To ask if anyone is now considering home education full time?

[PogTheDog]

I know most people can't wait for their children to return to school on Monday. However, is anyone now considering (all already decided) full time home education?

I have loved teaching my primary school aged children and they have enjoyed it too. I will send them back to school on Monday as I'm not brave enough to make a commitment to it yet, but may consider starting in September. Anyone else?

Also if I did it it would be until the end of year 6 and then she would go off to secondary as I feel the breadth of subject choices is much better and in depth and social learning at secondary is huge.

How do people work ft and home school? Or is it just for people who are able to not work through having inheritance or a partner who works and doesn’t mind you not working ??

Genuinely baffled reading posts that say people work full time single parents and home educate, genuinely how, I have to be logged in for 8.30 and normally have 3-5 hours of scheduled zooms throughout the day with another 3-4 hours free to fit everything else in - emailing, writing up, spreadsheets and all that - and fit a break for lunch in all whilst being available on work phone and text at my managers needs. How can you do any real work and plan it all and mark it, or go to all these groups and events that home educators go to?

No because we have to work.

Sorry - me again, but it's interesting to think about all this. I think if you are focusing on how to recreate the exact experiences that you get at school thorough home education, then it probably isn't possible.

For me, the whole point of home education is that we aren't limited by a schedule that has to meet the needs of 30 other children and a curriculum that has to be accessible to a whole class, so it wouldn't be possible to recreate that in a large group, even if we wanted to.

We home ed largely because there are other experiences that we prioritise over those which school provide. I don't think of it as 'missing out' on a particular kind of friendship or other school-specific experiences so much as having opportunities for a wide range of other experiences and relationships.

Someone who sends their child to boarding school might say that they really value the kind of friendships you form when you live with your peers, but that probably wouldn't be enough to make you choose it for your kids. I feel the same about school friendships and home ed. And most people feel that way about home Ed which is completely understandable!

I have to be logged in for 8.30 and normally have 3-5 hours of scheduled zooms throughout the day with another 3-4 hours free to fit everything else in - emailing, writing up, spreadsheets and all that - and fit a break for lunch in all whilst being available on work phone and text at my managers needs.

My job is nothing like that - it's super flexible and I rarely need to speak to anyone at all, so I can fit it in around home ed by working in the evenings, at weekends and when the kids are otherwise occupied. My husband's job is the same.

I can't see how you could make it work with your schedule unless your children were older and more independent.

How can you do any real work and plan it all and mark it, or go to all these groups and events that home educators go to?

We don't really do work that needs physical planning and marking as such - it tends to be much more hands on, but it is a lot of work to organise! I don't get much 'downtime' but it's worth it for us.

@MyDcAreMarvel

Why do so many people think home educated children don’t interact with friends. They socialise more and in a more natural way than school children. Also remote schooling is not home educating. Is really sad that so many parents are counting down the hours until 9am Monday.

Yes, it’s very sad that I’m counting down the hours to:

• Being able to wfh without interruptions.
• DH being able to start job hunting after being made redundant before Xmas, instead of being in charge of homeschooling and keeping DD occupied while I’m working.
• DD (an only child) being able to play with her friends, spend time with other people instead of just us, and hopefully going back to her usual happy self.

But no, we’re being selfish, while I’m sure you’re the best parent ever

I think if you are focusing on how to recreate the exact experiences that you get at school thorough home education, then it probably isn't possible.

Yes, I think that's the crux of it, isn't it? And ultimately, it boils down to the question of whether you value the opportunities and experiences that school can offer, or whether you put a higher priority on the different experiences that HE can offer instead. And that decision will no doubt be determined by the individual needs of your children as well as the offerings of your local schools, your personal capacity to HE and your own experiences and memories of childhood.

I think it's honest to acknowledge that HE can't recreate everything that schools offer, just as schools can't recreate the experiences that HE children might have. Your comparison with boarding school is quite right - I imagine that the friendships forged in that environment are closer again than the ones that my dd might form in a day school, but I wouldn't personally choose to prioritise that over her relationship with her parents. We might each draw the line in a different place and prioritise different things, depending on what we consider to be most important.

I can understand the appeal of HE in some areas, and I can see that there are some positives that you can't recreate within the school system - particularly around the freedom from routine and the opportunities to pursue a child's individual interests. Those are attractive aspects of HE, but for me, what we'd lose from the school experience would be much too great, especially for a child like mine who thrives on social interactions above all else. I can totally understand others feeling that the benefits of HE outweigh what they would lose from the school experience, because their kids will be different from mine. What I cannot really understand yet is those parents who get very defensive about their decision to HE and are reluctant to accept that any choices need to be made. Either they are truly recreating the same social opportunities that you would get in a school, and I just don't understand how they're doing it, or they have decided that those opportunities aren't a particularly high priority for them but they don't want to acknowledge this. Your position, @BoyTree, makes perfect sense.

@Tohaveandtohold

I can never home school my child full time. She thrives on interaction with her peers and also her teachers. I also think school gives more than just education so won’t consider it really

This applies to our family too

Both our lockdown "homeschool" experiences have been horrible, draining and an emotional minefield for all involved.
I'm counting down the minutes to 9am 8/3

However, real home education is different. If we had more options to get out into the real world, do our usual sports/ Scouting, and get tutors to support the trickier areas (DS1 has SENs) then that's quite a different situation to what we've just endured. Oh and being freed from a restrictive curriculum that doesn't work well for their interests/ aptitude.

While it's been near impossible to bribe/ cajole/ threaten submissible work out of them, they have had learning experiences. Some weeks ago, the sun came out sonwe drove off to find an open sports court to play football on. We looked at the medieval well which due to flooding, had a better flow than usual. The river was flooding and we talked anout the river processes and how the defences work. There was a lot of education there, just not in the format that school requires.

School works reasonably well for most children most of the time. Done well, there is a value in home education and if school really was not working for my DC's well being then I would not rule it out but it would need careful consideration of how to do it to meet all our needs. Lockdown learning was just the shittiest combination of all variables.

@EllieQ if your dh is unemployed and home schooling then you should have been able to work without interruptions.
My children’s opportunities to play with friends are no different than your child’s. Only Covid has prevented them spending time with other people.
Why couldn’t you dh job hunt? Home schooling does not take the whole day.
I am self employed dh works from home.
I didn’t say you were selfish , that was your word , not mine.

@AlexaShutUp

Yes, I understood what you meant. I guess for me, opportunities to forge really close friendships are very important, and in my experience, I have found that the regular, extended contact with friends at school leads to much closer friendships than the less frequent interactions through extracurricular activities, part time jobs etc. So from that perspective, I guess home ed wouldn't be a practical choice for parents like me who want to prioritise that kind of friendship opportunity. However, I can see that it's perfectly possible for HE kids to have lots of social contact of a different nature by mixing with kids in various other settings.

I can't say I've found that the quality of "closeness" or relationships in schools is particularly better overall.

Typically home educated kids do see the same kids again and again, not just a random assortment, and they are often more engaged with them than you see in typical extra-curricular activities. Many of the kids in the community we lived in had known each other very well for many years. They also will organise themselves to see each other once they are older. They tend to have a wider age range in their friendships as well as they typically aren't separated out to the same extent by age. Often they are much closer to any siblings and their parents, too.

However, the other side of this is that schools, even for extroverted kids who enjoy school and their friends, can also be very socially unhealthy.

‘Socially unhealthy’? In what way?

Yes I am homeschooling my youngest after the shit show his school did with him since last September. They failed him big time so I am not sending him back .

I've no plans to change at the moment, but I actually know more than a few home educators who are discussing getting their children, particularly teenagers, transferring into schools and colleges. Many have found lockdown home educating brutal in many ways.

For several years I home educated four children full time, then starting in 2019, my older three chose to go to school either full time or part time -- to just end up back home, but with their school work.

I'm still full-time home educating my youngest, part time home educating a teen who is hoping to go full-time at college in September everything going well enough. I'm actually mostly worried about these two, particularly my youngest as all his social activities have been closed for nearly a year. I'm definitely mulling over how to best support him as things reopen when we're unsure when or even if some of his things will return. And yes, I'm in the bad parent camp where I'm looking forward to 8:30 on Tuesday when my 16-year-old will leave to go back to college - we all need it, mostly him.

There are pros and cons, benefits and risks and responsibilities to all the education options which all give different experiences. Neither the home ed is shite and schools are so beneficial and home ed is amazing & we can do everything and schools are shite sides are fully representative. I think part of the reason some of us home educators get so defensive is its often assumed we're doing it out of bad motives and many of the issues in home education show up in schools so when people are pro-school education act like it only happens to home ed kids, it can feel like ignoring crap on your doorstep to point at ours.

Yes, social isolation is an issue for some in many home education communities - it can also be for children who are school educated. Not everyone makes lovely friends in school. Poor academics and lack of access to qualifications is an issue in home education communities, there can be additional barriers when you have to pay and find exam centres -- but when all the schools around you are 'inadequate'/failing that have essentially had years of children written off because it's that part of town or your child's needs have already been failed by a school, pointing out that some home ed kids aren't getting well educated and parents can't teach everything so are limiting out children's options can feel like a bit of a slap and fake concern for our children.

What I cannot really understand yet is those parents who get very defensive about their decision to HE and are reluctant to accept that any choices need to be made. Either they are truly recreating the same social opportunities that you would get in a school, and I just don't understand how they're doing it, or they have decided that those opportunities aren't a particularly high priority for them but they don't want to acknowledge this.

I think it's probably from the pov of why would you compare the two? They are compeletely different so by choosing home ed it is a given that you do not prioritise the school experience.

Sort of like saying to someone who lives in rural Norfolk 'How do you recreate the cultural opportunities available in London? Or do you not prioritise a choice of theatres and art galleries?'. It comes across as a bit critical and it's hard to answer without sounding defensive because you're being judged against someone else's norms, even though you have perfectly good reasons for your choices.

What about HEs in inner cities? How do they do it? I’m not being flippant- it’s a genuine question. Like I said previously, I take my hat off- I couldn’t do it myself. I work in one of the most deprived areas in the country and of the few times I’ve either see children being taken off roll to be home educated... they weren’t being taken off roll to be home educated. They were just being taken off roll by their parens/ guardians for a variety of other reasons.

Sort of like saying to someone who lives in rural Norfolk 'How do you recreate the cultural opportunities available in London? Or do you not prioritise a choice of theatres and art galleries?'. It comes across as a bit critical and it's hard to answer without sounding defensive because you're being judged against someone else's norms, even though you have perfectly good reasons for your choices.

I totally get what you're saying, but to carry the analogy further, this thread was asking if lockdown had made people want to consider home educating. Let's say that's akin to asking if we have been encouraged to think about moving to rural Norfolk. My response was to say, actually, no, because this lockdown has really helped me to appreciate all of the theatres and art galleries that we have here in London, and I've really realised how incredibly important those experiences are to me and my family, and indeed to many others around me. I don't think I could possibly recreate those experiences on the same scale if we moved to rural Norfolk, so that wouldn't be an option.

And instead of coming back and saying, yes, it's a given that we don't have as many theatres and art galleries in rural Norfolk, but we have beautiful countryside, clean air and a great sense of community which we value even more than all the cultural stuff that London has to offer, some of the rural Norfolk dwellers have come on here saying OMG, I just can't believe that people are so ignorant, of course we have just as many galleries and theatres here in rural Norfolk, and actually, they're way better than the London ones....

I'm more than happy to accept that rural Norfolk is bloody marvelous for those who choose that kind of lifestyle, but it would be absurd to suggest that the people who live there have exactly the same access to everything that London has to offer as well.

Some HEers seem happy to accept that different people have different priorities, and that there are things which schools can offer that HE cannot (and vice versa, obviously). Others seem hell bent on making the case that HE can do everything that schools can and more. I'm not convinced about the latter, personally.

I don't think I could possibly recreate those experiences on the same scale if we moved to rural Norfolk, so that wouldn't be an option.

To be fair, some posts were more like:

'Yes, rural Norfolk offers a chance to live a completely different lifestyle, but children need the things London can offer them and I can't see how rural Norfolk could offer anything that compares without setting up their own version of London.'

Yes, maybe @BoyTree. I can only speak for my own posts which were very clearly talking about my dc and kids like her...who very definitely need the stimulation and culture that London can offer (stretching the analogy a bit here, but you know what I mean). I did acknowledge that rural Norfolk would be great for kids with a different temperament/different interests/different needs, but I still got jumped on by posters who thought I was being terribly ignorant to even suggest that rural Norfolk couldn't offer the same cultural opportunities that London does. Why not just acknowledge that they each have something to offer, and that some kids will thrive more in the city and others will be much happier in the countryside?

Kids need exposure to other people, and extroverted kids need lots of exposure. Yes, home educated kids can go to groups and activities etc, they can socialise with other kids etc, but unless the home education community effectively sets up an alternative school, the kids will miss out on the sense of community and wide exposure that school provides.

Your post above does sound like your are generalising beyond your own kids.

I just don't know how you would create the same level of interaction, and continuity of relationships, that kids get from a school environment. I'll happily be corrected if anyone can tell me how this would actually work in practice.

Again, I'm sure you had no ill-intent but it comes across as though deviation from the norm needs to be justified in the context of the mainstream choice rather than being a legitimate choice in its own right.

I am honestly not trying to have a go at you because it's been an interesting discussion. But given that we seem to be in broad agreement, I just wanted to highlight how the implicit bias towards school as the 'norm' can come across as critical of those who have made different choices.

No. My eldest thrived and was able to get on with it himself because he's school provided on line live lessons for every lesson on his time table. He said there was less distractions so he was taking in more, however he was in his room online ready for lessons from 8am until 3 every day and it did concern me that he was going to become very isolated.

My youngest didn't work so well, thrives off social interaction and would only do work she found interesting. It felt like a battle every day. She had live lessons spread out at different times during the day/week and we'd only know what time the lessons were on the actual day so I found it very difficult to juggle and actually quite pressurising.

Kids need exposure to other people, and extroverted kids need lots of exposure. Yes, home educated kids can go to groups and activities etc, they can socialise with other kids etc, but unless the home education community effectively sets up an alternative school, the kids will miss out on the sense of community and wide exposure that school provides.

Your post above does sound like your are generalising beyond your own

I accept that I was generalising with regard to the statement that kids need exposure to other people. I stand by that, and haven't actually come across any HEers who would disagree with this basic principle. My other comments were referring specifically to extroverted kids like my dd, who get their energy primarily through being around other people. In other words, I was talking about my dd and other kids like her. I'm sorry if this wasn't clear - I did acknowledge further down in the same post that I could see how HE might work for more introverted kids. (NB when I say extrovert/introvert, I am referring solely to what energises people and helps them charge their batteries, rather than passing any comment on social skills/sociability etc.) If I'm honest, I still don't fully understand how a very extroverted child would get the level of social contact that they might need from an HE situation, unless they were literally going to groups all day every day...which starts to look rather like school.

I just don't know how you would create the same level of interaction, and continuity of relationships, that kids get from a school environment. I'll happily be corrected if anyone can tell me how this would actually work in practice.

Again, I'm sure you had no ill-intent but it comes across as though deviation from the norm needs to be justified in the context of the mainstream choice rather than being a legitimate choice in its own right.

Again, I'm sorry if it came across like that. I was responding to a poster who had called me ignorant for thinking that HE might not provide the level of exposure and contact that a really extroverted child might need. I wasn't asking anyone to justify the choices that they had made for their own kids, but rather to explain to me how this could be achieved. I'm afraid I still don't get it.

I have no problem with other people doing HE if it suits them and suits their kids. School isn't the right environment for everyone, and I totally support parents who choose what's right for their kids. However, if you have a child like mine who really thrives on being around lots of other people, it's hard to see how it can work for those kids. I've always known that she is energised by being with other people, as it has been obvious since she was tiny, but the recent lockdown has only highlighted for me just how incredibly important this is for her. Personally, I am more introverted so for me, it isn't such a big deal.

But yes, I think we are broadly in agreement, and I too have enjoyed the discussion.

@crazyontheweekend Hi, I am interested to try home education. I didn't understand what you mean by try different classes. I though they learn everything at home? Or do you mean there are extra curricular activities for home Ed kids? If you can clarify, I would be grateful!