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.

In an ideal world I wouldn't have had to home educate my daughter in her last 2 years of school, I home educate due to a crap British education system, disinterested teachers, bad discipline, disruptive pupils, and ridiculous rules and regulations that have no bearing on a child's education, the increase in home education rates has risen 14% since September last year, and clearly speaks volumes. My daughter is thriving and doing so well, she is taking her Gcses a year early, it is hard work at times, but the easy decision would have been to leave her in a useless education system, where she was learning very little, definitely one of my better decisions.

It is nit not home schooling, it's home education, and parents facilitate their child's education. Most parents do not teach their dc. Also if they can't spell then the school system didn't do them any favours.

An acquaintance of mine has done this with one of her children, effectively giving him a pass on life, its ups and downs.

She expects that her child will end up living with her because of his needs (so that her ex husband can’t force a sale of the family home) until he manages to meet a wife. Or until she dies, if he does not find a wife willing to look after her son for the rest of his life.

I feel so sad for her son, who is perfectly able and intelligent, but whose teenage angst is being pandered to. Much to his future detriment.

Takes a village and all that Yes indeed! And despite this you think that school is the best place for a child.

I think a lot of people on here aren't grasping the sort of person you mean. I know the sort, like SIL, watched too many alternative online videos yet doesn't have the brains/effort to properly home educate so the kid slowly falls further and further behind.

I worked with a man that did the same, his kid was very clearly dyslexic, instead of getting the child help (pride) he pulled him out of school under the premise of home educating when the reality is the kid is working for him in several of his self made businesses so his formal education ended at 13 but the kid knows how to run a cafe 🤷‍♂️

Both these parents had limited education themselves.

That's interesting - as there was a thread on here a couple of days ago, an AMA by a Roma Gypsy and she was being slated for taking her children out of school . Everyone was saying that it wouldn't be possible for her to home educate as she didn't have secondary schooling herself. Yet, you are suggesting the opposite .

This.

I've toyed with home ed, not because I want to but because the school system, funding, curriculum and increasingly draconian rules are all shit. Teachers are leaving in their droves for good reason. Just read an article that TAs are teaching GCSE classes in some schools.

If you were to look into the statistics rather than relying on social media, you would find that EHE is comprised of mainly ‘hippies’, religious/thought groups, ethnic groups and a number of people taking advantage of EHE to get away with neglect/abuse- but the rise in numbers recently is driven by families affected by SEND/EBSR/MH difficulties (for obvious reasons).

It is not driven by whatever drivel you are watching on IG.

They aren't the exception in our friendship groups. (Partly because I cracked the external candidate exam system.) We are all quite bright tbf but it didn't save me dropping out of school young, illiterate, innumerate and unable to tell the time and straight into motherhood. It took my first kids to be being dreadfully failed for me to realize as long as I was uneducated, no one would do much for them.

Our friends tend to be either MC long term unschooling EHE's who are horrified at our structured methods but also end up at uni regardless, (I wouldn't dare, but hats off to them) or WC on our estate, failed by our crap local schools.They are doing HE to a large extent the same way we do, because they can see it's worked for us, plus (like most HE's) we share resources with others who need them.

Most, not all, of my lot have initially been quite critical of university before figuring out how to get the best out of it. But they've all figured out how to use it well despite the issues thrown up, and found their own tribe across disciplines.

@ithinkwerealloldnow
Yes I do think that some parents use it as an excuse to hide from the authorities - meaning the children can become 'invisible'. There used to be some kind of assessment/ check from local authorities but I don't think that's done in any depth, if at all now.

I actually offered DD the option, both DH and I have PhDs (one arts, one science) and could cover most subjects easily apart from geography. She said no thankfully. She doesn’t want to be taught by us.

I know 2 families that home schooled. One super religious. The other was all wrapped up in the mothers feelings of being let down educationally, she thought she was super intelligent and had only failed her degree by not being pushed. So she took her children out to ‘push them’ But then ended up just taking them on lots of day trips and then only doing lessons on things she was interested in. She’s actually cut everyone off so no one knows what’s happened to her children.

My friend is an education officer in a museum in a very middle class area. She loathes the home Ed groups. She says the children are very badly behaved, not like school kids, but indulged and incredibly rude to staff (says the school children are usually excited). They have to provide a monthly group for them and they all dread it. That they think they are right about everything even though they aren’t.

I' d like to see the statistics please. Is there really statistics that put people in categories like " hippies", " ethnic groups " and
"... people taking advantage of EHE to get away with neglect/abuse-"?

Home education is great in some circumstances.

However, I can think of a few family vloggers, like the Inghams, who are badly letting their kids down. The kids all seem very behind both academically and socially. It’s a method of control for some families and no one seems to be looking out for these children.

And she's right. Home ed isn't pouring whatever your education level is, into empty vessel children who only learn what you know.

It's about facilitating, providing/accessing resources, and teaching children how to learn, and expand themselves, and making learning enjoyable. The internet at our fingertips even when traveling, has really opened it up to anyone who's prepared to put the effort in, regardless of their educational level.

My children and grandchildren are massively more academically educated than I am, but I bring older knowledge and skills, and common sense and enthusiasm to the table.

Statistics are free for everyone to see.

No, they clearly don’t categorise groups like that- I was paraphrasing. Statistics do exist on the motivations for EHE- but obviously they don’t have ‘we are hippies’ or ‘I just can’t be arsed with the school run’ as labels- the information is there, it does require some form of analysis to understand it though.

I home educate. This is because our primary school is rubbish. My eldest children passed their 11 plus with myself as their tutor and went to the local grammar. I said to my DH, I can only do home education upto year 6.
I do see what OP is saying. There are a lot of weird home edders. And I do think there should be rigorous checks. No one has bothered to check on my children.

Its a complicated issue and having crap schools with behavioural problems doesnt help.

Have you reported them?

Can you point me in the direction of the evidence that children from every socio economic status do better being home educated?

Genuinely fascinated by this.

So please link your sources.

My dc have been home schooled all the way through.

Of all the he children I met along the way, I would say 30-40% were getting a good education, 80% were getting at least as good as they would have got at their local school (which most of them integrated into without difficulty at ages 15+) and the other 20% were being pretty much failed by their parents (but mostly ended up integrating OK into school, with some extra help for the first few months).

The main reason I thought some of them would be much better off in school was not the learning, as frankly most children learn eff all in school, but the toxicity of some of the individual parents involved. Getting away from those parents for whatever reason for at least some hours a day could only have been a good thing, and school was the only way they would be likely to.

Yes, a report to the LA once a year. Just writing my sons now

Erm ‘stop homeschooling your children’?! Oh ok then…

I’m curious to know what has prompted you to post this very one sided post? Why has this annoyed you so much?

Have you seen the state of our education system? Who are you to tell parents who can and can’t home educate? I’m an ex teacher and I took my DC out (& myself out) for what you may call philosophical reasons. Is that ok by you? We unschool. Is that ok by you?

@VulvaArmy and @VikingLady can you please link your sources? Your claims are outrageous and you should be able to back them up if you expect us to believe them.

It’s outrageous to say that statistics exist on what motivates parents to HE? Can’t you see why that is information that the government would want to have?

Try googling it if you don’t know how to find sources, I’m not your research assistant.

That is a lie. They can only fine after missing 10 unauthorised days at school. People are just making up this crap about fines. There are strict rules in place about fining. You don’t have to give a drs note either that’s only if they are on a med1 or med2 where the child is persistently absent then they start asking for medical evidence. Not when they have been off three days a year for goodness sake.

Neither do I.