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.

HE is banned in other countries and for good reason in my opinion. There are safe-guarding issues (maybe less so in the UK, but how many times do we hear about children in the States who have been kept as prisoners for years by their own mentally ill parents because they were never registered in the system?). Also unless you really know what you are doing there is a real risk of a home-educated child not reaching their full potential.

I think it’s inevitable that the huge increase in home education will result in a shake up of the system and more scrutiny being placed on families who choose this path. There has been pressure for this from children’s rights campaigners for a long time anyway.

It really annoys me when people say parents are lazy or don’t care about their children’s educations because they can’t transform in to this magical home teacher.

There are so many factors that affect home learning being affective, but people are that narrow minded that they automatically think it’s the parents who don’t put the effort it.

And it’s usually said by someone who has found home schooling a breeze. “I did it no problem so there’s no excuse” Fuck off.

One of my home ed groups has regular meetups and subject specialists teach the group. So for example, one of the mums has a chemistry PhD so will do experiments etc with the children. We also do things with the kinds of people who go into schools as well, like portable observatories, museums, animal centres etc.

That sounds brilliant. I knew that lots of home educators formed groups for the children to socialise and to share resources. I guess that, like the OP, my concern would be that the people who have decided to do it very recently wouldn't necessarily be either able to (if the reason they're doing it is because of a family need to shield) or prepared enough to (if it's an unresearched decision to HE) access this sort of thing? Again, I don't at all doubt that HE can be done well, but like the OP I wonder if it there will be a lot of people doing it for the first time at the moment who won't have the ability, resources or commitment for many of the things that make it work so well for others.

212bazookas I doubt if any parents are up to the required standard in all subjects.

They don't need to be. Home Education is not limited to teaching by the parents; the children might be taught by any number of other skilled people. One to one teaching/instruction./demonstration and encouragement at that child's level and speed can be far more effective than learning in a class of 20+
I am talking about teaching up to A level standard. That's why I said that children whose parents don't want, or can't afford tutors are doing their children a disservice.
There are some homeschoolers who do a good job by a combination of professionals and parents, but I expect many more do not.

@lazylinguist says the government,1.1 Elective home education is a term used to describe a choice by parents to provide education for their children at home or in some other way they desire, instead of sending them to school full-time.

That doesn't contradict anything I said though,and it doesn'tsupport your definition at all. It doesn't specify 100% parental responsibility for the child's education. Nor that resources must all be sourced by the parents. It doesn't even say that resources are not provided by a school - it says instead of sending them to school. And, judging by the final few words of the part you quoted, you could even be said to be home educating if you continued to send your child to school part-time!

What is different this year, is that there are people who have rushed into it, as a response to the current situation, who haven’t researched, prepared,nor maybe even thought about how to go about it. Particularly those who have a limited grasp of the basics,*

  Do you really think  such parents will stick at  HE ?  
More likely they'll be climbing the walls before long

Teachers and schools are very aware of who their vulnerable students are and there are different layers of support in place to identify and support them.

That's a massive generalisation that is definitely not universally true.

I grew up in a severely abusive and neglectful home and the adults in my home had substance abuse and DV problems. Not a single teacher ever noticed even when I was regularly turning up to school with visible injuries or dirty torn clothing, and when my attendance started to drop I was treated as simply being naughty and punished. My school had a homework policy that all homework had to be entered into a "homework diary" which had to be signed by a parent. I didn't have engaged parents able to sign my homework diary, so this was simply not physically possible for me. I got detention about a hundred times and not once did it occur to anyone at my school to try to contact my parents or to ask why my parents never ever signed my homework diary. I literally told a teacher once that I was scared of home and didn't feel safe at home and she just sort of patted my hand and made vague sympathetic noises. She certainly didn't tell anyone or flag it.

In my experience which vulnerable children are flagged and which go ignored is often very much down to class. One of my best friends in school lived on a council estate with a single mum, the school were constantly all over her trying to paint her mum as being a bad parent. Working class families are often subject to excessive scrutiny, while obvious abuse or neglect within middle class families goes totally ignored. My family were very upper middle class and my dad was a Cambridge grad, which meant I basically could have gone to school naked with one limb dropping off without any of the teachers even considering the possibility of abuse.

it isn't as simple as opting out and disappearing.
This is literally what happened to me. I had health problems which meant that getting myself to school (school was an hour away) with zero parental support was increasingly difficult. My attendance dropped more and more. School didn't notice or care, apart from yelling at me. No one attempted to get in touch with my parents to discuss it. Eventually my lack of attendance was flagged and someone from Social Services came to my house, tried to physically shove my bedroom door open, and yelled at me that if I didn't stop "being naughty" and start going to school I'd be forcibly dragged out and sent to live with a foster family who would MAKE me behave. I was 12.

My mum didn't want SS bothering her so she contacted an HE group who gave her a template letter to send to the LEA saying she'd decided to home educate me. That was the last contact I had with the outside world for four years. Literally no one in authority made the tiniest effort to check up on me. I mean they could literally have killed me and no one would have ever noticed I was gone.

Says who? Surely it just means educating your children at home? Just because the home ed community might have decided on their own narrow interpretation of the phrase, that doesn't mean everybody else has to abide by it.

There is no one home ed community - just like there is no one school ed community.

Some home education spaces welcome 'afterschooling' by parents organizing education alongside school, just like some welcome 'carschooling' (commonly used for those who are home educated but also in sports or other activities where they travel a lot). Some find both of these go against their educational ideals and feel these two groups are more pressurized than they think home education should be (this also tends to be the group that brags about having never used a worksheet).

Some home educators preferred during the first lockdown for there to be a divide between home education and home schooling with school resources because many were using poor versions of the latter to bash the former or just to make it easy to distinguish between two groups doing two different if overlapping things. Some felt there were no need for any division.

I'm in the middle of seeing afterschooling and carschooling as variants of home education, but also viewing home education and home schooling as different. Not really for me, but for many parents who are fighting to get school resources. When so many children are being left out through no choice of their own, it's important to acknowledge that there are children who can't access exams because home educating parents have to pay for them and at this time not everywhere has places home educated children can take exams. People like to say that a parent's choice, but not all teenagers have access to a school that will meet their needs. Acknowledging the differences for home educated teenagers makes it easier to discuss and help them gain access. My local college now has a home educated teenager programme, separate from its GCSE resit programme, to help meet that need.

It's why it winds me up when people go on about how GCSE and A levels - and their equivalents - are why people shouldn't home educate. It not only entirely ignores the primary level and how secondaries handle having children from outstanding to inadequate primary experiences (and colleges doing the same for secondary) but the issues of teenagers being off-rolled and parents feeling the only safe option is to remove children from schools that are inadequately dealing with violence. Peer-on-peer abuse is on the rise and schools have less and less resources to deal with so many issues now being put on them to solve.

We can go on about the potential risks of home education and what can be done about that in terms of safety and helping kids reach their potential and the very real truth that not every family can home educate well, but not every school is doing well in those areas either and for some families it's the choice between the inadequate unsafe school they can access and what they can scramble together at home. People are falling through the cracks on all sides, and nothing is helped by acting like either is always great while the other is always shite. We have struggling systems and people trying to make their way through them. Some can do it well with ease, others not so much and it's not always easy to tell which is which before covid was added to the mix.

The Way Things Have Always Been Done is almost inevitably wrong. Since Queen Victoria learned to write with a quill pen, there are new and better ways to communicate. (Including technology to type out what is dictated into the laptop)
There is no excuse for stubbornly sticking to anything else done the way it has been for centuries. Covid19 or not, there is no need to round up any group and force them into physical attendance in a building. (Australians were home schooling long ago, but it was work posted and work discussed by contact with teacher by radio)

The potential for new technology is transformative and inclusive, with enormous benefits. Cost, of course, since the State will not need to fund most of the buildings involved in any level of education. Inability for bullies to access victims. Ability of the previously excluded to be included e.g. those with physical difficulty can learn from their bed.

Also, there is no need for the segregation by birth date. If a parent notices an online class of interest, they will study. If a young child races ahead of anyone his own age, because he is entranced with an area of learning, nothing need hold him back. Individuals of all ages can find their level, and can devise their own personal syllabus.

Learning has long been in need of change, because it is obviously not possible to assume any knowledge (including professional) is 'done to you' in youth, (by sitting with a teacher/lecturer repeating what they and their grandfather were told) and then you have a way to earn a living for the rest of your life.

The most practical skills probably have the best staying power, so a care assistant or farm labourer or plumber may be more securely employed than a lawyer, whose body of knowledge may be overturned by an app. which does the job better, faster and nearly free of charge

If schools are regarded as childminders, there are better, cheaper ways to do that. More parents and more firms will insist on WFH, so merely having someone in the same building as the child is a much smaller problem now. Further education practical and sandwich courses have been wrongly despised and deprived of funding. Now, it must be obvious that permitting infantalised adults to spend full time years to study a single degree subject is virtually never sensible.

The home schoolers have pioneered, so did the O.U. But now everyone must exploit the range of new possibilities. Professional educators can check on pupils doing work devised by the finest experts in the world. U.K. is miles behind, educationally and in health standards clearly.

We can go on about the potential risks of home education and what can be done about that in terms of safety and helping kids reach their potential and the very real truth that not every family can home educate well, but not every school is doing well in those areas either and for some families it's the choice between the inadequate unsafe school they can access and what they can scramble together at home. People are falling through the cracks on all sides, and nothing is helped by acting like either is always great while the other is always shite. We have struggling systems and people trying to make their way through them. Some can do it well with ease, others not so much and it's not always easy to tell which is which before covid was added to the mix.

As a home educator turned school teacher, I'd say that's just about right.

Very sensibly summed-up, BiBabbles. I just don't think that it does the image of home-educators a lot of favours when some are pouncing on people for daring to describe their home-learning efforts as home education or home schooling,when there is in fact no specific definition of what it must entail.

@EmilyinWolverhampton I'm so sorry about your experiences as a child, which are shocking and unforgiveable. Safeguarding in schools has improved a lot since then, though sadly mostly as the result of tragic cases where individual children were badly failed.

That doesn't contradict anything I said though,and it doesn'tsupport your definition at all. It doesn't specify 100% parental responsibility for the child's education. Nor that resources must all be sourced by the parents. It doesn't even say that resources are not provided by a school - it says instead of sending them to school. And, judging by the final few words of the part you quoted, you could even be said to be home educating if you continued to send your child to school part-time!

Sending a child to school part time is called flexischooling and again is different to full time elective home education and has to be agreed by a school head.*

Anyone who thinks that taking full responsibility for a child’s full time education and the responsibilities that come with that legally and otherwise is the same as someone setting their kids a bit of extra homework or taking them to a museum at the weekend has no idea. A parent who electively home educates must provide an adequate education for their child’s age, aptitude and ability by law, someone who does a bit of extra homework on the side of school has outsourced that responsibility to the government. Yes home educators may use tutors or their child may attend forest school or similar or they might buy a curriculum to use but by law the ultimate responsibility lies with that parent. It is the parent who Is contacted regarding the education they are providing, it is the parent who can be taken to court if the education isn’t deemed suitable. Can you be taken to court if your child doesn’t do the extra work you set them?

I’m not sure why parents who use the school Tustin are so keen to consider themselves home educators?

school system”

There is a large home educated group where I live, but it’s not home education done by the parents. These are wealthy parents using various tutors. I have a teacher friends who now work in home school tutoring full time. It’s a form of home education that is for the few and cannot be compared to parents educating their children full time. The parents still call it home schooling when it’s really parents chauffeuring their children to private lessons.

I suppose it depends on each learning style and if they have an inclination for researching things themselves. I know I have and still do learn things from books and online resources. I remember when I went back to school, I was miles ahead and was explaining things I had learnt online/via books to my peers.

@Barmyfarmy
Anyone who thinks that 15/5 = 1.5 shouldn't be allowed to educate children.

I’m not sure why parents who use the school system are so keen to consider themselves home educators?

I think you're imagining their keenness. I doubt they give much thought to the terminology really. I expect as far as they are concerned they are contributing to or supplementing their child's education and doing so at home - i.e. educating their dc (partly) at home. They don't see any harm in referring to it as home education because they don't realise that it will cause such offence to permanent full-time home-edders. So they are probably somewhat surprised when people screech "That's not home educating!" at them. I'm not talking about people who just occasionally take their dc to a museum - that's not education on its own, it's a day out. I mean people who substantially supplement their child's schooling by actively teaching them, or even who temporarily teach their children at home using school resources or other resources.

It's education. It's at home. Why would it occur to them that they mustn't call it home education?

@EmilyinWolverhampton Sorry you went through that. That sounds so difficult to deal with. I hope things have improved since then.

[quote Chickenkatsu]@Barmyfarmy
Anyone who thinks that 15/5 = 1.5 shouldn't be allowed to educate children.[/quote]
That is painful. I don't even know how they're getting that.

@MimiDaisy11 they think that the 5s absorb each other so that they have to move the decimal place maybe?

I am talking about teaching up to A level standard. That's why I said that children whose parents don't want, or can't afford tutors are doing their children a disservice
There are some homeschoolers who do a good job by a combination of professionals and parents, but I expect many more do not

Every single child I know - 30 plus at least, who wanted to do A levels, went to college to do them. This is how I know people don't know anything about how the majority home educate because GCSEs and A Levels are always brought up triumphantly as some kind of Gotcha! The majority home ed parents do not believe themselves to be capable of educating to A Level standard and that's why the children nearly all go to college to do them OR to do a vocational course that is suited to their requirements, needs and abilities.

When people say this and stick by it as their reason for believing home ed cannot work and is doomed to fail, they are showing their rigidity of thought, that they can only see one educational route for a child:-

Outstanding Primary -> outstanding secondary -> 5-10 GOOD GCSE! -> 3-4 GOOD A-LEVELS! -> Uni of choice.

There's so much more available than this. Your way is not the only way and thank goodness for that when you consider the huge numbers of children falling through the cracks because they're simply unable to manage in a mainstream environment and cannot follow your determined process of How Things Should Be. Step outside your boxes for a moment and consider that this way cannot and does not suit all children and there are multiple alternatives.

It's education. It's at home. Why would it occur to them that they mustn't call it home education?-

Well now anyone reading this does know @lazylinguist so that’s something. And yes people are keen to be seen to home ed, I’ve been involved in home ed for a number of years now and have seen so many people claim they are home educating their1, 2 or 3 year olds and then go on to send them to nursery and school, others give their child a bit of extra work after school, join home ed groups online and claim they home ed. It seems quite a trend. By that definition anyone who ever does anything with their child is a home educator even the most basic things like taking them for a walk or reading a book together. Those things are educational but are not by themselves home education.

YANBU

But this bit
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
I don't think is unusual, going by the stuff a couple of acquaintances of mine who HE share! They have a very negative view of schools (despite never having used them) which is quite different to my/my children's experience of them (if they were as bad as they think I would also HE!).