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

[PennyRa]

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

God yes, I definitely would. Academics are really important to us, it's part of the reason we home educate.

@Gagglestaggerhome I think you are incredibly naive if you think most schools offer what you have. I am happy that yours does, and I wish the local school with the crap Ofsted also did, so my sister didn't have to do what you suggested, and move them. Sadly there are no spaces, they're number 1 on the school that's doable logistically and they're twins so will both get a place but when will that place get there. I don't think home ed is a bad option if you have the time and money for it, which my sister currently does.

Good point this. Particularly the last few years.

@Gagglestaggerhome I'm not sure schools are honest about kids being on track though. In my limited experience home ed parents are very happy to brag when their kid isn't following the curriculum so I can't see them lying. The academic home ed parents actually push their kids more than schools would often be able to and lots go onto grammars.
My niece's left in Y1 with reports saying they're apparently meeting expectations. When they brought their exercise books home that was evidently not the case. They are genuinely on track now but that's because my sister has the time and access to resources, as well as patience of a saint. They literally had to start from reception work.
For what it's worth I don't like both sectors. The whole system needs changing.

I think it’s a great idea for many kids out there and I can see how they would really thrive and be far, far happier and richer for the experience.

I have 3 kids currently in urban, mainstream primary and secondary and they get on great. They’re popular, academic and they manage to blend in and have lots of different friends. No complaints here other than the odd issue or two. Sometimes I have to stop my kids from telling me about other kids being bullied etc as it just makes me feel so sad.

There are A LOT of kids for whom school is just not the right place to be. I school refused from the end of year 9 and never did return. I taught myself as no such thing as home ed back then. Probably undiagnosed ADHD but I’m certainly not an odd ball, well okay maybe sometimes 😉.

@NAndJAgainstStrepA Yup I agree. The KS1 curriculum is lazy too, especially in big academies. Discredits parents choice of worship, practically forces kids to take part in collective worship every single half term. Most topics in R and Y1 are celebrations. It's boring and unnecessary.
Privates are heading the same way, jumping on every social change bandwagon just to prove they're not Tories. It's madness. When did education get so political.

I think people who are educated on the subject understand. People who think home Ed means 'sit at home, learn maths and sing songs' or such think it's wrong.
Kids do not only socialise at school, there are tons of home Ed groups now, and also clubs, hobbies and interests where they can make friends.
Educating at home, can look very different to school, they may not learn maths/science/English to the same level (also they may, and even above that level!) but they may learn tons of other life skills that our school Ed kids don't. Cooking, life skills (budgeting, cleaning, washing, gardening), growing things, sewing, knitting. Taking up hobbies that are a little out of the 'norm' all sorts.

I know quite a few home Ed families, their kids are lovely, intelligent, extremely sociable and very able at lots of things.

Looking back, if I had the chance to do life again with my kids, and didn't have to work (as I think this is really something you have to be able to do) I would 100% home Ed them I think both my kids would have been much better for it!

I don't think most people ever think about this issue at all, let alone "understand and therefore support" it. Where are you getting that from?

The few times it's come up in conversation, I've generally hear people mutter about how it won't be good for the kids.

@Blendiful I do all that and work 37.5 hours. My kids learn maths and science from actual teachers who are trained to teach it whilst I teach them about the stuff I know about on the weekends. They learn Spanish from my family abroad. We go on beautiful holidays and learn about different countries. My child has support from peers who actually have autism rather than her NT parents who don't understand how things feel, sound and how confusing the world is.
Or does that not fit your narrative?

Most ND home ed kids have multiple ND peers they socialise with. The home ed community is chock full of ND kids.

I think one thing to remember when criticising schools that many children receive an education out of school. They are only in school until about 3pm 5 days a week leaving about 5 hours for other stuff (and of course weekends and holidays). My children both have interests that they learn about after school and we do a lot of different activities where they mix with others. The same also applies for the 'i take my child to the shops where they learn about money and budgeting' you often hear on HE threads (not this one I don't think).

As there have been misconceptions about home education and socialising, clearly there's been similar the other way when people have been talking about school kids socialising with just their cohort.

I have a very active 8 year old who probably does as many out of school activities as someone who is home educated. My 5 year old is less bothered and if was home educated it'd be a struggle to get him different places (he likes school and enjoys the routine).

Yes that bit is often missed. The "I use scouts for socialising /gymnastics for pe/and we swim on a friday" are all experiences my child had AND school.

I know I've been lucky that mine have thrived at school but to hear some militant home eders (note "some") I've deprived them etc. I still mix in some home ed circles and there's sometimes a group mentality that is anti-school, in a way "cloth bummers" can be anti "''sposies" as they call them. And an overlap of people...

But that is in a subsection of ideological homeschoolers that follow on from bf/bedsharing/etc.

I do really feel for those forced into homeschooling where their child doesn't fit the system or where the LA haven't found alternative provision.

@NerrSnerr exactly. It fits with the home educators want to believe to say that most kids get home and sit in front of the tv all day. You're not special for taking your kids to the shops and letting them pay for the items and check the change. We all do that. That is not a maths lesson!
The idea is that the child learns about something in the classroom in an abstract way and then sees it in a more concrete way in the real world. Now you can do that in both home education and school, but the idea that kids in school only learn the theory and don't see it in the real world is strange.
I follow a few families who travel the world constantly whilst homeschooling and that is the only lifestyle which is obviously preferable to formal education. Then again, unless forgotten Tibetan monasteries and Sri Lankan street food come up in the GCSE exams, I can't imagine there are many academic advantages to learning this way rather than traditional schooling.
Like with all parents, the hard part is that none of us will ever know if we have done the right thing until our kids are in therapy in their thirties. Maybe making my kid go to school every day will be something she will resents me for, maybe she won't. Maybe some of the homeschool kids will wish that they had been exposed to a broader range of families and children, maybe they won't.

I was merely pointing out what others often say in response. I think home Ed should look however people want it to. I don't think I could do my job and home Ed, but if you can, that's great.

Sounds great to me!

@Blendiful I'm able to do my job precisely because I don't home educate

My fault I read that completely wrong.

Either way it's great you are able to do those things.

My kids go to school, so I do this too. But I certainly don't get as much time as I would like and am often tired from work to do as much or be as spontaneous about when we do things. Plus, homework.

I think, school works for some kids and it doesn't for others. I think my kids would have done much better home Ed, but I get other people's kids wouldn't. And some parents wouldn't want to.

It's fine either way I am more of an advocate for people to do what works for them/their kids. But I do think people are very misinformed about what home Ed can/does look like.

I mean, I guess if you don't talk to your children at all outside school this would be a reason to home educate? We do, though. And actually learning the complexities of holding your own beliefs without insulting or offending others is one of the most valuable lessons they learn as part of a huge, diverse cohort.

I think there is an odd misconception that parents who send their children to school (the vast majority in the UK) don't also teach our kids and engage with them outside of school hours.

I home ed my son because I have no other choice. He was in an ofsted rated good school, with small classes. He has autism with PDA, dyslexia, dyspraxia, speech delay and disorder, and sensory processing issues. They were simply unable to teach him.

They told me ‘he is fine when he is here’ alllllll the time when I dragged him in kicking and screaming (he and the other children would tell me he had stayed in his chair crying all day). They freely admitted he wasn’t able to access any learning but said not to worry because his behaviour was fine. When I removed him in year 3 he did not know the alphabet, could not hold a pen and could not read. He was miserable all the time, withdrawn at home (he would go home and go to bed immediately) and had no interest in socialising in any way. He only wanted to be left alone and asked how he could kill himself.

After 18 months at home he is reading at the expected level for his age, despite his dyslexia. He can hold a pen and write legibly (at the bottom end of what would be expected for his age). He knows his times tables and is working on algebra in maths. He engages with his specialist maths/English tutor ever week, he has an engineering tutor (and can fit a radiator), he has an art tutor, a music teacher and socialises with other children (all day at forest school one day, has regular sleep overs and play dates with his old friends and he attends multiple clubs with other children). He is a different child to a year ago and is keen to try adding another day at a flexi school into what he does and talks a lot about when he goes to college and university.

Yes he is odd, and proud of it. He flaps his hands, he makes hooting noises when he is excited and he still needs help to get dressed but he is making amazing progress. We are not religious, or too lazy to do the school run, or anti vaxers, or anti authority, we do not have a problem with registering our sons birth, we welcome visits from the home Ed team at the council! We are post graduate educated professionals. we just want our child to learn and be happy and this is what works best for him right now.

Most teacher training is about learning classroom behaviour management (used to be called 'discipline') and how to assess/mark work against set criteria. Also, there is quite a lot about how to structure a lesson of a fixed length, with a sequence of 'engaging' timed activities etc. Obviously, none of this is relevant to home education.

Not a huge amount of teacher training is about how to actually teach, i.e. how to explain and how to ask the student questions, etc.

Almost no teacher training (on the PGCE course - might be different for B.Ed.) is about the subject matter being taught. It is assumed that the trainee teacher already knows all the subject content.

I was just chatting with my son who’s in year 8 after reading this thread and funnily enough he brought the subject up of home Ed. He said his friend was home educated throughout all of his primary years and he’s really very clever and in top sets. My son is smart but apparently his friend is a lot smarter.

This is the same lad who in year 7 got put into the same tutor group as my son and went and sat directly next to him and said “hey my name is……. Me and you can be best friends”. Now I won’t lie my son was taken aback by this and he said this boy was weird (he said this to me in the strictest of confidence). I said aww just be nice to him he sounds sweet. Long story short my son said he would be nice to him but he certainly wasn’t going to be his “best friend”.

Fast forward to year 8 and he’s really good friends with this boy now and he’s in their group. I said remember at the start of year 7 when he was a little odd and he was like “oh yeah I totally remember that. He’s normal now, don’t know what that was all about”. So yeah make of that what you will 🤦‍♀️. He clearly didn’t have the social skills at the beginning of year 7 as people actively avoided him but fast forward a year and apparently now it’s all good. Sorry waffled on a bit there but it was just uncanny our conversation after reading this thread.

@Changingplace Very few teachers spend years training in their subject. Even if they do, it's not the pedagogy of teaching, but that subject itself and a general teaching qualification on top which covers mostly planning and management. Just because you did something to a high level at uni doesn't make you a good teacher in that subject. The PGCE certainly won't make you a good one.
More and more are teaching without any qualifications in free schools and academies. Most actual teachers don't even have a degree in the subject they teach unless they're STEM and even that's disappearing.
None of the above make them inherently bad teachers. There's good and bad in schools and home ed.

@NerrSnerr but previously on this thread people have stated that home educating is a privilege because you can afford many activities; and school is for socialising so there shouldn't be a need for all these extra curricular ventures (and what about the poor parents that work evenings and weekends? How do they fit these out of school activities-tongue in cheek - going with the general flow of the thread here 😂).

@Gagglestaggerhome school doesn't work for all, it won't work if your child is a kinaesthetic leaner, it won't work if your child isn't quite ready to sit still yet, and it won't work if you're child is too bright.
One teacher, 30 individual children, we aren't designed to learn in exactly the same way.

I do feel teachers have a very difficult job, there's Tom who has fallen behind and can't read, Janet who wants to read Oliver Twist and the other 28 kids on different levels.

Yes school is great, if your child manages to slog through the workings, fits in with the mechanics, but we only need to check how many adults are illiterate after having spent so long in schools to see one size doesn't fit all.

Before anyone is overly offended, I have home Ed (still do) but have dc in school too now.