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

[PennyRa]

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

@Gagglestaggerhome You'd love to see some of these home ed groups. There's one where the people on there 'translate' everyday activities into what is learnt. Eg Tommy went to his brother's hosp appt= Tommy did real world phonics (reading leaflets), practised sitting patiently and did pe (walking home).
In reality Tommy was robbed of an education. Naturally appointments don't come up everyday and it's part and parcel of life but to spin it into a day of education is offensive. Just like in a lot of schools, you will find the crunchy mums or whatever, they exist in home ed communities. It does no favours to the movement and I genuinely wish the LAs would crack down on them.
My sister had to leave those groups as she was slated for cooperating with the LAs home ed team.

As I said uptherad. There's good and bad in both. It's just picking up in popularity here so people are raising their eyebrows more and more.

I used to work for an organisation providing lessons for both school visits and home Ed groups.

Some of the Hone Ed kids were fantastic- you could see that Home Ed was absolutely right for them. Engaged, articulate, socialising well. Whatever the reasons were, it was clearly working beautifully.

I also worked with some total nightmares. You could often trace it back to the parents.
Climbing on the roof of the building. Parent tells me they let him express himself and could I please not ask him to come down. Nope. He’s not expressing himself on the roof - it’s not designed to be climbed on and there are solar panels and skylights up there. He’s coming down now and ideally you aren’t coming back.

kids who didn’t actually take part in the session - no skin off my nose, I still get paid. But running around with an iPhone isn’t ‘showing a keen interest in photography’. It’s taking selfies and not learning what you’ve brought them to learn so don’t kid yourself that this is education. If you run all their sessions like this they will lack a lot of basic knowledge their peers will know. Which won’t help them.

Telling me gushingly how their kids are asking so many intelligent questions and they’d be stifled in the school system who just turn out robots. Which just isn’t true. I didn’t have any discussions with Home Ed groups that were far better than those with school kids. They were of a similar level, both in terms of the questions the kids asked me and the answers they gave when I challenged them to justify answers or explain something. There just wasn’t any evidence of a higher level of free thinking. The parents who kept telling me that their kids were better than school groups annoyed me because they were wrong. They had their narrative about school and the children not thinking and it was bollocks! They’ve got subjective opinions about school in the same way that others have opinions about Home Ed.

On balance, I think it’s a great idea for some kids who thrive and do far better than in school. I think there are others who do it who shouldn’t. Like school, in many ways.

My concern is not really any of these children though. They will be ok. I worry about the children whose parents use Home Ed as a way to hide them from the authorities. For this reason Home Ed needs to be more closely scrutinised- not to be ‘Big Brother’ over those who’ve opted out of school but to try to provide another safety check for children who are largely invisible.

@Nevermindthesquirrels it's called autonomous learning, and as much as people may find it funny, the two families that I know took this route, child from first family went on to read maths at Oxford and second child Russian at Cambridge.
So I guess it works after all

But you know that a school educated child can do all the other things too, right? At the weekend, in the evening, in the holidays. So a school educated child could have a massive advantage by doing all the science and maths and history etc as well as all the budgeting and growing things and sewing and washing…

@babybythesea yes to all this! Your experience is really similar to mine posted up thread. Working with HE and schooled children was interesting!

Home ed children also do science and maths and history.

I wouldn't HE as I believe in schooling for the majority of children.

I'd love the poster who said the KS 1 curriculum was 'lazy' to explain why.

@babybythesea yes all this exactly!!!!

Telling you their baking was maths etc even if they bake the same few things every week. It might pass reception maths but really there's so much more they haven't covered.

And the "oh aren't they special they're not like schooled kids" in spades.

I also got the thinking their children was more advanced but when they came to read or write they were miles behind sadly. And all the underpinnings of maths weren't there as they had followed "interests."

@FunctionalSkills that's interesting (and I've also posted regarding autonomous schooling a few posts up).

I find your post interesting because, of the home Ed families that I know, majority sit their maths GCSE when 13/14.

My own dc was covering year 9 work in year 6, maths being one of the easiest subjects.

Yes. Absolutely. I was specifically responding to the poster who seemed under the impression that if your child went to school they wouldn’t learn ‘other life skills.’
This post:
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 was pointing out that a school Ed child can learn all of the things listed and would also learn the other things that the home Ed child “may not learn”, according to this post.

@Sherrystrull mass rotation doesn't work for all, this is the reason there are adult numeracy courses, because school failed so many.

www.ft.com/content/52b91b92-1780-4c84-ae11-4017a315ada7

Linked article regarding the low numeracy rates in the uk.

I imagine it will depend on the family /groups concerned but sadly that's my experience!

Yes I do imagine a bright child facilitated by educated parents could race through maths with appropiate packages /textbooks but it seems it stays at the "oh we did baking that's maths" or "we did this cgp book he's fine" and anyway his interest is drama less so.

Yes when you only sit a few GCSEs they're all more than doable at 13/14 for a bright child. It's getting to the level in 10 subjects that takes the time.

My 13 year old could easily have taken psychology (my main subject) GCSE and maths if they were the only GCSEs she was doing this year - but she's in school and covering 10!

I would happily tutor (willing) home ed students though. I am not against it in principle just so aware of my local groups and how they come across!

There IS some provision paid for education out of school if your childs school placements keep breaking down but it's so very wrong a child has to get to that point to access help.

I think the problem is there is so much variation you can find evidence to support both views of home Ed.
I know of some children who did brilliantly. I also know of others who really didn’t.
It would be interesting to see some proper data rather than anecdotes. I’d love to know if the majority of children who were home Ed did better or worse or the same as their peers.

But I have come across a lot of parents who told me how much more advanced their children were and actually, they weren’t. The children couldn’t do the things their peers in school could do. It was their parents inaccurate view of school that made them think their child was so far ahead.

Of course, children in schools also fail. Schools aren’t perfect. But at least in theory, there are ways to make schools accountable and to try to ensure that children are not allowed to fail. In practice of course it doesn’t always work but people try. There are no such checks for Home Ed.

Yes that's it exactly baby. A bright child with switched on parents may well do well with home ed, but also would have done well in school just had a different experience.

It's those who are being missed and not given a chance that is worrying, particularly post covid I think.

Really interesting thread (I've got to page 12 so not rtft).

I Home Ed one of my kids. He has ASD and school wasn't working out for him.
We noticed how much happier he was over lock down and didn't send him back.

I can relate to loads of the points on here. Both negative and positive. Its sobering to read some of the accounts of Home Ed going wrong. Obviously I'm really keen to avoid falling into some of those pit holes.

Although I love Home Ed, there’s no denying it’s a huge responsibility. To take on a child’s education, arrange their social life, encourage independence (in circumstances that mitigate against it). On top of all the usual parenting stuff. It’s a lot. I’m very aware of the potential to fuck it up.

When we first started out, it took a while to meet people and find groups and classes. It was isolating at first. We've now got a reasonable routine with one out of the house activity every day. As well as "school work" and appropriate down time. He does a mix of Home Ed meetups/classes and clubs at the local community centre.

It’s usual for parents to come along to the Home Ed things and that does feel a bit weird. As though we're still at the toddler stage, hanging out at playgroup together.

As far as the culture goes: I definitely recognise the "Frugi Mums". Very middle class. Certain eccentricities. On the positive side: very confident about the education they provide and very hands on. I run an activity and the parents are great at interacting with their kids. Noticing what particularly interests them about the activity to build on later. Asking me for additional resources and so on. This was a big relief as it certainly makes it easier on me as the organiser.

I also go to a meet up specifically for kids with ASD. Really different crowd. Noticeably more diverse and working class. Mix of EOTAS kids, Home Ed kids and kids who are out of school while the grownups argue about where they should go and whos going to pay for it.

These guys are not Home Edding as a lifestyle choice. They're at the end of a long, painful process of trying and failing to get their kids needs met at school. They are shattered and their kids are traumatised. It’s like looking at DS's future, if I hadn't pulled him out when I did.

I think these guys are probably more representative of Home Ed as a whole. Although the first group is more visible.

There’s a really interesting sentence in there. “…also his ability to support his children with their homework, ending the intergenerational cycle of functional innumeracy in his own family.”

It’s not as simple as ‘school failed him.’ I now work in a school. We have a child who I suspect will leave us functionally illiterate. I cannot tell you how many extra hours of support he has been given. 1-2-1, small group, different staff trying different approaches. Resources purchased specifically for him. Discussions with outside agencies. Ultimately, he has family who openly say school is a waste of time, who offer no support st all. No reading, no attending meetings, kept home far too often on spurious reasons but just enough to stay above the need for official intervention. He would appear as someone that ‘school has failed’. But he would fail in Home Ed too.
It’s not as simple as it first seems. If everyone was home educated then maybe numeracy and literacy rates would be a lot lower because the children of parents who really couldn’t be bothered have a chance in school.
This is not an argument against Home Ed at all, but you do need to dig deeper when citing ‘school failure’ as a reason to justify it.

I run sports classes for home Ed kids. Lots or co-depency and usually badly educated babies children lacking in resilience

• babied not babies

@babybythesea agree, I think I've been swept up by the words failing/failed used a lot on this thread when discussing home Ed.

However, the same does work the other way too, a bright child bored stiff at school because the teachers do not have the time or resources to facilitate their learning. For anyone interested in such examples, Christopher Lloyd (author), home educated his two daughters after realising his then 7 year old was bored at school and had lost all interest in learning (I believe like her father she went on to study at Cambridge).

At the end of the day, home Ed will work for some and school for others, but it is definitely not a one size fits all.

My kids used to go to an after school club with some electively home educated kids. Their Mum was an ex-headmistress who had decided that small children spend too much time queuing and not enough time playing. Her kids were very grounded, sociable and bright. They then went to the local secondary school at 11 without difficulty.

Most kids I have met who have been home educated for a time have been in that position because their parents have had to deal with a school crisis brought about by EN or mental health issues the school simply cannot provide sufficient support for. The education they get at home is passable at best, but often inadequate.

That being said, there does seem to be a bit of a Home Ed movement at the moment. There are more and more families doing it and there are hubs that provide opportunities for Home Ed kids to met each other and get education beyond parental expertise. I don't think this is widely known about or understood, but it is something to watch with interest.

I only know three families that home educate and two have done it brilliantly with both sets of children being miles ahead academically. Another family have done no actual homeschooling since year 5 or 6. The child, now 17 sits around at home doing nothing and rarely gets out of bed. His parents make no secret of it.

So done properly yes it can be amazing.

I said the majority, not all.

I also believe that if the government properly funded education and provided support for those that needed it, far less would 'fail'.

@CowsInFields my child is in a class of 16 actually and gets 1:1 for most subjects as she's got autism and a learning delay. I don't know one child who has asked for extra support who hasn't been offered it in some way. Yes, the school and I disagree. I wanted the ADHD assessment to be prioritised and they wanted autism to be assessed first, yes there is an ever changing TA who my daughter has to get used to, but I feel this is sort of life. In the real world, she will have to get used to colleagues leaving, friends moving, people dying etc.