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.

I disagree. This is meeting for 1 shared activity in a mostly supervised environment. Not the same as free flow social interaction.

No, that's not what I've said. Every child I have known who has been removed from school to be home educated has had ongoing safeguarding concerns. Usually low level neglect eg poor attendance, unwashed uniform, falling asleep in class, disclosures about verbal abuse at home etc. like another poster said, it's usually a knee jerk reaction, the parent often has poor mental health/history of substance abuse and can't cope with the hassle from school so it's easier to remove them.

The threshold for SS involvement without parental consent is incredibly high - we have to build up so much evidence before SS will even consider this. In my experience this is only in clear instances of physical abuse where a child has bruises/burns on them.

Well, to the extent that I taught my children to read and write before they went to school. I taught them how to use a toilet and how to say please and thank you. But they wanted to learn these things. I am not equipped to teach them GCSE Geography in a form that they would understand without rambling and confusing them because I am not a teacher and therefore have no idea of the best way of getting information into people who might well not be interested in learning it.

This is something that schools don't address properly, and I agree that children shouldn't accept being bullied, or in fact shoudn't be bullied at all.

Precisely the point I was going to make!

Disillusioned, illiterate school leavers opt to home educate their own children. And home education is the problem. Couldn't make it up!

Ah, the free flow social interaction where a 10 year old child was able to take a picture of my 9 year old DD on his phone, add a vile caption and share it with his 300 Snapchat friends, many of whom are adults and total strangers, and faced zero repercussions for it because his parents couldn't be arsed?

Yeah, no thanks.

Free flow social interaction???

Children are supervised at school and there is still awful bullying. What on earth would 'free flow social interaction' mean in a school setting that couldn't be replicated at a club?

Do you mean groups of kids unsupervised in the park? Home educated children could do that if they wanted to.

It means interacting with your peers on a variety of topics as well as during lunch, break and before/after school. Catching trains and buses together, working together in pairs and groups, spending half an hour at lunch talking about rubbish and having a laugh, ad hoc trips to town or parks after school and generally just interacting outside of an hour of a highly scheduled activity. Even getting up to a bit of mischief together.

It's precisely because you're bright that you know how much you don't know.

These are the results for our 'best' school in town

% of students who achieved a strong pass (Grade 5 or above) in English and Maths at the end of KS4
School. 36.5%
Local authority. 34.7%
Nationally. 45.9%

It is hard to know the number of children leaving with 5 a-c grades as this would be 4-9. This measurement of just English and maths gives us outcomes at 5-9 (36.5%)
From memory when we looked at this school it was 50% for English and maths at 4-9 and I would expect that 5 GCSE 'passes' including English and maths would therefore be less than 50%

How do you feel about this outcome from our local school and nationally?

I know a few people who homeschool their kids, and there are always tutors involved. Either for all subjects, or for some of them - depending on how capable the parents are. Its not cheap, and I literally dont know anyone who simply let their kids slide: usually, the parents who decide to homeschool are the very opposite of neglectful.

I dont know anyone who does it for "anti establishment" reason - is it even a thing?

Exactly.

Totally agree with all this.

@RedSkyatNight25 There are plenty of children who went to school that are illiterate.

Children don't learn literacy at school. English education in school primarily focuses on abstract questions like "what did the author mean by this word?" rather than spelling and grammar.

Children learn literacy from reading, which is something they are supposed to be doing outside of school.

I also see no shortage of people who have been to school who put question marks at the end of sentences that aren't questions (example: "I don't get it?") and who say "should of" (that one is just weird... you don't say "should of" when speaking, so why write it?).

It's not great, is it.

Pity there are no stats for the same achievement rates for home educated kids in order to make a comparison.

Imagine if the success rate was much higher! That would be extremely embarrassing for schools and might help motivate them to be better.

I agree. It seems recent. In Kent there's a definite rise in 'anti- woke, anti- LGBT, anti- vaccine, anti-muslim, don't trust the bbc, don't trust the government, don't trust looney leftie teachers' rhetoric which has extended to parents pulling their kids out of school. Along with a new wave, this month, who are now refusing to send their kids to school because the school has an asylum centre near it.

It's worrying. Glad so many of you aren't experiencing it yet. We have a reform led council, and are obviously at the front of the immigration issues. It all seems to be linked.

I also work with groups of children who have always been home educated. Lovely kids, generally from artsy, musical families who want more freedom to follow their children's interests. Or those with SEN who do better out of a classroom. Thats an entirely different section of society.

I imagine the success rate would be higher, because a home educator is hardly going to pay a fee to sit a GCSE if they don't have a reasonable expectation the child will do OK, and they can choose to sit a small number of GCSEs or even just one.

Couldn't have put it better. Even home educated children who get all As are missing out on the above. Also school drama productions and school trips.

Point is, the world is organised into communities. Work, neighbourhoods, social groups. School is the best place to learn about community by being part of a large one.

But I do have a lot of sympathy for parents of SEN kids who are not being adequately supported by the school or the LEA. There are definitely cases where home education is best. But I'm talking about non-SEN kids.

Kent is a very large county and no doubt contains some wacky beliefs

It also has a Reform Council, a truly rubbish SEN department, and a significant minority of kids in grammars, so it's already got some big stressors for anyone outside the norm.

I mean my outer London Borough is no great shakes with SEN, but the councillors haven't been caught on camera saying insulting things about SEN!

We've home educated four DC so far. We use a combination of self teaching for the subjects we're equipped for, face to face tutors for subjects that are better delivered that way - languages for my DC - and online tutors for other subjects. Online tutors are VERY competitively priced btw, and many are excellent.

We live in an area where home ed is very popular as a choice. There are daily groups, trips and opportunities both within the home ed community, and in the city/university. The numbers of families choosing to home educate is rising exponentially, and independent educational and support provisions are rising with it. There's so much more on offer now than when we started, around 18 years ago.

Our DC have a very regular life with a combination of home ed stuff and general stuff - drama groups, sports, music and so on. They acquired their GCSE's with a range of grades between 6 and 9, and are now at college doing A-levels. The home ed world post-COVID is exceptionally well provided for: brilliant exam centres, lots of academic and social support to be accessed online, for example.

The 'tribes' within home ed are very diverse, and we are not in step with all of it, by any means. Most of our friends and regular hang-out folk tread the same path as us. We're conventional people, with no axe to grind about traditional education - although it's startling how many teachers we know who home educate - and have managed to work around the home ed life, as we're both self-employed and very flexible.

As an aside, I absolutely believe there should be a home ed register. I've listened to the arguments over the years, but never heard one that convinced me that children should be able fly under the radar.

As usual, I don't recognise many of the home ed tropes I read on MN threads.

My daughter has been home educated since she was removed from primary school. She was unhappy there, and made little academic progress. I could have afforded to send her to private school. Instead we decided to home educate using a variety of methods. She is currently studying towards 9 GCSE subjects, and attends youth clubs to pursue her interests. She has friends and hobbies. Private tutors help her. I help her. I pay for all the education, the clubs and exam fees. I have a teaching qualification and doctorate, but do not need either to teach at GCSE level. She would have been miserable in the local school, and it doesn't offer the combination of subjects that she is interested in. If she had been a different child, I may have sent her to school. She prefers home education, makes academic progress and has developed study skills that shall serve her well at University. She is mature for her age, and helps me in the family business during her free time. I have met many families who home educate over the years, as there are local meet up groups. They are not all anti-establishment paranoid illiterate drop outs. Some choose home education as a preference, and for some families home education chooses them (because there are a lack of adequate SEN provisions in school etc). Most families self-fund the education, the exams, the books, the tutors and online schools, as it is rare for the local authority to provide any help. Local authorities demand reports from parents on academic progress periodically, and can force children back into school if they are concerned. The academic literature suggests that home educated children do well in later life in terms of career attainment. School is not for every child, and I feel glad to live in a country where home education is a legal option.

I think it's crackers that children aren't legally required to take GCSEs.

I don't see how the government can say that children must have a full-time, age-appropriate education but have no benchmark for that. It makes the requirement meaningless.

And you may be able to get away with not making your children take any exams, but the worlds of higher education and employment requires them, so...Imagine trying to apply for a job or a course without having taken GCSEs! Then there's the fact that this lackadaisical approach is a golden opportunity for parents who want to abuse their children. Seems that it would be very easy for a parent to deny their child any education at all, out of malice.

You have a rose-tinted view of what socialisation looks like for a large number of school educated children.

interacting with your peers on a variety of topics - either being told to work in absolute silence or being unable to focus on group work or peer discussions because some of the pupils in your class are out of control.
Catching trains and buses together, - having your bag stolen and your glasses broken in the first week of Year 7 by the year 10s on the bus.
working together in pairs and groups - see my first point
spending half an hour at lunch talking about rubbish and having a laugh - spending half an hour at lunch in the classroom, either because your teacher believes in collective punishment or because lunchtimes are terrifying as that's when the bullies have unlimited access to you
ad hoc trips to town or parks after school and generally just interacting outside of an hour of a highly scheduled activity - home ed children have friends, they're able to do all of this too.
Even getting up to a bit of mischief together. Ahh yeah, like Year 7s vaping in the toilets and Year 10/11s getting suspended for bringing drugs to school and turning the Year 7/8s into drug mules. Lovely little bit of mischief.

I was all for DD going to school and actually very anti home ed, until I taught in a (naice, very middle class) secondary school.

Oh right. Home educated kids do this sort of socialising at groups and outside their groups.

Do you imagine home educated children to be literally in their homes all the time?