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.

That's not the situation PP described. He was home ed for a while and then he sent his child back to school. Maybe you need to put a sign outside your home ed groups to make it clear that only people who are committed to home edding their child up to the age of 18 are welcome and you don't want anyone who is currently home edding but will reassess as the need arises.

Personally I can’t imagine anything worse.. and I worked in the school my children attended.
However, it is currently a parents’ right to do so and I have friends who have done it very successfully for various reasons but I have also seen cases where it has gone spectacularly wrong.
However. I think there should be much more scrutiny of those who are doing it, and that it should be a definite no for any child subject to any kind of social care intervention or who is suspected to be a victim of abuse.

Of course it's not "entitled" to feel used. It takes a lot of time and effort to organise home ed groups and events. If people who aren't really intending on home educating come along and then just disappear of course the organisers will eventually feel used.

They did home educate, just not for the child's entire education. I didn't realise that you had to plan your child's entire education at 4 and stick to it for life.

If your child is not of compulsory education age you are not home educating. You are just the parent of a small child.

Nobody said you had to " stick to it for life" to go to home ed groups .

And if we're talking about people being unreliable and letting down organisers, I think home edders are on thin ice. My husband was asked to run a home ed session every Monday by a group of home ed parents at a tuition centre. He spent hours researching the children's interests and gathering resources tailored to exactly what each child wanted to learn, and the tuition centre made special accommodations such as allowing some of the children who refused to wear shoes to wear socks inside, doing extra risk assessments to make this possible.

Frequently, not one of the 8 children who signed up bothered to turn up, and the parents refused to pay for sessions they hadn't attended.

This isn't an isolated incident and everyone I know who has attempted to work with home ed children has ended up out of pocket due to persistent flakiness.

For what it’s worth, with my youngest who I decided to send to reception and not home ed in the end, I didn’t go to any home ed groups. Yes, you can take 3/4 year olds to them, but I always found them pretty dire with my son so wasn’t in a rush to try any, and there aren’t really any where I am. It was just a few lacklustre attempts that people tried to set up but then fizzled out from what I saw on the groups.

The home ed people I met and (I thought!) I made good friends with, I found on local home ed facebook groups. Their children were around the same age as mine. I only went to one outdoorsy group, but childminders used to take kids to it, it wasn’t specifically for home educated children, although, all the older kids there were during term time.

So I didn’t use anyone or take the piss. I just thought I’d found some nice, local friends with children the same age as mine and older siblings. I was very honest that I was 50/50 about trying hone education again.

Silly me! I didn’t realise those friendships were on the proviso that I educated my child the same way they did.

And if anyone thought I was talking the piss for taking my older son to home ed groups for 7/8 years and contributing my time to quite a few of them spending hours cleaning up and setting up chairs, and then deciding on secondary school, well, that’s just insane.

That's not good, I agree. I would suggested making people pay in advance. But that's a completely different situation to home educating parents who volunteer to run things.

You're taking it very personally, but kid-related friendships are naturally situational. You make "mum friends" because you're in the playground at the same time.
It's a bit like work friendships, they often don't continue when you change jobs.

But these were mum friends. We used to meet up and go out without the children, a couple of families, we used to meet up at weekends and out husbands got on really well.

So it’s hard not to take it personally when you are dropped overnight for chosing a different way to educate.

I see one of them in the park most weekends, she pulls her children away from mine and blanks me. I know it was just about home ed as she was one of the ones I reached out to, to ask if I’d upset them all and she told me.

God, I’m still friends with some of ds friends parents from secondary school, he’s in his 20s now and we live 200 miles away.

How could I not take that personally?

So it’s hard not to take it personally when you are dropped overnight for chosing a different way to educate.

I agree, it happens both ways though

And it’s pathetic, isn’t it? The least interesting thing about someone is where they educate their children.

Religious reasons are ok, if there is not a school that is not non-denominational. Or are you referring to those people whose religion forbids the education of girls etc?

🙄

No I don't think it should be made illegal. Parents should have a right to choose how to educate their own child. I do however think it should be better regulated and welfare checks should be compulsory

Most home ed parents are against it tbh. You'd be amazed how utterly unpopular it is in the community.

I was one of the few I ever met who was pro more regulation.