Is there any evidence that home education/ taking your child out of school improves outcomes for SEN children?

[GnomeDavid]

I do have real life experience of this and I have a lot of empathy for parents of SEN children who struggle to attend school or experience EBSA.
But I also see a lot of parents pull their children out of school (in my opinion) prematurely. Some are able to go back to school, but I imagine many don’t.
I wonder if there is any evidence that these children end up happier, well adjusted and less impacted by the co-morbidities of poor mental health, depression, anxiety and predisposition to eating disorders.
I assumed that you would be switching one less than ideal situation for a different one. Yet there is no option to explore both paths. Certainly I see a lot of unhappy SEN children in mainstream schools, but I also know some deeply unhappy children who are out of school, and the impact on their parents is also huge in terms of losing jobs, independence, social life, relationships, relationships with their other children.
I suppose I made a choice that my daughter would have to stay in school, even though she doesn’t thrive, as this seemed to have a lesser impact on the family as a whole. But I think about whether I made the right choice every day, and tomorrow is never guaranteed.
I would love to do a longitudal study of this but I imagine the environmental factors would make it almost impossible to measure reliably.

It is a really difficult one and a position I found myself in. My son is autistic and wasn't coping in school to then point her wasn't attending. We tried lots of things and it didn't work - and forcing him in (which we couldn't physically do) was just going to make his life unbearable. So we deregistered and taught him at home.

It hasn't been easy and I think we and him would have preferred to have him attending school but unfortunately he falls into a grey area where he can't cope with mainstream but he doesn't fit into a specialist school. This last year though he has attended a small 14 to 16 college course after being out of school nearly 3 years. It's not perfect but it's been really good for all of us.

But there are lots of children out there which have been failed by the system who are now struggling at home to. I was in a lucky position where I could be flexible in my job to support him but for many families the stress and impact of a failed education system is huge. Equally there are many children who have thrived and has been the best decision for them.

I can not really answer your question as my daughter is still in school however she had to have a long period of time off for health issues and went from 3 years behind to age appropriate in the year she spent the most time at home incident going from not able to read to a free reader in 8 months.

@Rocketpants50glad your son has found something suitable now. It’s still one of those things I don’t think any parent imagines, that your child won’t or can’t attend school. Not only that but there’s no help!

@Keepgoing2022glad to hear that. I just can’t teach my daughter. She is very demand avoidant and also I’m not a special needs teacher. She just wants me to be her mum.

I can't imagine its measurable. Too many variables.

I think some pull to early and some who don’t need to do because they don’t want the fight.

I’ve also seen it become a slippy slope where one child in a house of 6 was homeschooled as their current school did not fit and then one by one all the other children suddenly couldn’t cope at school either spread out between reception and gcse.

Do I believe that suddenly six children needed to be homeschooled within a 4 months period. Nope not at all. I think it became easier to have them all home than running around to some at school some not some in primary and some in secondary.

Do I think knowing these children that they will achieve qualifications? Nope. Will then go into the trades? So far I’d say no to that as well.

The parent openly posts daily what their learning is and one should be doing GCSEs right now and isn’t doing anymore than some baking and kiddie game coding on a pc from the posts.

Only one of the six children again has a diagnosis.

@UndermyShoeJoeI mean you just couldn’t homeschool 6 kids, could you? I do know what you mean. I have a NT child as well and I’m sure they notice the inconsistencies of my parenting.

Bump for morning people

I started talking about suicide at 7 years old. I could not cope with school. Too loud and busy and when I get over stimulated I don't absorb any information at all.

When home schooled I would get up really early in the morning and diligently complete all of my work.

It depends on the kid. I was the type to eat my veges frost because I enjoyed delayed gratification.

But to this day I can't learn unless alone in a silent environment. I struggled even with a tutor and did far better when left to my own devices.

Being ND means I struggled with other kids anyway. Being home schooled didn't make it worse.

I do however think that there nerds to be serious oversight because it can make it easier to hide abuse when a child isn't going to school. So unfortunately for me, homeschooling helped me with school work and learning, but also meant that I never got the help I needed re home life.

I took mine out far too late. They were then diagnosed with severe depression at the age of 8 following what was essentially a suicide attempt. I will always regret not pulling them out sooner, however I did feel like I had to try absolutely everything to make it work at school. Whether she ever manages to return to one, who knows. I can't even say that it was down to lack of support as the school did everything they could as well!

I think it depends entirely on each case.

Some children cope better than others without some company their own age, and an only child is in a different situation to one with siblings.

Not all parents have the ability to teach, or the temperament, since teaching your own child is not the same as teaching a class. Let alone being able to afford it.

I think sometimes it's necessary to withdraw them from school to avoid further or permanent damage.

But I also think some people run away from the problem too early and it's worth sticking at it a bit longer because it can help their resilience - as much as I hate that word! With adjustments, a heap of understanding, days off, and so on (but again not everyone can afford it).

The hardest bit for parents is that it's not an exact science. Only time can tell if withdrawing them/persevering with school was the right thing for a specific child. And still, you will never be sure. You can only try your best and trust your instincts because you are the person who knows them best.

I’m not home schooling but my fear is my ten year old goes to secondary and can’t cope. We are in mainstream private we’ve had uniform adaptations, we do a lot a lot of scaffolding at home. There are now full on routines in place to get her to school. If anything goes out of place we get EBSA.

so far we’ve had two terms of it pretty much working. But I worry about secondary / the social side a lot because I know what girls can be like, at the moment her uniform difference isn’t seen by the other kids. No one says anything to her - but come secondary what will it be like? She’s autistic, demand avoidant and has auditory processing issues too,

So I worry about getting to burnout and then withdrawing when it’s too late,

@stickygotstuckyou’ve hit the nail on the head that it’s not possible for everyone. I couldn’t adjust my work to fit around a part time timetable, my job doesn’t work like that. There’s no financial options available, if you don’t get UC etc. Yet I was met with almost bewilderment from my child’s school that I couldn’t just give up work to homeschool her. It was if they thought it would be a relief for me to not have to work anymore!

@GetMeOutOfHere20I worry about this too. I’m trying hard to build my career so I can possibly go part time in a few years to help be there if she needs to go part time. I think she’ll go completely off the rails to be honest.

I think the problem is if mainstream isn’t working there is no other option other than homeschooling.. so yes a child might not flourish educationally in either however emotionally more likely to be happier at home .

@Starlightstarbright4I suppose my question is do they stay happier at home? So you pull your 8 year old back, the whole family takes a huge financial hit, mum gives up work. If you went back and looked at the child again at 15 would they still be more emotionally secure at home? And I don’t think any of us can answer that due to the many variables.

I don't know if it improves educational outcomes in general, but you have to think about your own individual child, not statistics. I'd have loved nothing more than for DD2 to have stayed in school and done seven or eight GCSEs, and it certainly would have been a damned sight cheaper, but it seemed like we were moving rapidly towards a situation where her attendance would be so low and she was so behind the school syllabus that she wouldn't be allowed to or able to take any exams in Y11.

And it improved her mental health and confidence almost overnight. We got our daughter back. She has just sat a handful of GCSE exams, one to go next week.

I know of loads of kids who did not thrive at school but got on well at college. And lots of HE kids do well academically. For us it felt like the only realistic and best option at the time.

From the person I know who withdrew so many. The children are happier but then again I think most children would be happier out of school than in it if you gave them the choice.

Emotionally it’s like they stopped growing up at the ages the left school though.

Their case is quite unusual though in the sheer number of children in one home though and as you say op and I agree I couldn’t homeschool 6 children not properly giving them the age appropriate work required either.

They are fortunate in once sense that the mum never worked so they have always survived of dads income and a bit of a top up.

We did online school/tutors for GCSEs by the way, there was no way I could teach DD2 either.

From observations as an educator, home schooling is not a good substitute for a school based education. Children not developed socially nor educationally.

Parents shouldn’t be able to control their children’s future to their possible detriment.

@chrsanthenumwhat about mental health though? There is some curiosity around the new phenomenon of many young people who are essentially housebound due to anxiety that this is a kind of PTSD due to years of being in school and feeling overwhelmed. I must say I think autistic people feeling forced to adapt to busy, noisy environments such as school has always been a thing and so I struggle with understanding why this is so prevalent now. I would hazard a guess at social media/ tech.

I tortured myself about whether I did the wrong thing when I took my nonverbal DC out of first school (quite quickly tbh). How could I know I was right when they couldn't even tell me definitively what was wrong? Then, 5 years later we bumped into DC's old class and DC starts screaming blue murder and self injuring and I knew I made the right decision.

Interesting question. my dd is still in school, but she is demand avoidant and we think the wheels will come off at secondary as there are already signs of school refusal and some very difficult days. I think secondary school is fundamentally badly set up for autistic people, the amount of pupils, the noise, you’re changing your environment every hour by going to a new classroom with a new teacher. It’s a level of variation that few people are expected to deal with in work. I actually work in secondary and I’ve long thought they needed to fundamentally shift to be more suited to the neurodivergent.

I genuinely don't believe it is more prevalent now, I think because families are all more connected online etc we hear about it more. 30 years ago if a ND kid crashed out of school due to being overwhelmed and refusing to go in, who would hear about it? Would have been seen as rare and a bit shameful and the family probably just quietly disappeared a bit.