be that

I'm sure you can interpret it but it still doesn't make sense.

Well since I understood what it said I didn’t feel the need to make a poster feel bad about their grammar

I never thought my DD would be home schooled. Ever. After being severely bullied for 3 years and then being physically attacked, she tried to commit suicide. The school simply could not make the bullying stop. So now she is home schooled. I pay for her to do GCSEs online. She is in a virtual online classroom every day. For her mental health I had to do it. I feel she is actually getting a better education than she had in school but I have reached a point where her grades are the least of my worries. My priority is keeping her alive. If she was still in high school I dread to think what might have happened.

Audreyhelp

Teachers might have had years of training to teach but they don’t actually teach anything more than the NC.

Faced with a child who cannot read or doesn’t understand maths and their training appears to not have covered that sort of thing

I was able to teach Ds where all other teaching had failed.

I haven’t got a qualification in anything.

Audreyhelp

I have a master's degree in nursing and teach practical nursing, including a course in pediatrics. I teach students to give medications that can KILL if given improperly. (Today I had students giving medications that have been rather commonly implicated in patient deaths if too high a dose is given. We were very careful the patients got the correct dose.) Yet I can't teach Year 1 health. I'm not a "professional educator".

@tunnocks34 - yes, I think a 4 at gcse is not an appropriate ‘minimum standard’ as many people never use those skills.

I think it is much better to have a solid grasp of percentages, ratios, rates, decimals, times tables. This would be my fear - that govt would essentially use these ‘checks’ to enforce the national curriculum.

Why have gcse English either as a minimum standard? Isn’t it better to have a have pieces of writing with comprehension questions. Ability to identify bias in newspaper articles. Ability to write a letter and e-mail (ie to persuade someone or complain)?

Perhaps if there were general well-being checks (for ALL children) age 3, 6, 12 and 15 for example I wouldn’t mind so much. Kids could get their vaccines at these. They could be asked about any problems - SEN, emotional, mental health, physical health and check basic literacy and numeracy (verbally rather than written test). At 12 and 15 they could also be told about school and college options and where to get more education if they wished. I believe that children should get a bigger say in how they are educated as they get older.

Unfortunately the teachers Ds had at school with all their qualifications in teaching were not able to teach him how to read and write.

Apart from a few lessons in reception when he was just getting used to school (he is a summer born with ADHD, dyslexia and dysgraphia and nearly 9 months to 1 year younger than a lot of his class).

By the time he had figured it all out going into year 1 and looking forward to learning reading and writing those lessons were over and the NC kicked in and he couldn’t work out what was going on. He said the teacher would write things on the board and then start talking but he couldn’t read what was written on the board.

There was no help for those that couldn’t keep up and by year 3 those that had difficulties were pruned from the class either by changing schools or by HE.

There was a reason why this school had such outstanding results in their SATS tests.
Anyone who would bring their average down was quietly strong armed to leave.

I am all for making sure HE children are being educated but schools should have the same standard.

If nearly half of pupils leave school unable to read, write or add up properly shouldn’t the focus be on schools to answer the question of why they cannot teach individual pupils the basics.

I can answer the question of why but are schools willing to change fundamentally in primary school or is the NC the Holy Grail that cannot be questioned.

I teach maths, and the amount of kind, funny, artistic, emotionally mature, inquisitive, creative children who believe they are thick because they can’t master trigonometry, or quadratics is so so sad

This is so true.

I'd love an overhaul of the whole system.

I agree there is lots of teaching that can be taught at home .
I think my bad grammar really put this point across well you had a lovely teacher not putting me down.
Teachers are trained for a reason . I could home educate my child the basics and I really agree with learning through play but you can do all this alongside school.

@Audreyhelp home education is about facilitating learning not always being the teacher. What an ignorant fucking comment

Doublevodka I an so sorry to hear that. It is appalling. Schools really do have a lot to answer for. Both individual schools and the school system.

I hope your daughter will blossom in the future.

I really agree with learning through play but you can do all this alongside school

Not in my experience. By the time you have done the homework, try getting a child who can neither read nor write to do a comprehension exercise as homework.

It takes hours as he painstakingly copied my printed letters then try teaching a child after that.

Sureky the teaching you would do at home is more fun based things if your kid is going to school? I remember my dad teaching me about atoms when I was about 8.