To think Home Education should be made illegal

[Viviennemary]

I would like to see a ban on HE except perhaps in a very very few cases and with good reason and under strict supervision.

I'm a trained teacher and most of what I learned is techniques for engaging a large group, planning schemes of work with levels of differentiation for a range of abilities and managing a classroom.

The skills needed for teaching your own child 1-2-1 are entirely different to the skills needed for running a class of 30.

Maybe that awful children's commissioner woman who appears to know nothing about family life, school, SEND etc. She's had an axe to grind with HE since she started. As did ex head of OFSTED.

I cannot take this post seriously, please tell me it's sarcastic or something?

I think they're making the point that children under CSA don't see teachers every day, and no one seems to think that they're inadequately safeguarded.

I think the rolling eyes give it away as sarcasm.

We can never 100% stop child abuse, though we can try to minimise the risks for children who may be unsafe. Look how many babies and toddlers suffer and die at the hands of their parent/s. And how many who are in school, as Sara was for the majority of the time she was abused (2019 onwards). Statistically most abused children will fall into those 2 groups. I am not saying it never happens in HE but known cases are rare (yes, there could be undetected cases). I certainly wouldn't be against more oversight where there are known risk factors which are substantial, again, as in Sara's case and where there is a move to HE. I wouldn't be against more oversight of vulnerable children generally but where is the money? LA's are going bankrupt by the week.

I think it was dry humour, commenting on the fact that the system in relation to children is completely broken/not fit for purpose/bonkers.

I might be wrong though.

This is interesting. I am not a teacher, but I was able to work out what dc needed to do during lockdown and I found that the help I gave them - I guess also using the skills I developed in relation to my professon - meant their marks went up dramatically after lockdown. It made me see school slightly differently.

I don't think it should be banned but I don't get why hone edders are do against regulation.

If I was homeschooling DD and was proud of what I provided and of how shevwas progressing I think I'd quite like to show off to someone!

Plus people like this need to be checked up on...

I agree OP. There are lots of home educated children who are beautifully cared for and receive an education. But as someone who works in safeguarding I have seen so many children watching the tv instead of going to school, I've been told things like the discovery channel is really educational and that putting on subtitles is how they do their reading. Parents who don't want to get up in the morning, who don't want to deal with challenges of difficulties with school and just take the kids out. These children are virtually unseen and don't for example access school nursing teams, there are very little eyes on them. They miss out on so many special events and milestones from not being in school.

I've worked in a college where (bright and able) home educated children have come back into education and are totally lost in the world of socialising and social media. It's easy to help 'socialise' a young child out of school but much harder to do that with a teen. Teenagers need to be with their peers to learn social norms around touch for example, the young people I saw after lock down didn't know how or when to touch, there was really exaggerated hugging and grabbing in a bid to be friendly but it wasn't always welcome. Their behaviour as a cohort was that of much younger children.

If you are going to neglect or abuse your child, home education makes that much much easier.

Sorry, so many typos 🤦🏻‍♀️

This maybe works with the majority of NT children. A lot of this would be hell for a ND child.

If my child was ND and they were so unhappy in mainstream it was affecting their mental health, you better believe I'm taking them out.

"They miss out on so many special events and milestones from not being in school." Like what?

Lockdown is an example of something other than home education. It was an example of us being isolated from our family and peers. I would say as a society, we have an issue with children who are unable/unwilling to socialise outside of devices.

While schoolchildren are somewhat more protected from abuse at home, you’re forgetting that home educated children are entirely protected from abuse at school.

This peer-on-peer abuse can include standard assault and harassment (“bullying”), all the way up to rape and murder.

I agree with you - homeschooling would have protected me from relentless bullying throughout secondary school.

I think often bullying is minimised, but it can have lifelong effects. It is abuse.

I think homeschooling is for a good purpose if it is to protect against bullying.

In Sara's case the parents should have never allowed to take their vulnerable daughter out of school.

There’s a big difference between doing stuff and learning stuff.

Why do some hone educating parents on this thread seem to think that their children are mixing with more (or a more varied group of) children than those at school?

In many cases, they are. What is obvious is that some people on this thread have a narrow view of home education.

Not least of whom are those that HE themselves.

Because they often are, depending on the area they live in and type of school attended.

Given he's academically ahead of the children he now attends school with, I think I can safely say he was learning.

Well, depending on the school, they probably are.

DD goes to a very small village school and for the majority of every day, she mixes with 16 other white British children, all within 6 months of her age, all with reasonably similar middle class crunchy parents (the school is known for being very outdoorsy with a big focus on forest school so it attracts a certain kind of parent).

The academy opposite us has more children but it's not much more diverse.

When I worked part time and she was pre-school we went anywhere I could get to on public transport and I saw friends of all different races and faiths with children of all different ages. I don't get to see them much anymore since I'm working FT and she's at school.

@zet1 @punocchio @mrssunshine2b

My daughter goes to a school with 30 kids in her class.

There are 90 kids in her year that get mixed up and put into sets for maths and English.

There are 360 kids in her school (3 form Jr school) and there are numerous clubs at both lunch time and after school that any of them can attend.

At infant school age she did multiple dance classes a week plus swimming lessons and rainbows/brownies. Now does martial arts and guides.

She has lots of cousins around her age she sees regularly.

We have friends with kids aged 1-16 that she sees fairly regularly.

We've been on holidays to campsites, hostels and all inclusive hotels with various kids clubs, activites and communal facilities.

Stop trying to push the nonsense that children who attend schools are in one classroom all day with the same kids and don't have time to do anything else. It's just as bad as the people who think homeschooled kids never leave the house!

I'm not. I said SOME home educated children mix with more diverse groups than schooled children. I'm not the one making generic catch all statements here. Depends entirely on the child.

There's a huge amount of wasted time in the school day though.

Doing the register.
Lining up for assembly.
Sitting back down and lining up again for assembly because they were too loud the first time.
Sitting through assembly, lining back up and taking it in turns to walk back to the classroom one year group at a time.
Input on the carpet which might either go completely over a child's head, or alternatively be something the child already knows, but nonetheless needs to be sat through.
Waiting for teacher to deal with child who keeps calling out/ poking another child with a pencil/ break dancing on a table.
Arguing over the seating plan and then handing out books.
Waiting for your turn with the ruler/ prittstick/ red colouring crayon.
Waiting with your hand up because you're stuck and need some help, but the teacher is dealing with another child who needs help or the wild child has resumed the break dance on the table and the TA and teacher are combining forces to try and get him down.

On a bad day, the child starts throwing chairs and the whole class wastes another 30 minutes whilst the classroom is evacuated and SLT comes down to try and extract the child from the classroom so the other children can get back to their maths lesson.

So by morning break (after gathering books, locating lost glue stick lids, you've probably done what could have been achieved in 15 minutes with 1-2-1 help. And that's before getting to all the things schools do because OFSTED likes to see it, such as children copying out the date and learning objective and underlining them with a ruler, which could take anywhere between 2 and 20 minutes depending on the child, and needs to be done at the start of every lesson or risk the wrath of the bad book scrutiny.

I agree. Schools and teachers simply don't take bullying seriously. And yes, it can cause life long issues. If my son had been subjected to sustained and serious bullying at school, I'd have pulled him out and home-ed him in a heartbeat. I suffered five years of bullying at my crap comp, not just verbal, but physical too including assaults and theft/damage to property. Teachers didn't give a shit. I'd never let that happen to a child of mine.