A wave of illiterate “home schooled” children

[RedSkyatNight25]

Prepared to get torn apart, and I know many homeschool because the school environment isn’t right for their children (SEN, sensory issues - whatever else) and their needs aren’t met by school with a chronic lack of SEN placements and too much demand etc. I’m not naive to that. I also know some parents with adequate resource will ensure their children have a rounded education whilst being homeschooled.

But there seems to be a movement to homeschooling by people who are simply anti establishment with a point to prove. Their grammar and communication on social media tells me they’re not equipped to homeschool a child. Not least I think the socialisation and soft skills school provides are hugely important too. I suspect most of these parents either haven’t considered the benefits of school or hugely underestimated it, especially past primary are parents really equipped to teach ALL the subjects with sufficient skill if they lack the knowledge themselves? Are they not underestimating the skills and expertise of qualified teachers?

AIBU to think it’s really concerning? These are the next generation of our workforce and infrastructure. I personally think we are hugely privileged to live in a country with free education - I know it’s not perfect but I’m not convinced homeschooling is better for a vast majority.

That is because you associate with like minded home educators who are going about it the right way, as you are.

Your replies are very defensive though, and you need to acknowledge that not all home "educators" educate their children. I sent DD to school because there was no way that I could have educated her to the level of attainment that she did actually achieve, even with tutors, but I am perfectly aware that schools do fail a lot of children.

No one way is perfect. Some children don't suit school and some parents shouldn't "educate" their own children.

Are you serious? They're is a huge teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Many GCSE years don't have subject specialists, let alone other years! It really isn't unusual for sciences to be taught by PE teachers etc.
Maybe if you knew what was actually going on in schools you may feel differently.

Unfortunately, the penny is only just dropping in socisty on how dangerously bad state secondary education has become and how little support there is for any child or parent who cannot manage within it, and how hardly any local authorities meet the requirement to provide alternative provision.

Bumping this because there's more talk of socialisation like it's a magic bullet that makes you employable but no one saying what form that socialisation actually takes.

I do think we ideally need an overhaul of the whole education system though to reduce the current situation of trying to fit everyone into the same model.

We need more options to follow lesss academic more vocational based paths for those children who are going to learn better that way. More less formal options. Better SEN support

but it won’t happen

@Teathecolourofcreosote

https://www.tes.com/magazine/news/general/school-year-groups-taught-by-non-specialist-teachers-subjects

This clearly shows the % of classes being taught by non-specialist teachers

There are 700K pupils at GCSE level being taught Physics without specialist Physics teachers

https://www.timesandstar.co.uk/news/national/25433366.700-000-gcse-pupils-without-specialist-physics-teacher-report-suggests/

Following on my post about home educating my eldest son for a term - I still feel guilt that I was unable to home educate his sister. She's now diagnosed AuDHD, but at secondary was undiagnosed (this is twenty years ago now so these things weren't jumped on as they are now). She hated secondary school, and really struggled socially, although not academically (she's very bright).

I SHOULD have give up work and home educated her. She would have done just fine, except that MY maths ability is truly dire and I couldn't have explained how to cope with maths problems. I HAD to work, as a single parent unsupported by the children's father, so she had to keep going to school. I explained to her that I wasn't up to teaching her to school standards, so reluctantly she kept going.

She didn't live up to her complete potential, but she went off to university two years after her peers and now works in a great job and is about to get married. But I still have that 'what if I'd taken her out of school?' guilt in the back of my mind.

I thought there was?

https://www.ivyeducation.co.uk/insights/homeschooling-requirements-uk

There's an absolutely lovely family down the road from my mum who homeschool. 3 kids, live in the countryside, screen free. Raise chickens and sheep. They are delightful, well-loved children and I think they have a wonderful life. I regularly feel a bit crap when I see the life they have as one of my children hates school and would swap in a heartbeat. The reality is though, none of them can read to a reasonable standard. The 10 year old cannot read independently at all but loves being read to. The kids always make lovely thank you cards for gifts etc but the standard of spelling and writing is so low, think 10 year old writing at reception level. These are bright, very articulate children and as a teacher myself I do worry about them, I know they wouldn't cope in school at this point. There has to be a balance or some kind of oversight, in my mind.

A lot of the problem is there's no respect at all for teachers in our society and parents think anyone can do it.

An estimated 111,700 children is a high enough number.

How about home educating with a tutor? I home educate my 5 year old who has autism and could not cope in school.
We have a tutor for her and will continue to do so for her whole education, we give her the correct hours a week of learning and also extra curricular activities and lots of home ed social groups.
I myself am not the most academic so I know a tutor is a must for us. Our tutor is a ex primary school teacher with SEN qualifications.

@Sprookjesbos "A lot of the problem is there's no respect at all for teachers in our society and parents think anyone can do it."

This ^

We don't home school dd 9 as I can't even get her to do homework. But I do understand why people do.

Schools are built for your average ability, or higher child. That can follow rules that make little no sense and dehumanise the kids.

If your kid doesn't "get it" when the curriculum says they should, then tough. Oh you need extra support or it explained a different way. Then forget it.
Oh you need the toilet forget it. You may only go at the pre determined time we have set.
Oh you're not learning because of the kids causing constant disruptions, disruptions so bad you all have to be declassed for your own safety. So students who actually want to learn can't.

The system is broken and instead of doing what is needed to fix it the government cut the budgets to the bone and make it so that all schools care about is exam results.

Yes homeschooling is not always the best option. But neither is school.

I’ve home educated for a long time, there has been a huge shift in the past 5 years or so both with the numbers of children being deregistered and the reasons behind it. The change is really noticeable to anyone who has been home educating for a long time. I think anyone who denies that there are issues within home education are part of the problem.

The LA have very little capacity to monitor any kind of provision for home ed. An annual visit with the word of the parents.

It is impossible not to conflate the two when many parents removed their DC to "home educate" but don't have the capacity, skill or will to actually do it.

The numbers of home ed parents who are genuinely illiterate and doing home ed only through mistrusting the system, and without any bad experiences of school must be vanishingly tiny, despite everyone on Mumsnet apparently knowing lots of them. Op says it's not about parents choosing to HE because of lack of SEN Support, but i rather think it could be.

If i knew then what i knew now, i would have deregistered when my kids ebsa first started, before it destroyed mine and my kids mental health and i would have joined the cohort of parents who are not equipped to HE but doing so because of "the system." The government are talking about cutting support for EHCPs so only the most affected children will be able to get one. That means there will be very large numbers of SEN children who will find it almost impossible to get any support. Where do they go then? Home ed.

I am fairly intelligent and well educated, and i have been through the horrific fight of trying to get "support" from a school and local authority for my child's EBSA, (plot twist, there is no support) i can see how an "illiterate" parent would be forced to remove their child from school and home educate, no matter how ill equipped, because of a lack of support.

Parents might not know know their child has SEN, especially if they have SEN themselves. They might just know their child doesn't fit neatly in school. They might not know how to complain or seek support, or might not have insight into their child's needs and what help they might need, much less how to go about forcing a school to provide it. (There's actually no way for a parent to force a school to provide support that their child is legally entitled to without going through the complaint processes and tribunal which could take the best part of a school year. Even then it doesn't guarantee support). Those children have to go somewhere.

What's worse, a parent who isn't very educated and might not do a good job of HE, or a child who is being destroyed by their experience at school and may be suicidal? Anyone tried to get help from CAMHS recently? Nothing there either.

Until you've been through it, you wouldn't actually believe how soul and mental health destroying it is. It's made me suicidal. There is NO help. The system is designed to crush children and their parents. Something like 98% of refusal to assess for EHCP get overturned at tribunal. Schools can just say no to proving SEN Support. Nobody will make them. Local authorities refuse to assess as a baseline and wait and see which parents have the ability, time, and capacity to fight on. That's thousands of families who are forced to go to a tribunal , which is a terrifying prospect for most people, to get their child the support they were always legally entitled to. Thousands and thousands of children left without support. I feel like I've seen behind the curtain, and so parents who chose to home ed citing "the system" for children with any additional needs actually have it right. Do you know what it's like to have your child say they'd rather die than go to school? And when you report that to school, everyone just shrugs and says "drag them in?" If you give up, you deregister and they get to tick a little box that says "parents choose to hone educate".

It's very very easy to believe that a parent who doesnt have the ability or capacity to deal with the widespread discrimination, fines, and gaslighting might just take their child out of school because of "the system" and "the government" which might make them sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it could actually just be a parent that can't take any more of the parent blaming, threats of fines, and the gaslighting that are a default for parents of children who are struggling with school.

There were some parents at my child's school that were going through the same as us but they said they didn't even know where to start making a complaint so they were just plodding along until eventually they'll be forced to home ed because there are no other options for parents who don't know how to fight, or don't have the energy for the fight anymore. They're no more equipped to educate their child than i am, but while i would know exactly why i was being forced into that position because I've been through every complaint process with the school and LA, and i know how badly we've been failed, those other parents , illiterate or not, wouldn't know why so they might just say "the system".

My point is, the op is about illiterate parents taking their children out of school because of the system or the government even though they might not actually be equipped to home ed. They might not actually be crazy. But they might not have the knowledge to put into words exactly why they are right. It is the system. And how would you know what those families have been put through, or have seen others be put through unless you ask them all individually?

If you or your child sailed through school with no issues, please take a minute to think about how unusual and how lucky you are.

Parents can request an EHCNA whether their DC is in school or not. They don’t need the school’s permission or for them to agree. DLA/PIP can also be claimed whether the DC is in school or not. It isn’t an out of work benefit either.

@spoonbillstretford

Unfortunately, the penny is only just dropping in socisty on how dangerously bad state secondary education has become and how little support there is for any child or parent who cannot manage within it, and how hardly any local authorities meet the requirement to provide alternative provision.

I completely agree: this is an absolute scandal and clearly at crisis point. And its a crucial driver among those parents who have been let down by the current system. It urgently needs addressing.

But that in itself doesn’t justify the “one size fits all” approach to allowing people to deregister their children.

The system has such a limited capacity to discriminate between these two categories of parents; those taking control of education out of necessity and those taking advantage of loopholes because they don’t care.

Its shockingly easy to simply opt out of formal education without any scrutiny of the quality of education being provided.

A supposedly advanced democracy which prides itself on mandating education for all children should not be allowing these children’s own parents to fail them like this.

https://www.fenews.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Picture1.png

I think people need to be more concerned with the school system rather than the home-schoolers.

Our local primary school has just put a post on the next door app begging parents to bring in extra nappies for the 5 and 6 year olds as they don’t have enough in stock to last the day 😳 this is a mainstream school!

My friend who is a TA at another local primary school has said she no longer sits and concentrates on 1-1s with students as her day is chasing children who have bolted from the classroom and trying to get them back in class- it disrupts the entire class each time. She’s almost 50 and can’t cope with it anymore- she used to love her job.

Our local college has so many students resitting failed GCSEs that they can’t fit them all in the college at exam time and have to use classrooms in another school, and most fail again.

Yet my homeschooled children who passed their GCSEs first time round and are now studying for careers they want are the ones people are concerned about. 🤣

I’ve spent over 18 years at homeschool groups and not once met one child who isn’t in school because parents are anti-establishment.
The majority of parents at homeschool groups are either ex-teachers who see what’s wrong with the system and refuse to put their children through it, or have SEN children and their needs are not being met, or have children being bullied and will not put up with it.

There are as many approaches as there are home educators.

I follow Jar of Fireflies on YouTube.

She's an orthodox Jewish woman who home schools her children. She seems to use a mix of resources, from my understanding is that you can pick a curriculum in the USA and buy the books.

I think the home schooling (and it is home schooling in the states) is about passing on the family's religion. She has a room that acts as a classroom and the kids desks have US flags on them so I think she does the whole pledge thing.

So they obviously celebrate Jewish festivals and the preparation for that is part of their education, so they make costumes for Purim while they learn to sew and be creative.

They have their workbooks and then they also have outside education for music lessons and lessons at the synagogue.

The fact that they are home schooled means they can learn Hebrew, her husband is from Morocco and she says she does not want him teaching the children English, but she does want him to teach them Hebrew.

She makes the children's education virtually her job and I think that's what you need to successfully home educate. Time and resources.

I must admit to being surprised that people think they are able to replace multiple degree plus PGCE-qualified professionals.

In a world ruled by the pronouncements of "Bazza2872439" on Twitter on such things as virology, meteorology, nuclear physics, international diplomacy, ecclesiastical and ecumenical matters, Islam, history and the goss aboutr strictly far outweight those idiotic enough to have wasted their lives studying at grown up school, I am frankly surprised it doesn't happen more often.

I think that may be the case.

I home schooled my eldest two children through to year three,
at which point my circumstances changed.

I had two late summer born children who weren’t ready for school, especially my eldest and we were in an area with a big home schooling community so it was easy to ensure lots of activities and socialisation.

My youngest two went to school from the start. My eldest two definitely think outside the box more now they are adults and are more
fluid in their choices - less likely to conform (not in a rebellious way).

I never doubted the skill and expertise of teachers but we didn’t like the one size fits all approach to learning and how much attention is put on the children misbehaving so that those wanting to learn end up missing so much learning time because of it. All my children found that the frustrating part of being at school.

Theres a growing number of children who are home educated because they have not been able to manage the school demands and schools cannot meet the additional needs of a lot of chilkdren. They are forced out.
Most people , even the illiterate anti establishment ones, send their kids to school when they are little. There is usually a lot of factors that contribute towards placements breaking down and relationships between schools and parents break down.
The parents dont have the resources or capability and often dont have the time to give the children what they need, and yet the school system is damaging them, and the authorities might be on their backs. They are often battling their own difficulties and undiagnosed needs. Dealing with it all can actually be traumatic. I think some of you really have no idea what its like now.

Absolutely there are uneducated children that get to adulthood without being able to read, as there always have been.

Its not as if every child is capable of reading and writing, and there are too many children in inappropriate educational settings that are set up to fail, and then people are surprised when it all fails.
Major investment in our state schools is needed. Major investment in SEN. Social work. The whole thing is fucked.