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.

Of course teachers look things up, all the time. Who says they do not.

You can look up trigonometry all you want- but understanding it, to the extent you can confidently teach it, is another matter.

And I can assure you that learning a foreign language is not about just learning 'words'.

I'm not sure what I'm missing but are you really suggesting you can't self study those subjects? People were doing that a 100 years ago just with books. Now with all the resources we have at our finger tips it is even easier!

Friend of mine HEs her son. He is unremarkable academically, but managed to catch up on 4 years of maths in 8 months once deregistered after his school failed him horrifically.

The huge collateral damage on children in education seems to be acceptable to too many people.

There's little evidence that HE is full of abusers and ne’er do wells, as this thread would suggest, yet piles of evidence that school is a disaster for many students (and teachers). Why is this?

I wonder if the scare stories that seem to be recently cropping up (and I imagine threads like this are included) seem to be a response to the headlines about HE earlier in the year pointing out how many more children are being HEd because of school failing them, and the government are trying to scramble support to stop the exodus of children from schools so blame the feckless, weak and abusive parents.
At this point I fully expect to see some channel 5 shitty propaganda on HE to be on our screens by autumn.

You can look up trigonometry all you want- but understanding it, to the extent you can confidently teach it, is another matter

Out of interest how many children completing mainstream education come out with a full understanding of trigonometry?
I’m fairly well educated, a levels, degree, masters, I have zero understanding of trigonometry, and it hasn’t featured at all in the last 34 years of my life.

Those were examples!

Look fair enough, maybe you can't do that. But plenty of us can. If the school system is so good surely we have an understanding of trigonometry already? You are looking up things to remind yourself, often. But I don't find it a problem to look up and learn new concepts either.

And haha, of course it's not just words. I speak 3 MFLs - one I learnt at school, one I learnt through a beginner adult course and then by myself and visiting the country frequently, the 3rd I taught myself. I find it very strange to suggest people can't learn things themselves especially in modern times with so much free information!

But did you not learn trigonometry at school? You might have forgotten it as you don't use it but if you wanted to you could learn it again and you wouldn't be starting from scratch, either.

Do you never help your DC with homework? What do you do if they ask for help with something you don't know? Do you not look it up so you can help them?

50 percent at our 'best' local school didn't leave with passes in English and maths.

To be fair it's hard to extrapolate from that as there may be some maths geniuses who are rubbish at English among the 50 percent who failed one or both subjects.

I have no idea!
But if I managed to learn (and forget it) in school by age 15, I’m confident that if my child is headed towards a career that requires trigonometry, he will be motivated to learn it, and we will use resources of which there are many to make sure he learns it effectively, not in a classroom that overwhelms him because of the noise/the one size fits none approach that reduces the learning capacity of many children in school.

As it is we use various maths resources suitable for his age, once he reaches trigonometry age it will be part of the resources we use. If, like millions of other children, he instantly forgets it and never thinks of it again, I will not be beating myself up for letting down my child.

YANBU.
I totally agree with you.
I don't know why so many people do it these days.
Sounds like my worst nightmare.
School not only teaches academic skills, but life skills.
School is where you can make friends for life. School can be great fun (and I say this as someone who was bullied occasionally at school).

I agree a small percentage of children and parents are more suited to being home schooled/doing home schooling.
The rest seems to be snowflakes who don't like the system.
Flame me all you want, but it's my opinion.

There's not a chance I'd do it. I'm not cut out for it- and I believe most parents aren't. Move schools if you need to.
DD is a very active, very sociable kid, she'd be climbing the walls.
I just don't get it.

Do you never help your DC with homework? What do you do if they ask for help with something you don't know? Do you not look it up so you can help them?

Helping someone with something they've already been taught isn't the same as teaching it from scratch.

There are so many teaching resources available now. My biology A-level teacher literally read to us from a text book and we copied it down. I got an A.

But home education also teaches life skills arguably more so.
Home ed is also where you can make friends for life.
Home ed is also great fun (again arguably more so!)

And most home educated kids aren't climbing the walls precisely because they're not kept within 4 walls like at school!!

Just because you don’t ‘get it’ doesn’t mean it’s an unreasonable thing for families to do.

So many people are doing it now because school is a nightmare for many kids. The system is broken and outdated. It’s a one size fits all style of education that is out of step with the modern world. School does not teach life skills, it teaches people to pass exams. I would counter your opinion by stating that my kids have learnt far more life skills in their HE life than school kids.

HE is great fun and they make friends for life.

As for the word ‘snowflakes’ what an insult to most HE parents who go above and beyond for their children. I’m so glad your child is one of those who fits the mould and enjoys that very specific style of education. That’s genuinely nice to hear as it’s absolutely not the usual thing you hear about school.

Sure, but sometimes my DD is doing homework and she may have missed the topic so needs help from scratch. Sometimes yes, she has some idea about it. But either way if I need to know something to help her that I don't know, I look it up. It's also not all about teaching, it can be facilitating them to find it themselves. I'll always make sure I know about it myself anyway so I can help if they get stuck or if they want me to look at their work.

I meet a few home educated people who are bright and intelligent.

I don't agree with your home schooling narrative. There are many children who are illiterate despite going to mainstream school.

education system is so rubbish especially secondary 30 or more kids for class a lot of disruptive behaviour so basically a 1 hour lesson becomes 30 minutes waiting for everyone be in silence and listening the teacher, bullying and normally the bully are kept in school with no consequences, special needs kids have a minimum support, teachers are changing constantly because they can’t handle the pressure. So I think homeschooling is a good choice in UK, USA, Australia etc.. kids are safer at home they can learn more subjects they are really interested in they can learn at their own pace they have subjects study groups, PE groups, private tutor and online providers.
I don’t see any neglect to protect your child and make them happy.

Do you think this might be because kids who are shy/ND are more likely to be educated at home?

How do make friends for life at home schooling? Who with - your parents or tutors?
It's a genuine question - I don't mean to sound ignorant but I don't understand how it can be fun or rewarding for the parents or child.
It must be so difficult to have the endless patience you require to home school successfully, day in day out.
I could never be a stay at home mum so maybe that's why I wouldn't enjoy it. Kudos to anyone who does.
Personally I think me and DD would feel extremely cut off from things.
Genuinely amazed how many people want to do it!
Possibly regional bias?
I'm in the north west and my friends children like school and never had a problem, and we all like them going aswell.

I know of a few families who ‘hone school’…. None actually do very much educating…. A family on our estate have 3 sons, one didn’t get the infants school they wanted so they simply didn’t send him to school… he should be starting seniors in September this year, instead he’s never been to school, his younger brother then also never started school, and she’s had another baby now too …. The 2 older ones are morbidly obese, the house always smells of drugs, the estate is full of feral cats thanks to them neglecting having their cats spayed/neutered… it’s sad for those kids!

Another family I know has 2 kids who basically refuse to attend school…. So they don’t… mum works, kids sleep & eat all day & have increasing mental health issues since quitting school.. also not actually educated!…

BUT I understand it… my friend has twins, both probably autistic spectrum, daily struggle to get them into school, both below 50% attendance, parents try their hardest with very little support from school…. One has an EHCP which school refuses to acknowledge, they’ve received threats now to be fined etc for low attendance… in that scenario what they do? The temptation to just withdraw them from the system must be tempting… but the daily fight continues!!

There’s also a girl at swimming who is ‘home educated’… she’s been out of school 3 years now, doesn’t do school work and no one checks that she is…. No one checks that any of them do work…. It’s appalling that ‘home educators’ aren’t checked up on.

Take my hat off though to anyone who home schools and actually does it.. we did it during covid, but couldn’t do it full time!

Home educated children often come back into the education system for Alevels. You can rote learn for GCSE but A levels are a bit more demanding on both the young person and the parent. You see a huge gap in the ability of the young person socially and their overall ability to cope in sixth form and in turn university. I think home educating is more about the parent than the child they are pretending to educate.

You make friends for life with the DC you mix with at classes, groups, trips, meet-ups etc. My DS is still best friends with a girl he has gone through the whole journey with. They are now at different colleges but still really close. He has a couple of other close home ed friends.

It's fun because you get to do a lot of fun trips, classes, groups. Learning is fun and you get loads of time to follow your interests, play and do really interesting different stuff and you can really enjoy and make the most of spaces as they are not crowded with school children. I made some friends among the other parents too. You are not cut off, you are part of a community, a bit like a school community but you are closer.

It is immensely rewarding seeing your DC thrive and seeing them learning skills etc.

I think if your DC have never had an issue with school you are privileged. My DC have SEN so that has not been the case and is the reason most home educate, ime.

Not all HE children go to HE meet ups and groups.

My DS and his friends were all going to college from 14 so have had no issues socially in 6th form - they are much more prepared than their peers who have just come out of school. Academically they don't expect to be spoon fed either. My DS and his best friend are both doing really well academically too. Which is even better considering they have achieved all that even though we were only 'pretending to educate them.' Maybe schools would get better results if they just started pretending too!