Stop homeschooling your children.

[pentagonisapentagon]

I run an educational consultancy and exam company. We produce books that most parents in our area of education will purchase. Home educating your children makes us money.

However. STOP. Now I don’t mean those that have children with severe issues (this is a small %, everyone likes to diagnose their children with some form of disorder and it isn’t those I’m talking about) who would benefit out the classroom / often awaiting a better school option.

I mean the parents who are tired with the education system - lots of moans that they can’t take their children for a holiday, annoyed about not being allowed make up, the rules being too hard. You can barely spell, stop trying to teach your children yourself. These children are being FAILED by their parents.

By all means, if you have the relationship, time, ability and means to provide a solid home education system (inc money for tutors which will be needed) - go ahead. Just ensure you’re covering the social aspect.

I am seeing the advice to home school EVERYWHERE. Mumsnet and Facebook filled with the poor advice. It’s detrimental to all parties involved.

I’d love to know others thoughts on this.

I have 'taught' my dc in levels well above what I had to begin with in some subjects. We had online resources, and we sat together, both read the material and then discussed it together.

With ds1, who is very gifted at maths, when I 'teach' him in fact it is the other way round, he teaches me. He says having to explain things so that I understand them is very useful to him, as he has to make sure he really understands them in order to do it.

As they grow older the role is more one of study buddy than teacher.

Any teacher will tell you that having to learn alongside your pupils is not the best way. It inevitably means you do not stretch the brightest pupils.
And getting children to explain what they have learned is good practice and used in schools.

My kids all go to school and I’m finding the main problem is with other children. Violent, aggressive, sweary, children and there is a real lack of discipline. Kids who hit get no real punishment. So much lesson time is lost to behaviour management.

School is quite frankly an awful environment for lots of children.

HE parents often talk about visiting museums, art galleries, etc. That is what loads of families do as well with children who also attend school. Visiting museums and galleries as part of HE is fine, but to be really useful you have to build on that visit at home by learning more about what you have seen.

In a school setting that may be true.

In a he setting, you can encourage your dc to stretch themselves (in the case of mine, well beyond anything they would have had access to in any school) with online resources, and accompany them in that process.

And yet schools are being filled with ECT's and trainees learning on the job, lessons taken by HLTA's and cover supervisors and for many older ones, no one...

For many both using schools, and home educating, concepts like the 'best way' became something out of their grasp a long time ago.

Except it's not a waiting room, it's a cafe/foyer of a theatre with lots of open space and children playing entirely appropriately

That's exactly what the majority of HE families do, and the other way round, exploring a subject and then going and seeing what artifacts and additional opportunities they can find to deepen and broaden learning beyond passing an exam in a subject.

@Elleherd No its what the best HE families do.

I've got a friend who is about to homeschool her daughter. It's going to be amazing of that I have no doubt. The trouble is the flip side is someone on my estate who's well known for her mental health issues. Kids are being homeschooled because she can't manage the education system. I often wonder what the kids are learning today when I go past her house. They deal drugs from the house so I suppose maths skills? I find social services to be very wary of families like this because of the levels of violence & intimidation shown. The school asked her to leave as she kept actually fighting with other parents at pick up ect. Those poor kids.

They do very basic experiments. Using PH strips for acid/alkylate, bending light using prisms. But since the kids do not know what they are missing they will tell anyone they are HE and do science experiments.

The people I know who do HE well are very intelligent and well educated.
The people who do not say things like, it does not matter that my 10 year old DD can not read, she will learn in her own time.

I think it's very hard for teens to come out of school around year 8.

Some of the difficulties are that parents may only have a model of trying to recreate school at home and don't realise that there are alternatives that may suit their child better. These alternatives may take time and trial and error.

Parents probably working so teen has to get on with work, which is fine if they have already developed some learning autonomy but even so still provides a very book/screen based one dimensional type of learning. Parent not available to help them join in with group based things or to spend time researching what is happening in the area for home ed kids.

Teens on the whole go through a more self conscious phase. It's harder to join in with home ed groups as a result, especially where there's no structured activity as an ice breaker. Mixed age groups may feel a bit overwhelming although some older ones can busy themselves helping a younger one while they ease in socially.

Teens who have had a poor experience with peers or teachers bring that experience with them. They fear bullying or that an adult who is teaching will tell them off or shame them. It takes a while to feel safe and comfortable and drop the lense through which they've come to see interactions because of their school experience. Initial defense mechanisms can make it hard to form new connections.

When children join in younger it doesn't present the same barriers.

I would never say don't start home educating but I think these are important aspects to consider, as peers tend to be so important in the teen years. I understand that many teens are coming out as a last resort. Many need a break to recover and then thrive, but I think the govt really need to take a long hard look at what isn't working and serve this demographic much better within the system.

And HE are full of parents seeking advice because they have to write a HE report for the Local Authority but all their kid has done is play minecraft and use social media.
I have seen friends do HE incredibly well. But I get fed up of HE parents who refuse to acknowledge that there are plenty of HE parents doing it incredibly badly. Because if you have spent any time on online HE groups you know there are plenty of parents making a mess of it. Plenty of parents posting saying they are struggling to even get their teenager out of bed at all.

So these kids were off rolled and not given a suitable alternative, which is very shaky from a legal point of view.

@OceanicBoundlessness I agree. And although I think workbooks and online learning can be part of HE, I agree that parents who work and leave their kids to learn only through workbooks and online learning are doing their kids a disservice.
The truth is plenty of parents have incredibly low educational expectations for their children. And that includes some HE parents.

It’s true there are different ‘types’ of HE.
Like all things in life it’s a spectrum.

The term unschooling though has been wrongly associated with neglect! I consider that I unschool my kids and I’m an ex teacher with an undergrad degree and a post grad degree. I can assure that they are far from neglected.

My kids can perfectly read, write, work out percentages, play an instrument, socialise, one is learning to code at a very high level, one is very creative & arty, one is doing someGCSEs early, we travel a lot, they go to different educational settings around the world, they do a myriad of different activities but ultimately I don’t ‘teach’ them. They are what you may call self-led learners. We allow them to follow their interests and manage their own time whilst I suppose putting resources/activities in their path in case it resonates with them.

It’s sometimes hard for people to wrap their heads around the idea that children can be trusted to learn what they need, in the right environment, without being taught explicitly. As an ex teacher I can tell you that children do not retain much of the information taught to them that does not interest them. Children, like all people, learn best when they have an interest or a love of a topic and have time to dive deeply into said topic.

Thing is you could say this about any parents.

High educational expectations is not something that is exclusive to school parents! Trust me I’m an ex teacher so I know this.

And FWIW I’ve been a HE parent for a lot of years and I do not know of any of my peers that remotely leaves their kids to only learn this way! All the parents I know are very involved and very dedicated.

Perhaps this has come about recently from the high numbers of people removing their children from schools now they work from home? Perhaps this is a needs-must situation? Very judgemental on here today.

@benefitstaxcredithelp I have seen unschooling done incredibly well. It is more work than doing school at home. But that is not what most parents do. Most just use it to mean let their kids do whatever they want and buy a few books about their latest interest.

There are no doubt lots of parents who HE who really, really shouldn't be. Plus some who don't really HE at all, they just say they are, but are actually just failing ti send their dc to school.

I'm a very experienced secondary school teacher and I would have found it hard to HE my (bright, cooperative) dc, so I'm surprised how many people do it. However, looking at the state schools are in, I can also understand why increasing numbers of parents don't want their children in school.

I home educated both my DS all the way up to GCSEs and they moved on the 6th form for A levels. DS1 got 3 A stars and 1 A in his 4 A levels and is now flourishing at Durham uni and has a great social life and good friends. DS2 is now at 6th form studying for 4 A levels, predicted to get 4 A stars and is being supported by his 6th form to apply to Cambridge uni. He is very involved in lots of social/extra curricular aspects of his fantastic 6th form.

And it is very common for HE parents who do have a child who goes to university to send their child to school/college at 14. So it is the school/college who does all the hard work to get their child into university.

I think it's much more complex than that. Often parents are doing the best they can (often it's what they think they have to do based on questionnaires from the la) when their child has been absolutely sinking at school. They've taken them out as a last resort and are thrown in at the deep end.

Firstly, mind your own damn business. Secondly, the best and brightest home schoolers will have nothing to do with snake oil salesmen like yourself; you're probably seeing the less educated, less confident parents, although I don't see why the latter would do a worse job than under-resourced schools with a severe discipline problem and a bullying culture.

Also, what's all this fuss about people who can't spell? It's less of an issue than ever with spellcheck. My DM is atrocious at spelling and she taught me to read and write at home when I was a preschooler - had she left it to the so-called professionals, I'm not sure I'd ever have learned!

YABVU

If you can't counter OPs opinions without resorting to personal attacks and derogatory language you probably shouldn't be home schooling tbh.

YANBU OP
I will start by saying I have friends who home schooled one of their children, the one who found school overwhelming. They did a fantastic job because they were organised, focussed, had previously trained as teachers, and had a spread of interests between them (important because eg if I was solely homeschooling the education would be heavy on arts and humanities and light on science and sport)- they also made sure the child had plenty of social contact. The child returned to mainstream school after a few years and has been academically successful.
So it definitely CAN be done, and done very well.
However - just to give a few recent examples- through my job I have come across 2 families opting to home school. In one, the (sole) parent is completely illiterate. In the other, the (also sole) parent is actually well educated but does not speak english at all well, has no understanding of our education system and due to their own complex needs is leading a very chaotic life.

I often despair when I read these debates on MN that so many people have very little idea of 'how the other half live' as we used to say. Home education can work well but only with committed, hardworking, well educated and engaged parents. Without that the children are basically being left without an education and this is a societal issue, those children's welfare is ALL our concern.

And that's without even starting on the safeguarding aspect.

By all means keep home education as a legal option but it needs far far more oversight and regulation.