To think that most people actually do understand, and therefore support, home education...

[PennyRa]

And it's just a loud minority that are ignorant?

Why would a teacher have to get onto a medical degree? Wtf.

Because as I said, in some countries it is harder to become a teacher than a doctor.

What's that got to do with anything? You need a good degree in this country to do a PGCE btw (my friend with a third from Cambridge can't do a PGCE)

@PeterRabbitHadACarrot
And many medics would make lousy educators and many welders wouldn't succeed at dentistry and many accountants couldn't play football for Brazil. What's your point, other than snobbery and teacher bashing? And what relevance does that have to the Wild West that is elective home education?

I just think it's too much of a broad remit to say 'I support home education'. Of course the home educators on here are acting defensive and I'm sure all the posters are great and their children get a good standard of education, have friends (who they can meet up with independently of friends), and meet with children from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds who are not all white, middle class kids in frugi.

It is no secret no know that not all home educated children get that. I know a family whose home educated children do not socialise with other children, do no groups and are 'unschooled'. One of the children is very vocal about wanting to go to school but it's not even discussed. The family is very 'against the system' and the children just don't know how to interact with others.

I think it's great that many home educators are brilliant but it's sad some children are being let down and if anyone suggests that happens an army of posters pipe up saying 'but I do it brilliantly' so the discussion can't be had about the ones who are not doing it so we'll.

Re the socialising - when DD was a Brownie all the girls stayed in their school groups and didn't mix.

Because that was my entire point. Then I was told it was a lie and now it has nothing to do with anything.
Some other countries have different definitions of what classes as a 'good degree', the reality is many teachers simply wouldn't make the cut in other countries. Tutors, curriculums and textbooks are good alternatives. The poster I was responding too said it wasn't.
The education system needs a shake up. But apparently that isn't the case on this thread.

Are you not just seeing this particular group of mums though rather than the HE community?

I tend to see what you are describing in schools more so than HE. A lot of schools near me have very few non-white children and very few children from poorer backgrounds.

My DC who is in school only has school friends from a close local area, non further afield. They all tend to be of a similar economic background (due to the type of school and local area).

My DC who are HE mix with a much wider variety of ethnic and social backgrounds. Party due to the local HE community being spread over a much wider geographical area.
There are HE families who are very well off, some where one parent/both parents work, Dad’s are very much involved too, some much poorer families, some single parents, lots of different ethnic groups, NT children, ND children, different ages, etc etc. The HE community has such a wide mix of people. I love that my children aren’t confined to the social constraints that occur within schools.

I think to be done well it needs to have a lot of time and resources and expertise put into it, and it's rare for the average person to be up to it. I can see it would be a viable option for neurodiverse kids.
However, I used to work in a library and we had a large group of home schoolers come in once a week. They, or more specifically their obnoxious parents, were universally loathed by the staff. Entitled, rude behaviour, taking over an entire section of the library with loud, performative lessons, allowing kids to damage library books and just generally letting the little Mordecais, Persephones Orions and Pyrrhus's (actual names from the group)run riot. They were eventually given warnings about their behaviour, and did a huge flounce, saying they were going to use another library in a neighbouring area - they came from an area notorious for middle class "bohemian" hippies. They weren't missed.

I’ve just realised from reading this thread that a group I sometimes see in the park on my lunchtime weekday walks might be a homeschool group. If so, despite living in a pretty multicultural area they are all white, all the adults are women, all the kids are dressed in boden/joules/frugi-esqe clothes, just as some other posters have described. Not very representative of our area which has a high % of people who identify as South Asian. I would be interested to see statistics of demographics actively choosing to homeschool.

@MilkToastHoney well for a start you have to pay for a lot of home Ed groups, £50 per week minimum for our local one. You can't get tax credits or other to pay for this as the home Ed groups aren't ofsted registered. So that rules out most people on low incomes.

We live in a big city so most schools have children of different nationalities. Not to generalise but a lot of cultures value education in a traditional sense, as in education which can be evidenced by grades and tests. So they wouldn't usually choose home education for this reason.

You cannot tell me that home education groups are run solely or even partly by dads. It is 99% mums taking a step back from their careers in order to facilitate the home education.

I don't want my daughter to grow up thinking women just stay at home to educate children and make themselves financially vulnerable.

@ohthehorrorthehorror yes to the performative lessons!! I also see this in my local city farm. How exactly multiple trips to the same farm with its three animals is equal to a day of maths, phonics, languages, history, art, RE, science and tech I'll never know.

@PeterRabbitHadACarrot

I think you're confusing two completely different stages of education. When was the last time you went into a secondary school or took a close look at the GCSE or A-level syllabus.

We are interviewing students at Oxford this week and next. The teachers who have prepared these smart young people are (from the written work, the breadth of reading, the references) in most cases very intelligent and dedicated people. I teach for a living, but I couldn't do what they do. I would be wary of assuming that you can, either.

It's obviously fine if you don't want your kids to go to Oxbridge! But if you or they have serious academic ambitions, then home-schooling is very unlikely to make sense in the long run. Like other universities (and employers) we're interested in taking people who have succeeded relative to their peers. The single most useful piece of information is ranking: '1st out of 94 in exams at the end of year 12', 'the cleverest student I have taught in 15 years' etc. The second is the impression that someone has formed on a person who isn't paid specifically to like or to teach that individual, and who has formed a positive judgment about them in a disinterested way. Being elected to edit the school magazine, as head girl etc fall into this category, but so do dispassionate descriptions of someone's work from a teacher who has a lot of experience teaching other people in that age group.

A reference from homeschooling parent or someone paid specifically to teach a single child would be about as much use as... a reference from any other parent...

@PennyRa As a professional I have worked with families who have home educated. I do agree that there are certain children that the standard education system doesn't work for. I also believe that a motivated, able parent can do well at providing an education that works for their child. My big concern for these families is that so often they drop off Education's radar and if the parents aren't meeting their social or educational needs then there isn't always someone readily involved to pick up on it and offer support.

This is very interesting: researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN05108/SN05108.pdf

It also goes against some of the things stated here. For example 9% of home educated children have had some sort of social services involvement compared to 3% of schooled children and 22% of home educated 16-18 yr olds were NEETs compared to 5% national average.

Whilst this will be skewed by children with SEN/MH issues for who formal education will have failed, but it certainly doesn’t paint a picture of a failing education system vs home schooling being all sunshine and roses.

Home educated children do go to Oxbridge though. Your post implies that they can only get in if they are best in the year group, not because they are intelligent people whose work and qualifications reflect that. They can be very intelligent and dedicated people. Which your team must acknowledge to some extent because some do go.
I'm very far off the A Level point, I have no idea what we'll do then, but my point is that it can be done.

I don't care what others choose to do but I wouldn't consider it for my children unless they had additional needs. School to me isn't just about education, it's socialisation, learning resilience, mixing with other children from different backgrounds and basically becoming a functioning member of society. Maybe I am ignorant, but I fail to see how a child will get all that from being homeschooled.

It's not something I would ever want to do but I appreciate that it is is a good choice for some children.

One homeschool family I know had children who for various reasons were not a good fit for school. The parents spent months researching stuff and planning and getting a support network and just worked really hard at the whole thing. Result were kids who were educated far better - given their difficulties - than they would have been in school.

The only other homeschooling family I know are a totally different kettle of fish. They are hippie types, anti vaxxers, huge distrust of authority and the "system", like to think they they are special and different and that their children are too unique and precious to be in school. They say they are "child led" but this basically means letting the kids do what they like, learn what they want, or not as the case may be. No idea what they are intending as a future for their kids as they are raising them to be practically illiterate and unemployable.

Well that's been extensively explained on this thread so maybe you should read it again.

Apart from this one?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-10770907

And probably others. This is the first that sprang to mind. Obviously most homeschooled children are not abused. But if you are abusing your child, you don't want them in school where other adults might notice.

Think about how many socially awkward, rude, ill mannered, ill educated people most of us come across in our lives (a lot, if you take a look at half the threads on this site). Statistically almost all of these people will have been through the school system. Yet the minute a home educated child is a bit odd, or a bit badly behaved, of course the reason has to be that they are home educated.

@CharityShopChic - the government report I linked above showed 9% of homeschooled children had social service involvement vs 3% of schooled children. So nearly 1 in 10 homeschooled children have had some sort of social services involvement. There is likely more underreporting too given lack of oversight. I think 1 in 10 is a good argument for more oversight of homeschooling.

At my son's beavers group they all mix, he's made some great friends there. They're all off for a Christmas trip on Saturday.

I personally haven't got an issue at all with more oversight. I do have an issue with ignorant, small minded people making assumptions about my child and our family based on the fact we home educate.

It's presumptuous of you, OP, to assume that people who don't support home education are ignorant. I voted YABU based on my own unhappy experience of being home educated myself for the entirety of my childhood.

No two experiences of home ed are alike, and some children will certainly have had a more positive experience of it than I and my siblings had, but you should not assume that scepticism about home education is always based on ignorance. Sometimes it comes from a place of knowledge. In my case, 16 years of my life.