To think that home schooling is a bit cult like?

[WobblyWellies]

This is purely anecdotal but based on a group of friends who are all home schooling now, it makes me feel like there is a cult like element to it. There's definitely a click amongst the mums. One of my friends in the group has changed quite a bit since she started home schooling. She's almost become a bit militant about the whole thing. She often posts things on social media about how terrible schools are for children and how home schooling is much better. I feel like she's stirring things up. I am in fact a teacher but I don't push school on people I meet or social media, it's totally individual choice how you want your child educated. I'm not sure if my friend is out to convert people.

However, I do see homeschooling as a privilege to a certain extent because it relies on a parent not working (or part time) and is self funded for the majority. My friend has a house with acres of land and woods, she does loads of outdoor learning with her kids which is great but I wouldn't say it's the norm to have that.

So this group of friends are very clicky over homeschooling and it feels like a them and us scenario now.

Aibu to say it's like a cult for some people?

I ended up home schooling my youngest (aged 12 at the time) through covid as I am CEV and we couldnt risk her going to school daily until I was vaccinated. My older ones were at boarding school and so we managed them into and out of my bubble.

We decided to home school, rather than use her school’s online curriculum and teachers (which were available) as she had tried that for the last part of the 2019 school year and found it immensley frustrating at it went at the speed of the slowest child and since there were unlimited opportunities for children to not listen, then the speed of the class was glacial. I found a online provider that we could pick and choose classes from and then we worked up a timetable from there with a mixture of online academics, arts, sports and more classic home ed parent taught stuff.

What we discovered was that she thrived academically being able to move at her own speed. That some classes she was self driven and motivated and could work with just the online material and would research and follow independently. Other classes she needed some one on one tutoring to keep her jogging along. She finished the school year requirements by Feb ish and by June had finished 3 school years worth of work in Spanish, in math had done 2 school years of work, realized she hated biology and loved history and creative writing. She learned to play the flute and discovered lots of art and crafts skills using outschool.com. She was able to do a few outdoor sports that were more individual. But she became quite lonely as her friends from her old school just dropped her despite our efforts to keep the friendships going outside and over zoom.

She is now back at a new school (we moved) and is loving the social side but is using after school time to push academically as she find that the academics in school are still too slow in many subjects.

So my experience of online schooling is that it does allow you to customise for your child. Not surprisingly that is helpful in allowing your child to progress specifically where they need or want to. It also needs careful monitoring so that they dont miss out on a fully rounded experience and I dont doubt that (covid excepted) extensive socialising is as possible with home schooling as with ordinary schooling. As with everything in life, when something is done carefully and thoughtfully it can be an enriching and rewarding experience, when it is done slapdash and for the wrong reasons then it can be detrimental.

No, home education is not a safe guarding issue. It's a perfect legal choice, the legal default .

Obviously it would be easier to hide abuse if you didn't send your child to school and kept them at home all the time. But many children are abused at school. Or they are abused at home but nobody at school finds out about it or does anything about it . If there's any evidence that proves your statement "abusive parents keep their kids at home on purpose" I would like to see it please.

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I think home ed does change as children get older. Most home ed people I know decide to send their 11+ children to alternative ed settings part of the week. We are quite lucky in having Montessori and project based learning schools in my area where kids attend 2/3 days a week. There are also traditional forest schools offering days. Also the local college offers GCSE provision for home ed kids and work placements at 14. For many home ed parents there comes a time where the kids need a separate, group learning space and they will send them there. Often the kids have had a really bad school experience before home ed, so the parents take time to prepare them for return to classroom type environments with 1-1 learning and building self esteem first. Many home ed kids look up to people like Billie Eilish, Thomas Edison, Margaret Atwood, Yehudi Menhuin etc who were substantially home educated, among others. There's a very long list of successful home ed people who serve as inspiration.

For one of my home ed friends she seems unaware of what school is like now and bases her views (which she posts about on SM) on being at primary school in the 80s and a lot of stuff she's been told by other home ed people. She half-heartedly viewed a couple of primaries for her eldest, but then didn't apply because she didn't approve of their discipline expectations - which sounded just like the usual, fresh start every day approach.

I'm a similar age and my DD's primary bears little relation to my 80s primary - the lessons are inspiring and fun, the teacher is brilliant, there is a strong emphasis on creativity and art. She learnt to read fluently by end of Year 1 and really enjoyed how they learned how to do this. She likes the school dinners. PE/Games actually sounds fun rather than the misery we endured. And it's only a 'good' state primary serving an area with a higher than average number of pupils getting free school meals.

I’d really appreciate if you could share where she had her online tutoring? I use outschool sometimes but it’s hit and miss for us. I’m interested in getting extra help for one of my children in particular. Thanks in advance!

Ahh quite damning views on home educating.

We never ever thought we would home educate until our children were pretending to be sick every day because they didn’t want to go to school. It was an awful time. One of our children in particular was becoming a shadow of herself. Completely lost her love of learning. So sad.

I’d been into the school multiple times but nothing ever changed. Every time we complained things would settle down for a few weeks and then the bullying would start again. She was 7 at the time.

Its bloody hard work home educating (and trying to work also) but it was what was best for our children. They are free to return to school whenever they choose. It would be easier for me if they did!

There must be more people like me who are trying to do the best they can. We are quietly getting on with it.

I don’t believe that home education is best. I don’t believe that school is the best way either. I think children are individuals and all have different needs. As a parent all you can do is try to do your best for them to meet those needs.

I generally don’t volunteer the information that we home educate because of the judgement I receive. It’s perfectly illustrated on this thread.

"If I don’t think school is the reality of later life either. No where else in later life I can think of where you put 30 plus completely different people together for 6 hours a day and expect them to get on and I’m not an advocate of home schooling"

Well you don't expect them to "get on". You hope to give them the tools to work out how to co exist.

Also you could argue that if most children have been to school and they meet up later on than they both have that as a reality of their previous life so everyone has experience with dealing with co existing with others iyswim.

I don't think mainstream school is brilliant in every way but I can't see how you can truthfully argue that your children are mixing with a wide range of children that haven't selected through some common hobby or interest, or because they're other home schoolers. Plus I think school also introduces children to a wide range of adults to interact with.

I don't think mainstream school is brilliant in every way but I can't see how you can truthfully argue that your children are mixing with a wide range of children that haven't selected through some common hobby or interest, or because they're other home schoolers.

Isn't it the same for school kids? They mix with others through hobbies or because they are other schoolers?

Ironically my dd went to mainstream school. Where they didn't pick up on her being autistic (she was diagnosed after university) and the sen teacher laughed when I suggested she might be adhd because she was anything but hyper (she was diagnosed with adhd after she was diagnosed as autistic ) but the structure and timetabling of mainstream school was when she's been at her happiest. And she was lucky that she wasn't bullied.

However, I appreciate that that is very much not always the case.

Primary schools are pretty narrow in particular for their lack of diversity in intakes. Similar housing surrounds the school. In cities many are either faith schools or simply parents select schools with similar intakes. Round here you can pretty much walk past a school playground that’s 80-90% white then a few minutes later another that is 80-90% brown. Or one school serves an estate, the next nearest school is surrounded by leafy streets and large houses, with people even renting to get kids in. There’s not, in huge areas of the UK, much truth in claiming that school offers children exposure to a broad range of diversity for most children.

"Isn't it the same for school kids? They mix with others through hobbies or because they are other schoolers?"

Yes but, I mean you could argue that about anything. But it's still going to be a bigger pool of children at school in most cases. A small primary would have sat a 200 children?

"There’s not, in huge areas of the UK, much truth in claiming that school offers children exposure to a broad range of diversity for most children."

But there is in a range of home schoolers you physically interact with on a daily basis? And it doesn't have to be just "diversity" in a modern usage. Diversity in numbers and personalities et etc

I don’t homeschool but this post really struck a cord with me.

My DC has had a number of poor teachers a few years in a row and cca I can see the joy of learning has disappeared.

It’s not a great school and we are outside the catchment for a better one.

Firstly there is more crossover between home schooled and schooled kids than you might think. My local boxing club, scouts and music schools have both. Also. it's unlikely a child in a school of 200 will interact with all other children. Lastly, in my area it is largely white and still quite racist. There are a larger number of ethnically diverse children amongst the home ed community because of racism, which I am sure schools try to stamp out but is impossible to avoid on the way home, during break times or just as a subtle form of ostracising.

"Yes but, I mean you could argue that about anything. But it's still going to be a bigger pool of children at school in most cases. A small primary would have sat a 200 children?"

What's diverse about interacting with a greater number of similar children?

My children could interact with 30 or 1000 children of primarily white middle class Conservative parents at the local school (you'd then see a smaller subset of the same children at Scouts or dance or football),
or 30 children from 12 different countries, 5 different religions, 4 different ethnicities and a handful of SEND. (I don't ask about their politics but I am guessing that they're not all Conservative voters) and also see some of the local children at afterschool things, too.

"But there is in a range of home schoolers you physically interact with on a daily basis? And it doesn't have to be just "diversity" in a modern usage. Diversity in numbers and personalities et etc"

One day they might be at a large event with 100 at it and the following day, there could be half a dozen.

You might regularly see the same 40 children on a kind of rotating basis, depending on the activities you've signed up for, in a reasonably-sized town.

Yes. My nearest school is a faith school, I honestly don’t think we’d have Muslim friends if we hadn’t home educated the youngest ones for example (despite being about a third of the wider area we live in). There’s also a significant non-UK number who don’t want to use the UK system for various reasons. There’s a significant number of black boys/ black boys with SEN who have had poor experiences in school for various reasons. The people who are failed by school tend to be those who are a little different. The ones who opt out are often a little different.

Its actually one aspect of home Ed, having to have an attitude to set differences aside. There’s less of you, and you’re a diverse crowd. You can’t just keep hanging out with those just like you. You learn the hippies are lovely gentle people in the most part.

Obviously great diversity includes having some real twats or people you can’t stand under the umbrella of home Ed. You learn to ignore them or just rub along if the kids are ok.

@MiddleOfHere @Helenahandcartt I agree with you both. We enjoy mixing with schooled children and maintain friendships, but home ed has greatly diversified our experiences.

Those who home ed and work - how do you make that a success? The home ed groups can legally only take children for 15 hours per week which means working maybe 1.5-2 days max...

I really agree with this. I have a few HE friends. One posted on social media about how much her kids benefitted from the classes run by the local museum for HE families. She was very put out when another friend said they also run these for schools and most local children will have attended. The museum was trying to give the same opportunities to HE families as kids at school already had.

Depends on the age of their children. Plenty of teenagers are left at home while their parents work.

I don’t work a consistent pattern (dh does). I tutor at the weekends or evenings, I sometimes pick up supply teachings p/t but as a SENCo or intervention teacher. Some is just paperwork based and doesn’t need to be fully at school. I have used a range of friends/ childcare and family when working p/t. The reality of working full time while they are primary aged was after childcare x 3 I took very little home, with this bitty pattern of supply and tutoring I actually take more home. Kids are expensive every way you work it out realistically.

It's extremely difficult, often a matter of juggling two p/t incomes or working from home. It's probably impossible for some people, though I think if you are sending your 14 year old to home ed college placement it gets easier. Parents make sacrifices, such as not flying abroad for holidays, buying second hand, cycling everywhere. Even so, I am aware it's an impossibility for some people, which I think is a shame.

I would leave teenagers a day a week.

But in the scenario where they've already had 15hrs elsewhere, I wouldn't leave them for any more because we'd not fit everything in.

Personally, I wouldn't have left non-teens for anything other than the occasional day.

I know that people say you can work full time and still home-ed afterwards but in reality, that's meh (and I worked throughout home-ed even when they were little). How would you go to meet ups and trips? And find time to eat and sleep.

We didn’t we both gave up but we were able to as could apply as carers as dc get dla