Are you going to have a generation of Home Educated kids by parents who are not up to it?

[Thegrinchshorriblesister]

I’ve been on Home Education sites for a few years as was momentarily considering it but decided against it. The crowd was great, informative, inclusive and lots of resources were shared.

I noticed at the beginning of lockdown the member counts shot up as obviously people wanted help during lockdown. Then September came and there have been a noticeable rise in those parents deregistering their kids and asking for help regarding issues with stubborn LA or meeting resistance from their families. Or posters saying they have no access to laptops or printers and what phone apps can they use for online materials.

However - a lot of these posts are written in really poor grammar. A lot of people are clearly not set up for the huge commitment that HE is.

There is a very different feel on the site now, very much ‘us against the system’, lots of memes about having children and farming them out to be drones or robots, or not loving your children because you have teachers raise them.

It’s making me wonder will there be a generation of kids that never sit any exams and go in to adulthood with no real kind of education or children who are stuck with adults that have these views making their world very small.

The 11+ isn't scored on percentage so how did you manage that....

Im a home educater by default. My son has SEN and is on roll at a school but he only does 8 hours a week and the school /LA expect me to deliver the curriculumn at home. They call blended learning. The year before that they couldnt find a school at all.
If i didnt 'home school' hed learn nothing.

After lockdown part one l know without a doubt l couldn't do it!! I am not stupid but l don't know anywhere near enough about anything to teach- plus as an only child, my daughter needs to be with kids if her own age. At my school, we have kids who have been home educated but for whatever reason they start at school and so far, they have all been significantly behind their peers and have a lot if catching up to do. But l guess it isn't all about work, their mental health has to come into it. Wouldn't work for us as l feel l would restrict her life chances too much.

@MillieEpple

Im a home educater by default. My son has SEN and is on roll at a school but he only does 8 hours a week and the school /LA expect me to deliver the curriculumn at home. They call blended learning. The year before that they couldnt find a school at all. If i didnt 'home school' hed learn nothing.

Millie which I totally get. You have to do it, you’ve no choice.

We're seeing this with DDs best friend. Her parents took her out of school because she was struggling with the new set up - undiagnosed autism ( she won't push for diagnosis - a whole other story). Her mental health has deteriorated terribly, it's really alarming. And she is learning absolutely nothing. I'm so worried about her.

My point was that the education of the parent does not necessarily correlate with the child’s academic background so I don’t think I’ve “missed the point”. There are plenty of home ed groups normally available (not now so much with Covid) which provide all kinds of educational experiences for free or cheaply. I, too, cringe when I see misspelled posts and also I’m not keen on the whole anti vax thing which goes round with home education but overall I think it is better for most kids than school. And btw, I removed my eldest from school in Year 1 due to him having epilepsy and dyspraxia and the school being useless. It wasn’t an easy ride for us either.

Isn't the real problem here not with the people choosing to HE but with the education system (NOT teachers before I get accused of teacher bashing)?

I imagine most people choosing to HE recently have done so as they realise their child is much happier, less anxious etc not being at school. Many of those as a pp said might have SEN children who fall through the gaps.

Mental health issues and anxiety among children, teens especially, are extremely high and are rising.

While school is not the only factor in this, it's the biggest one.

Of course there is also a small number who are worried about Covid too and HE for that reason.

I don't want to HE, but if my children started displaying the school refusal, anxiety etc I see in some children I absolutely would.

If only there were better alternative provision or, even better, an upheaval of the school system and OFSTED in line with research showing best practice.

I don’t think people in this thread understand how home education actually works

No, I think OP’s point is more that many of the parents currently deregistering their children have little idea of how home ed works, and don’t know that most home educators rely on tutors and groups to cover chunks of the curriculum.

I home educate my DS. I agree it is a big commitment and it is not good if lots of people are rushing into it without proper consideration.

Their success would also depend on what resources they have available locally. We are lucky to have a tuition centre for home-educated DC. My DS does GCSE English lang and lit in a class of 5 which really suits him as he is autistic.He also does Arts Award at the local art gallery in a group for home-ed kids. Then there are plenty of other group meet ups and he socialises with his friends - sleepovers, going to the park together etc. If none of this exiisted it would be much harder.

@Pinkflipflop85

The 11+ isn't scored on percentage so how did you manage that....

You can work out the percentage due to the overall grade and the child’s score. I’m in the North West. I tutor English for the 11plus.

Op, I've no chance of proper grammar, writing on my phone, I am much better on my lap top.

Don't judge people's grammar by posts.

It's hardly a generation, it's been about 8 months and may be a year in total.

@Mistlewoeandwhine

You're right it does not necessarily correlate, but you clearly have bright, capable and hungry to learn children which makes a major difference.

If they had hated maths, struggled to grasp it and not wanted to learn you might be telling a different story.

@lazylinguist

Probably. I'm always a bit baffled that so many people think they are capable of home-educating to a good standard tbh. I'm not anti home ed in principle and, having taught for 25 years, lord knows I can understand why people have problems with the system, but I wouldn't attempt it myself.

Quite. I wouldn't suddenly roll my sleeves up and start delivering lambs on hillsides, taking the family's teeth out or doing an MOT but as we know, on MN, everyone is a better teacher than the teachers.

This is from America so sorry (I need to make my Christmas cake) but at least does have some HE stats. www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/

overall I think it is better for most kids than school

No, I don’t agree with this.

I think it is true that within the home education community, home education is better for most of those children than for school.

I do not agree that home education is better than school for most children in the general population. What an extraordinary claim.

I have poor grammar, but writing posts on my phone hobbles me entirely.

However I can help dd at home with her grammar no problem. What she has to learn is much more easy. Eg, homophones. I can do that.
So far....
I wouldn't judge people based on mn posts.

@Thesearmsofmine

I home educate my dc and have stopped posting on most home ed groups now because of how they have changed this year. People are deregistering with no thought and then coming into those groups and saying “so I took my kid out of school, now how do I home ed them?” or “will the school still provide work?” or “will I get the money that usually goes to the school for my child’s education?”. It is clear many people have not bothered to do any research into home ed when it is a big step.

I find it troubling as a home educator because these people will likely end up putting their dc back into school but not before causing changes to the way home ed is viewed and monitored.

Same. I read them to see if there's anything important or helpful, but the tenor of the posts has absolutely changed.

And it is worrying. It's the kind of thing that's going to make it harder for all HEers in the longer term.

I feel i should state i have another child in full time school.

I agree with the influx of parents who on the surface seem unprepared and illiterate. I won't voice that on any of the home ed forums though as I have faith that a lot of them will grow into the role.

I am utterly against a register on principle. I am under the radar of my LA at the moment and I hope to remain that way. Of course I have "nothing to hide" but in the same way I would be against the police knocking on my door every few months asking to see inside my home just to check I haven't stolen anything, I am against a random LA bod with little understanding of how different home education is to school "assessing" me with arbitrary school standards.

Do I think this influx of people will make a register more likely or happen faster? I am a worried it will be used as leverage, yes. I don't blame the wave of new HE families though for this. Those with a fixed agenda will fasten on anything to help their cause.

Some children, esp those with sen or anxiety etc have actually done surprisingly well under lock down.. My 8 year old flew under lock down.

My older dd started to suffer towards to the end, so like with everything else in life, some flourished, some suffered, it's not blanket either way.

I think “generation” is over egging the pudding.

Will there be an increase in hone educated children, for whom either whom education doesn’t suit them or their parent doesn’t manage it well? Yes.
A generation? No.

Some kids who are HE now would be better off in school, but the parent wants to HE. Some would be so much happier and learn more HE, if only the parents could afford that. But we’re talking tiny numbers, surely?

@PandemicPavolova

I have poor grammar, but writing posts on my phone hobbles me entirely.

However I can help dd at home with her grammar no problem. What she has to learn is much more easy. Eg, homophones. I can do that.
So far....
I wouldn't judge people based on mn posts.

They were not MN posts it’s a HE facebook page.

I actually disagreed with a post stating that people who sent their children to school were narcissistic because they only had their child for selfish reasons as they passed them on to teachers to raise

I had a response back from the author of the post saying he would ‘go wolverine on my arse if I didn’t fuck off from his page’

Completely different feel to the page now.

I’m not a home educator, and never will be, but I think it’s very important that people have the right to home educate if they so wish. If there really is currently a large number of children being pulled out of school, given scant education and essentially being radicalised by parents with strongly held conspiracy theory type views (the type of people who probably think they’re much cleverer than they are, see the Dunning-Kruger effect) then the whole future of home education is surely going to be put at risk?

One of the things that has struck me about the influx of people deregistering recently is that they need to be spoon fed information via Facebook strangers instead of doing some research themselves. We have all this information available to us but instead of finding for example the legal implications of home educating on the governments website. they ask people on a Facebook group. Often there are several incorrect replies(usually then an admin comes along and states the facts).

@GreyBow

I agree with the influx of parents who on the surface seem unprepared and illiterate. I won't voice that on any of the home ed forums though as I have faith that a lot of them will grow into the role.

I am utterly against a register on principle. I am under the radar of my LA at the moment and I hope to remain that way. Of course I have "nothing to hide" but in the same way I would be against the police knocking on my door every few months asking to see inside my home just to check I haven't stolen anything, I am against a random LA bod with little understanding of how different home education is to school "assessing" me with arbitrary school standards.

Do I think this influx of people will make a register more likely or happen faster? I am a worried it will be used as leverage, yes. I don't blame the wave of new HE families though for this. Those with a fixed agenda will fasten on anything to help their cause.

I can understand your reluctance to be 'under the radar' of the LA but this does make me smile though.

There is no suitable school for DS due to his SEN so I am forced to educate him at home, the LA actually funds some of the learning he does. But they have taken zero interest in whether he has actually made any progress or what he actually does all day in the 4 years he has been out of the school system. They've completely washed their hands of him. It's a disgrace.