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.

Respectfully this is simply not how home education works for many home educating families. We do not regurgitate information in the hope that a child remembers most of it long enough to regurgitate it back up in an exam. We do not strive to provide a school experience at home. Home education is so misunderstood but a lot of us are okay with that because we understand its value for our children. We do not need validation from school parents.

Oh please piss off. As a home educated person myself now home educating my own children I am bored of having to defend my actions all the time. You do you.
Ps the fact that you don't even know it's called home education not home schooling in this country says a lot.

No, when they get high grades it is generally because the young person has cracked the art of independent learning and self motivated study.
That thing that university lecturers complain so bitterly that students no longer have, expecting to be spoon fed throughout their degree, because they were taught to the test in school.

Exactly.
The sweeping statements on here about HE families are hilarious.

Im an ex teacher and I can tell you that I saw more neglect and awful parenting when I was working than I’ve ever seen in my HE life (I’ve seen exactly none). All HE parents I know are dedicated and work incredibly hard to facilitate their child’s education. It is NOT the easy option I can assure you.

No doubt home education is used in rare cases to cover up for shoddy parenting but these are few and far between in my direct experience as an ex teacher and as a HE parent.

If you are home educating you dont need to hire tutors. Atleast not in my country. So I'm not sure where this is going.

I think there are a variety of reasons parents choose to home-educate. I have two older children (sixth-form and secondary) and one primary aged child. The education system is rapidly going downhill. My eldest son (17) often didn’t have a maths subject teacher throughout years 10 and 11, (pre-GCSES) they had to go to a computer room and complete a 10
minute task but often the room was so disruptive (no teacher present), he was getting grade 3’s in his mocks with very clear gaps in his learning and we was told he wasn’t expected to pass this subject, he achieved a grade 4 in maths GCSE’s. He decided to re-sit Maths at sixth-form, he studied for 3 months, covering foundation and all of the higher paper content and ended up achieving a grade 6, he now takes Maths as an A-level. The system may have failed him but his perseverance didn’t. Poor education due to high class numbers, lack of support, persistent disruption and lack of subject teachers is failing our children. I can understand why many people choose to HE, if they’re able and finances allow.

That's basically saying if a child in a school gets high grades it's the child not the teaching, I worry about some teachers. I really do. What exactly are they teaching if they teach our children but can't tutor their own?

Home schooling should be regulated properly, subject to regular checks and be under the necessary radars. There have been numerous cases where children have been taken off roll for home educating and never heard of again. I’m sure it’s a tiny proportion, but one is too many. The previous (I think) Children’s Commissioner was very vocal about the regulation of home education and I am in complete agreement.

Your ‘3 categories’ are a joke right?

Stereotype much!

Im curious to know which one I fall into. I’m an ex primary teacher who decided that the system was unfit for purpose for my NT children and that they would learn better outside of it. They now thrive in HE and are self-motivated learners with strong interests in many diverse, interesting subjects. They are bright, sociable and capable 🤔 1, 2 or 3?

Also if you look at Finland and their education system compared to ours, you can see why it tops the league tables.

Works to some extent for some subjects. Try looking up trigonometry and see how far it gets you!

Can you 'look up' a foreign language? How about so many things like history where it is important to understand bias and nuances, not just dates.

What an insult to teachers to say most things can just be 'looked up'. I imagine you just look up your symptoms instead of going to the doctor.

TBF a lot of it is the child and a culmination of their understanding of final exam based education and ability to show their learning on the day under pressure.

A good teacher will have provided good resources and helped the child develop the ability to understand and apply the knowledge they have, and deepen it through independent learning, as well as taught exam technique and skills.

A good home educator will have done the same, but often in different methods from those suitable to groups of thirty.

Where teachers really come in to their own, isn't over high grades, it's spotting where the child is weakest and raising the child whose natural result is a D, up to a C, and creating a whole world of opportunities that D's wouldn't have granted them.

I think many teachers approach education with the idea that they can only really teach their specialism and maybe a couple of other subjects well. There is a huge difference in actively lesson planning and differentiation for a group of thirty children and facilitating or teaching one or two, but teacher don't know the ins and outs of it until doing it. Most teachers I know who home ed have said their classroom teaching skills haven't been that useful and they've had to unlearn a lot to be effective.

I could teach my kids very effectively for about half the curriculum subjects- but not all of them. Certainly not to GCSE or A'Level.

I'd homeschool in a heartbeat, but I'm a single parent so him being in school is the only way I can work. The education system is not fit for purpose. I'm basing that on working in schools, not as a parent.

"You can barely spell, stop trying to teach your children yourself. These children are being FAILED by their parents."

I initially thought this was a spoof post.

What research you have completed or are you using to make such sweeping negative claims? Genuinely interested. This isn't my experience of home ed families at all, quite the opposite.

You're focusing on the idea of forward facing teaching as opposed to exploring, collaborative learning, and facilitating. The former requires a different set of skills to the later. Both work perfectly well if done properly and work for the child's learning needs.

Not at all with over 30 years experience, I am very aware that a mixture of both is great. You can study a lot of things as you describe- for some subjects, and at secondary and post 16 level, some subjects are totally, or almost totally, out fo bounds for what you describe.

Foreign languages, maths, trigonometry, calculus, chemistry, physics, music even.

Works to some extent for some subjects. Try looking up trigonometry and see how far it gets you!

What is difficult about trigonometry?

As a teacher (deemed outstanding in each of the ofsted inspections I was subjected to, before anyone questions whether I could do the job) who left after 15 years...what is needed, is to fix the system. Our system is not one size fits all, but rather, one size fails many.
As one other poster stated, my own children also flourished academically during lockdown and I didn't follow a school curriculum. Parents who homeschool are not failing their children, the government do that well enough all on their own. This is with their constant insistence on all children sitting test after test, assessing the joy out of learning and not teaching lifelong skills just regurgitating the latest set of buzzwords (fronted adverbials, dipthongs, split diagraphs anyone?)
The education system needs to reflect our current society and the fact that children don't all learn the same thing at the same time in the same way. I don't have the answer but I do know that it's broke and more tests won't fix it!

. Parents who homeschool are not failing their children, the government do that well enough all on their own.

This needs to stop being a binary argument.

Some parents who homeschool absolutely do fail their children. They have opted for HE to avoid the scrutiny and expectations.

Some parents who HE do so for perfectly valid reasons and do a great job.

Some are in the middle somewhere.

music

You wouldn't believe how many young people pick up an instrument and learn to play it without any formal tuition.

There are also multiple community opportunities for yp to learn to write and perform contemporary music and free or no cost opportunities to learn associated practical and technical skills.

Tutoring your own DC is completely different to teaching a class hence why parents don't need to be teachers. On top of that there are classes, tutors and online programmes available if required. My DS did do some classes and this increased as he got older. But I didn't find it hard to facilitate his learning.

I taught my DGS who was then years 5 and 6 during Lockdowns. He actually got ahead and made progress ahead of the rest of his year much to his teachers bemusement! I approached it like I do my own job and bought books, downloaded the National curriculum and used all the available resources online and BBC bitesize. I paid for online maths tuition once a week as well. He is in top set at his secondary school now!

Fair enough.
I can only say that in that case 'somehow' the later methods are working well for my Dc's and DGc's regardless. All have maths, most have further maths, and three separate sciences, all have between 1 and 3 MFL's and 2 have Latin.

The exception in that list is music, as they all enjoy it and play instruments, can read and write notation, and a couple have studied sound, but no one's yet chosen it as a subject they wanted to take exams in, so we've no experience there.

I don't understand? Why could I not look up trigonometry?

And a foreign language - of course. If I forget a word etc I look it up.
History - again yes, I can look in a text book or look for articles/books.

And yep, when I was a teacher I looked things up! However, tutoring and facilitating a DC 1:1 is complete different to teaching a class!
I'm a nurse now and yes, I'm always looking things up!
This is why home educated DC are so good at independent study/work as they understand that noone is expected to know everything but if you want to know something you can find out about it.