AIBU that home schooling is as much for the privileged as private school?

[HomeskoolorPrivate]

I see a lot of private school bashing on here, which I guess is fair enough, as it's something that benefits a tiny minority and seems to be something a lot of wanky politicians do. Not so much home schooling, though, which to me is also a thing that only 'rich' people can access. Private school is seen as for toffs, right wing, bad, whereas home schooling is seen as radical, left wing, and generally not judged as much? AIBU that both options are reserved for the highly privileged who can afford to do such things / make huge sacrifices for a radical alternative option to state schooling?

If you earn around £20k (i.e. full time minimum wage), you will have a take home of £17000 per year. It’s is therefore possible to pay for private prep and, in many cases, senior school (excluding London and the SE for seniors) for one child. So if you have one child you could, instead of giving up work to home school, pay for the private school by using the whole of your salary. It’s actually pretty common in private schools for one parent to use all of their salary to pay the fees whilst the other covers the household costs. I did it myself for a while and I know plenty others that do. I earned more than £20k but I had two to pay for. I’m not saying that it is what people should be doing, but some do and then they attract a level of vitriol from other people which I’ve never heard about homeschooling.

A lot of homeschooling are comfortable middle class but then a lot have also had to downgrade their whole lifestyle because there just isn't schooling to suit their child, parents having to both go part time or leave work for 10 + years, the sen and mh provision is the UK is not adequate.

Also not mutually exclusive. I know two families where one child is homeschooling but another sibling is in private education because that was the best fit for the child.

When ds had his online schooling, dh wasn't at work because he was older and took redundancy and I worked shifts. We had to be really careful with money, but there wasn't really any other option.

For some, yes. As a single mum, I can afford my ds' school fees (half normal rate) by working flat out but to home school, I would need an independent income or how would I pay the mortgage.

But a lot of home schooling is because of a lack of SEN provision and must be incredibly hard on the parents.

Yes this exactly is what I meant. Home school people are not 'rich' but private school people are not necessarily either, but as one poster said, the former are not accused of being rich because of the education they have chose. Both have privilege equally, but I'm not really judging either. It is interesting how awful people think private school people are. It was just playing on my mind a bit. Some great experiences and thoughts here to mull over.

I don't think that either the term homeschooling or unschooling are helpful or understood.

I didn't home school, in the sense that I didn't try to emulate school in the home.

For my child, with undiagnosed sen, when I removed him from school his mental health was so badly effected by 'schooling' that he needed a period to get well again.

Unschooling, doesn't mean failure to educate. It means following the child's interests. An unschooled child will rarely end up functionally illiterate because most children do want to learn and will lead their own learning to achieve the goals that they want to achieve. Some unschooled children will end up doing formal exams and some will even end up at university.

Obviously some parents just don't give a shit. But I would say that the number of parents this really applies to is very low.

This is a US article but it explains unschooling a bit better than I have on this post. https://aplaceonahill.com/2020/06/19/when-unschooling-means-exams/

When we home educated, we both worked part-time around each other. I worked for a charity and DH was a lecturer. Tbh many families HE around here weren't "clean middle-class hippies" (as our friends described us) but far more working class as the benefits system/cheaper housing etc allowed one parent to work in a fairly low-income job and the other to stay at home. Before I get leapt on, that is an observation intended entirely without judgement.

We home educate one of our children. We are on benefits (FSM level so really not wealthy or privileged) It wasn’t a choice it was necessity for medical reasons

I can’t work due to home educating

I don't agree.

My friend homeschools due to her DD not coping at school. She's not privileged in any way, spends her days homeschooling and evenings working.

Homeschooling must be very hard going. If I was rich enough and came into that "privileged" bracket of which you speak, I would pay a full time tutor.

I had to home-ed my children because they both have special needs which were ignored by the school. Then they became the targets of bullies and one attempted suicide. We couldn’t afford private education and no alternatives were offered. Call me an over-privileged ‘crustie’ if you want to, but what else could we have done?

I think there is far more judgement of home educating families than there is of people who send their children to private school.

There’s a massive assumption that children will be learning and will access education just because they attend a school.

I have home educated at various times. I couldn’t afford private school.

I have sacrificed work, but atm all my children attend school and I still can’t manage many hours at work due to their needs (reduced timetables, inability to cope with wraparound care, separation anxiety, autism)

I'm a single mum and use a private all girls school for my daughter. I couldn't homeschool because I'm a lone parent.

It's a reasonable cost, lots of parents both work, mainly in law, medical, tech etc

The reason why many of us strain to pay private is because the state school system is absolutely shit for ND kids. My DD14 has ASD and ADHD. Academically she's good but really really struggled at state primary with 30 kids in a class and the noise levels.

Her school has two classes a year 12 in a class and she is thriving.

This is not about privilege. Sometimes treating everyone the same is the most unfair thing you can do.

I definitely might have considered home school/online schooling if I could have or thought it the best thing for my child.

There is no way I would ever earn that much though.

I was a SAHP because there is no way I could earn enough to pay for nursery/childcare.

Yes giving it up would be a sacrifice, but so would spending it on private school.

Yeah. I don't have a pension or any hope of career advancement. I would say those things are for the privileged.

But I do the best I can for my kids.

I think there are similarities and differences.

As PPs have mentioned I think a large subset of homeschoolers do so because their children struggle in mainstream education due to emotional, health or learning difficulties or neurodiversity or because they have particular beliefs or ways of living (including but not limited to religion) which are not compatible with mainstream education.

That said, it is a fairly privileged position for one person in a partnership to be able to abandon their job to focus purely on educating their children. I privately educate my child so I'm in no position to throw accusations of privilege around but its not something all families can do.

I home educated my first child until he was ten (he’s now a young adult doing a degree apprenticeship). He wasn’t ready for school in so many ways when he was young. He went to nursery at 3 and it led to a catastrophic start for him. It was just awful. We took him out to home educate him half way through reception. He went to school at 10 as we moved across the county and asked if he wanted to try school. He did and it was fine at that point.

My 9 year old is at school. Started nursery at 3 and a half and loved it. Loves school. It suits her. She was a very different child to ds.

My youngest is 3 in August. I’ve not applied for a nursery place as she is very similar to how ds was and being and August born child, I wouldn’t have been sending her so soon anyway. I am probably going to home ed her but won’t decide properly for another year or so. I’ve found all the local home ed groups in preparation.

I am not religious. I am not a crusty mum who lets her children walk round asda with bare feet and thinks it’s fine that they still can’t read at 10.

With ds I followed an online curriculum. We went to lots of home ed groups. He did lots of “after school” activities.

The only drawback when he went to school was that he was ahead of his peers academically. He’s not gifted or very bright - you can just get though a lot one on one and children learn a hell of a lot when they can pick their own projects. He also missed thee social aspect of home ed, which makes me laugh seeing as most people act like home educated children are locked in the house 24/7.

If I do home educate my youngest, it won’t be something I have entered into lightly.

And christ, the constant criticism and judgment you get as a home educator isn’t something I would actually chose to subject myself to. People can be so, so rude and nasty. I just want to do the best I can for dd. And if that’s home ed, I will again, take all the shitty comments on the chin.

I privileged to be able to have the choice. But I chose to be a SAHM. We are not well off, dh supports us all on £37k (my adult son is still at home but has a good job and pays some rent). But that’s a lifestyle choice we made and we live within our means and moved to a very cheap are to do so.

Anyway, I’d best start growing that thick skin again. I see attitudes haven’t changed in eleven years since I last home educated. I’d better get ready for the harsh judgment to start.

I must admit, my presumption on home schooled was from conspiracy theory say-on-the-toilet anti vax parents to keep them 'Away from the system' however there was a great thread here earlier in the year, maybe in AMA? About what it actually entails when you do it properly - not just sat indoors all day trying to replace being a teacher. It sounded ideal tbh, especially as we have a DD who is probably going to struggle in a school system.

But it did make me realise that not only do you need to be able to survive on one income (or one full and one part time) you also need money for all the activities, the tutors, the outings. We couldnt afford that.

But we COULD afford, at a push, private school (in primary years anyway).

Christ, off the back of this thread I googled the name I used on mumsnet that I used to use when I was home educating all those years ago (I’ve re registered many times over the years on here).

First hit was a thread I started in the home ed section in 2010 taking about people making shitty comments about ds being home educated. I was in such a low place because of it.

I honestly don’t know if I can go back to taking that shit all the time 13 years on. It was exhausting and demoralising.

Two of my three dc are homeschooled - they are autistic and were drowning in school, especially dd, who became suicidal. They went to a mainstream (independent) primary school and did very well, but the social pressures of secondary were too much. I think it is possible to do it well without being particularly well off, but it does make it much easier - we pay for multiple hours of one to one tutoring, music lessons and sports coaching. I was also financially able to take an extended break from work in order to facilitate it all (am self employed and we can manage easily without my earnings). It would be much more difficult for me if I had no choice but to work or if we had to teach them ourselves.

Not at all. You’d change you’re mind if you visited the home schooling groups here. Not one ‘wealthy’ person.

Although in fairness the majority of the homeschoolers here are the anti-establishment anti-vaxxer variety. I’d always planned to home school ds but couldn’t get on with the groups locally. He’s fine at a lovely primary now but we may have to look at home schooling for secondary as he is ASD. We’re not rich and I’m already making financial/career plans in case that’s the route we have to go down.

I home educate (not homeschool) dd because she wasn’t given a place in a sen school when she wouldn’t cope in mainstream, I’m far from rich in fact the opposite!

I only know people who home educate because of SEN and an independent school isn’t an alternative because they wouldn’t take the children. I also don’t think the children concerned get the same level of academic education and a fair bit of it is being left to their own devices to learn compared to a school setting. However, it’s a happier environment and more suitable for them than mainstream school where the inability to fit in meant they weren’t getting the level of academic education they could have been either.

Some people wfh around the home schooling because it’s not affordable. However, when neither state nor private schools are an option, there isn’t any choice.

I home educate both my children due to them both being failed catastrophically by the schooling system. Both my children suffered so much at school due to their needs not being met. They became shadows of themselves and I wasn’t prepared to put them through more trauma. We don’t home school, we home educate as there is nothing like school in our lives.

We are no where near privileged and we aren’t well off by any description. Me an DH both work full time and we go without an awful lot.

I’m sure there are lots of people who will make snap judgments for our choices but until they have been in a similar situation then it will be hard for them to understand. I would like to point out however, my children are far from illiterate (as a previous poster likes to make out)

the education system doesn’t work for so many children. The system should mould around the child and their needs. Instead, the child has to mould around the system in the hopes of getting by and not drowning. Just because a child is in school does not mean they are receiving a fulfilling education