Why are so many parents anti-school?

[DrowninginMaryBeardsBeard]

I'm a member of a few homeschool/ unschooling groups as I like their ideas and I want some tips to encourage learning in every day life. My kids go to school. This isn't perfect and both have gone through stages of school refusal. They are genuinely happy now.
But in generally, schools are good right? My kids do so much more at school than I would be able to offer. They have trips, forest school, sports, technology, science labs, art supplies. I could never provide all that.
I get that there are many SEN kids who can't attend school and I have so much sympathy and empathy for those parents and kids. But parents who call school 'twelve years of prison'? Where's the justification for that?
Is it due to the parent's bad experiences? Wanting to be in control?
Term time holidays?
Plus there's the problems with socialising, monitoring screen time, getting them into university with non standard education? It seems like it's quite an extreme choice and I'm not sure I understand it? Most of these parents went to school, so how can they know that not going to school is best for their children? Where are those children's points of reference when they see children go to school?

@Fionaville absolutely and is 100% my point. It's so varied isn't it? It's just not something that can be defined in one way.

I do know that where I'm from, HE is dominated by people doing it for religious reasons. Many of them had links to communities in the US and I could easily imagine there are places in America where it's also religion dominated, but don't know for sure.

The religious aspect is definitely less dominant around here. My friend's 3 groups, as I understand it, are split with most in either the SEN or the "our children are too special" camp.

@user1497207191

The reason behind teachers thinking 🤔 mindset when one or two disruptive pupils create problems issues in the classroom,
is to ensure everyone in the classroom has to do the punishment, is its serves two purposes,
problematic pupils, obviously know that they have transgressed rules, by doing that,
but also if everyone has to do this punishment,
it also going to have an impact on everyone else
so with peer pressure of that effect and consequences,
less likely to make that mistake,

It's nothing to do with lazy teaching methods...

We found most of the HE families around here were very middle class and had one parent at home all the time. Some, like me, worked evenings/weekends, around a partner doing traditional hours. Some ran family businesses. I think it would be really hard to make it work as a single parent unless you had 50/50 custody and worked all the time the kids were with the other parent, sadly.

" I just couldn't see how my very easily distracted child with learning difficulties would just play in the woods for hours and then magically be able to pass GCSE's at 16. It just wouldn't work for her."

It wouldn't have worked for my kids either. Mine really need that school structure to do anything academic. Saying this was a total no-no in most of the HE community around here though who were/are hardcore unschoolers. The ones who I found more reasonable, and more accepting of my kids' differences (ie not just saying "that's fine, don't speak to him if you don't want to") were actually the religious families who followed curriculums at home (despite the fact we're not religious at all).

Around here the groups are mostly composed of the religious people (who I actually found quite friendly and who at least tried to be inclusive - probably because that's what their religion says to do, but still!) and the "my children are unique" gang. They were generally also pro-very extended breastfeeding (age 7+ wasn't uncommon) and bedsharing, anti-vax, pro-free birth and had kids with names like Pixie. They were generally hardcore unschoolers who didn't believe in any rules at all or even asking their kids to do things like get dressed, brush their hair/teeth or go to bed. They allowed their kids to exclude my ND ones (because it's up to them who they speak to, adults shouldn't guide their behaviour) and although their kids were quite happy running wild and doing their own thing at the groups the lack of structure made them really hard for my kids to access. It was ultimately the social isolation that lead us to try school, but before that we found the groups organised by the religious people to be the most welcoming! (We still never saw anyone outside those groups though.) I do think though that it varies hugely, we live in quite a rural area so there wasn't much choice of groups or people to hang out with. We are all much happier out of it!

I don’t have the patience to homeschool personally. I’d have to hire tutors in.

However I have noticed in my own circle it seems to be growing just in the last couple of months 3 people I know have deregistered and now bleat on about homeschooling.

I do think most schools are hit and miss and do lack some of that more hands on learning between reception and gcse science basically. We need more stem schools too. We have one stem school secondary only in the whole city that technically doesn’t have a catchment but more than a 5 minute drive you are not getting in as a year 7.

the only people I've seen successfully homeschool their children have multiple children, have a wide social network, have employed a teacher and not done it past primary. but it can be great. it can also be a recipe for disaster. its not for everyone.

Live in republic of ireland so obviously quite different. But your schools sound crazy,ie having to keep blazer on whatever the weather , the huge attention on essentially sats in primary etc etc . School should be , certainly in primary enjoyable for children. In secondary, again you'd hope it would be mostly enjoyable , that might mean each child would love sone classes etc. My son went to irish language school primary and secondary, may have been unreasonably lucky, but in both schools, dealt with teachers on first name terms, genuine sense that teachers helping them was their aim, definitely a good experience.

Reading Mumsnet sometimes I think your schools have forgotten that their aim should be to help pupils to achieve their potential. In a supportive, friendly, maybe even fun atmosphere.

I accept im in a different country so may be unreasonably influenced by some posts....

I'll just add, i always felt both schools and teachers were on my sons side, im sorry for those of you who seem to be in a completely different system.

If teachers focused on the three Rs rather than teaching my child the importance of transgenderism in Ukraine (yes, really), and didn't go on strike so often, I'd have warmer thoughts about them.

I disagree. People live in societies. They need to cooperate with what's best for the majority. And the 'different learning styles' thing was a fad in teaching maybe a decade or more ago and has since been completely discredited. More recent research shows that all children benefit by using a range of learning styles.

If teachers focused on the three Rs rather than teaching my child the importance of transgenderism in Ukraine (yes, really), and didn't go on strike so often, I'd have warmer thoughts about them

What age r u talking about here? What school? Is this real?

@Swirlyyyy I had an almost identical experience. Spooky actually.

Tried school again and DC had to leave. Now on EOTAS but like @hiredandsqueak says I hate it, not the utopia it's made out to be.

I'm just internally screaming all the time.

Glad I'm not the only one who hates it @JustSettleOnAUsername as on the EOTAS boards everyone is almost evangelical about it where all I'm thinking is "oh joy of joys tutor and speech therapist today and another hour of my time spent on emails and chatting to providers"

Definitely not the only one. I am so close to saying that I'd rather do it myself again and we're only a term into it so far.

@Ninastibbefan

I disagree being punctual and on time even though it's quite 😩 stressful at times to get there on time at school,

it's important to have rules like this,
even if it means if showing up late lots of times at school results in a vist from school welfare officer as a welfare concern or a fine,

do you think it's OK if any children who are autustic, to have speacial preferential treatment to turn up late for school compared to the rest of the pupils in the classroom then?

bear in mind it's disrupts the routine of the lessons if pupils turn up late constantly,

school is also there to prepare for life beyond school too,

Also children in general with security of structure of routines find this provides reassurance stability rather than chaos which obviously increases stress levels

@cerisepanther73 I do get that it’s disruptive & I can understand why schools don’t like it. But what do you do as a parent if you simply cannot get your child in to school? I’m asking seriously. Because let me tell you there is actually no help in this situation. What do you do if your child is so stressed by the noise & busyness & the school are making no adjustments for them? Isn’t it better for them to go in for a few hours rather than not at all if that’s all they can tolerate?

It is crystal clear from this post that you have no idea what it is like to parent an autistic child.

'Preferential Treatment indeed!'

No it's not ideal for the other children or the teachers but, guess what? We are compelled to drag our children in to an unsuitable setting even if kicking and screaming because the government doesn't see fit to provide suitable educational environments for neurodiverse children. This is somehow supposed to make the child want to be in a fundamentally unsuitable environment and, here's the buzz word 'build resilience'. All building resilience actually does is break the child and their parents and wider family. Imagine doing all of that in the backdrop of fines and potentially imprisonment for failing to get your child to school? Both the parents and the child are humiliated and everyone ignores the elephant in the room that it is simply horrendous to force a child into a situation that they cannot cope with!

If a child really didn't want to go home people would look at what is going on in the home environment to see what is causing the fear, why don't they do the same for schools!?

This is what it is like to deal with an anxious school refuser. Years on, after my child being away from school between the ages of 10 and 16, I still have PTSD over what we were made to do and the fact my 10 year old tried to throw himself under a gritter truck and jump out of bedroom windows and STILL I had an education welfare officer visit to ask why his attendance was poor.

I said upthread the same child now has an interview at Oxford University next week, I was told the time he would have poor educational outcomes if I removed school from the equation. What he needed was to feel safe and be allowed to learn in a safe environment. No one, and I mean no one, listened to me.

Fully agree @itsfinallytime. @cerisepanther73 clearly has no idea. Unfortunately this seems to be the prevailing view, no one listens & parents are penalised rather than supported in this scenario. No wonder home schooling is becoming more common & families are becoming anti school!

The teacher might have a different version of why he got the detention than what the son told his mum and she told you.

We tried going in for a few hours a day as that was all that could be tolerated - it was rubbish.
They don't get a proper education as they are already doing the maximum they can cope with per day by going in, so have no capacity left to make up work at home, and the (primary) school constantly switched lessons around so even if it has been carefully timetabled to cover 100% of fewer subjects what you got was random lessons with gaps in, e.g.: you'd be expecting part 3 of 4 on a writing task but you'd get "finish off this IT" (which you weren't there for) and miss the writing as that was now in the afternoon, meaning you were behind on that the next day.
We deregistered from that in order to allow our child to have access to a comprehensive full time education covering the whole curriculum.

I'm interested in home schooling because of the crappy behaviour from other children and parents. My friend is a Year 1 teacher, and in the autumn term she managed to get through only two full lessons due to the sheer amount of disruption.

No one previously in this family got school exams and some left illiterate.
We're always told we lack aspiration, we don't, we stayed in our lane because we were taught it was all we could hope for.

We aren't evangelical about Home ed for all. But we are quietly about it for us, and for people from our specific background who traditionally get failed, because we discovered it allowed us to change everything in a single generation.

We're now two generations of home ed here. It started with Dc's being let down, and SEN Dc's pushed out of meaningful education. Then serious physical damage, armed police, the mental toll, all for a place in a school not providing an education level most of MN would tolerate, that we had no choices over.

The day the decision was taken was when I realized that even on the worst H/Ed day I could reasonably expect them to still be alive tomorrow to try again.

Because of how much H/ed changed all our lives and futures, it's been an automatic choice from the start for the next generation. H/ed's served us very well and continues to do so, despite assumptions from many. Most of us here are WC/LC, mixture of skin tones, mixture of faiths and none, and I'm a self employed hand to mouth earning LP, HoH. You get out what you put in, which just didn't happen in school for us.

We have little contact with the 'extreme H/ed' lot, and tend to shy clear of both them, and 'school is better for all' families.
I put our experiences out here, because I was once a terrified beleaguered overwhelmed parent who only knew one option, and MN H/edders showed me there was an alternative. I remain grateful.

We've gone from accepting the very low expectations of the system for people like us, as we had no agency, to being able to reasonably choose and write our own futures at a very much higher level than the state education system has ever felt us worthy of. People might see that as evangelical, but its just fact here.

We've been enabled to discover SEN affected Dc's actual learning issues, and find, create, and facilitate different methods of learning, which they've then taken over, so they became independent learners able to go after what they wanted, rather than limited by others expectations of where they should fit in the world.

It's meant things we now know about and can access things we didn't used to know existed, like separate sciences, further maths, MFL's, and Latin, are now ours for the asking and no having to choose between creative subjects and STEM, everyone's free to take combinations school systems don't allow.

Doing badly in pre tests doesn't de-select, lower what paper etc, or a low GCSE mark prevent A level study because we're not producing results for the school.
Being unable to get good marks in a written exam, doesn't mean they can't study MFL's and be fluent across Europe or beyond.
Studying a subject for the love of it not an exam result is a perfectly reasonable use of resources here. We can value education for all it brings us, not just as a route to future earnings.

For the first time education, exams, and universities have become for us, and tbh the life it's given us really suits all of us.
All education choices are horses for courses.

I think there's a minority of very vocal parents who complain about everything and think school is like a service where you pick the bits you like and opt-out of the bits you don't and their children can do no wrong. It's all very well having plenty of time at home to discuss feelings and consequences when your child is acting up, but they seem to forget that in a class of 30, the teacher doesn't have the resources to spend 40 minutes working through Neveah's big feelings about participating in today's maths lesson.

Unschooling seems like a poor way to attempt to give validity to a permissive parenting style that lets children do whatever they want. Maybe in 20 years time, all the unschooling children will prove me wrong, but all the ones I've encountered have been years behind their peers in school and horribly behaved. I'm sure I'm about to hear from many Mumsnetters who unschool and whose 5 yos are just graduating from Oxford with 1st class degrees whilst winning Nobel Prizes for their excellent manners, but I can only speak for the ones I've met.

Having said all that, it's hardly surprising that there's some push back against the attempt to install the Birbalsingh method in every school, regardless of area and cohort. Most parents do not want their children to be treated like criminals in school, and the endless rules about ridiculous things like what colour socks children wear seem to be designed to irritate parents.