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 think the radical unschoolers shout the loudest, will tell everyone their opinion and seem to be the most likely type to have a dedicated Instagram or tik tok set up to show their children running around in the woods, they also tend to be the ones who appear on tv shows etc and people see that and put all home educators into the same bracket.

In reality we are a diverse group of people all coming to home ed for different reasons. There are radical unschoolers at one end of the spectrum and hot housing types at the other end but most people I have met over the years fall somewhere in the middle(myself included).

There are definitely problems within home education and I don’t think it does us any favours when people deny this. I am not against more input into it from the LA although I am honestly not sure how I think this should look but I think moves to create a positive relationship between local authorities and home educators could only be a good thing for everyone involved, most importantly the children. Unfortunately at the moment there is a lot of mistrust.

But there is no data , that’s what I’m trying to say, we can’t compare your children’s success and that of your friends children with anything out there.

state and private all publish their data, we know which performs well , which doesn’t.

I think it depends what sort of school options individual children have tbh.

What's been available to us was so dire, and our options got smaller and worse over time, as the sharp elbowed middle classes pushed us further and further out of catchments and anything not officially sink schools.
The Dc that we where finally backfooted out of the system over, aside from getting little education, first suffered serious batterings,some of it put on the internet to be laughed at, then broken bones in three separate incidents, was stabbed in the neck with a compass, declared gay, sexually attacked and threatened, and finally was shot at, before I stopped listening to 'yes, but they need to go to school.'

That Dc came out with their MH in a terrible state, and tattered poor education, and while they've done well, they carry a physical injury that is still causing pain all these years later, as well as hidden issues, from what was done to them.

I do understand where you're coming from, but on balance I absolutely wouldn't unless it was either an exceptional leafy state school, or private. Both out of my range. That Dc holds similar opinions but wouldn't trust even a good state school, having worked in them. They just wouldn't take the chance.

Everyone else out of the older schooled ones, just suffered standard stuff if they couldn't keep their heads down far enough, most learnt to be as invisible as possible and get through it, but one (very gentle soul) was terrorized out in their exam year with threats to set them on fire and another (severely dyslexic) was being pulled into gangs and I let them leave underage as long as they worked full time instead. None of them would want to chance their Dc's futures even though their experiences weren't generally as bad.

I ended up having a lousy time with authorities and then having to take them to court all because I was one of their failures who sent my Dc's to their schools.

Having found how to have such a different and worry free positive education and lifestyle, that allows us to mix with different levels of society, instead of being kept in our lane, I reckon it will be at least the great grandchildren's generation before we get one who might decide they want to try school education. Mainly because I think my DGC's will probably end up quite MC, while their parents mask as it, but hold fundamentally WC values. So I can see one of the grandchildren's children maybe thinking they might like to be more educationally conventional...
But currently for our family who are finally thriving, there's just no reason to want to engage with the school education system, beyond some choosing working in them as a career.

Ensuring that a certain standard of education is being met is reasonable, but why would you need to compare them? I'm not sure I understand the benefit of that as an across-the-board measure. Our local authority carry out checks in person and by way of self-reporting, to ensure that an age appropriate education is being provided.

I'm in favour of a national home ed register, incidentally.

I know all about the statistics thank you, as I get safeguarding training regularly. You know what else is part of that training? Peer on peer abuse. Because it is a thing and it is happening.

Statistics also show that women are most likely to suffer abuse at the hands of a partner or ex partner. Does that mean that sexual harassment in the workplace doesn’t happen?

I agree that HE works for some children and not for others. I would very much have liked to HE my eldest DD (subsequently diagnosed AuDHD and who struggled in school, although not academically).

I'd like to know from those who do or did, how do you cope if there are younger children in the house (ie, under school age) who need to be occupied while you also need to supervise and assist your home learner, and how does it work if you can't afford to employ tutors for subjects you can't get to grips with yourself?

I think I would have some questions to ask you back?

Is school the only place to socialise? - it’s not, there are many home schooling communities where children get together to socialise, they also join many clubs where they make friends and socialise. Home educated children are not having a lack of socialisation.

soft skills? Please elaborate on what soft skills schools offer that are actually important for working life post school? I don’t think there are actually many. Most of school life doesn’t translate into work now.

post primary - do they need all the subjects? - no they don’t, we don’t use 90% of what we learn at school after school. A parent only need to be able to teach what they and their children need which is different for every person.

I would suggest school leaves very little time with parents working and taking children to activities to teach young people life skills. Home education offers lots of opportunity for that.

I am more concerned about the many many parents who don’t want to home educate who are forced to as their school system has no space to meet their needs or they have been kicked out. Not those who choose to home educate.

my children were not home educated but I wish they had been.

Having data to compare would be very useful.

If results are lower than similar pupils in schools , then something is going wrong and it needs to be looked at, for the children’s benefit.

If results are better , then again, this needs to be looked at and see if any of the things that are going well could be implemented in schools, particularly in the case of struggling children.

If results are similar , then everyone just cracks on as they have been .

There’s no real/accurate data concerning EHE children. Ask yourself why.

Social skills - it's more the opportunity to build deep friendships that comes from prolonged exposure with only light adult supervision that I would worry about missing out on.

A lot of home ed parents point to extra curricular activities for building social skills and it's not impossible to build deep friendships this way but it's fair to say most children at these activities will already have their closest friends from school and not really be in the market for the same at eg swimming or gymnastics. That's not to say school is the only route - one of my dd's best friends is our NDN's daughter, and they do have good friends from Woodcraft folk where they've been camping together over many years - but both of these have the same ingredients of a lot of time exposure and only light parental oversight. I imagine some home ed groups are similar but it must be quite tempting to get involved more than you might do over school friendships etc - or naturally gravitate towards people with whom you have most in common.

It's certainly not necessarily deal breaker, but I think it's perhaps undervalued and I'd be seeking out these kinds of opportunities quite actively if I were to home ed.

How odd that you think 30 minutes max 5 days a week would in a school setting would build deep friendships and that home ex oarents behave jyst like school parents and rely on a big of extra curricular and lunch breaks to build friendships.

In my experience mang of ys weng oug of oug way to notice yhd friendships forming and to provide additional opportunities to develop them further.

I don't think it's especially odd - it's what people have pointed to on this thread as well as in my experience irl when people I know who home ed have been asked about socialisation. And of course there will be friendships built outside of these but my point was that these friendships might have a bit more parental oversight than the equivalent friendships at school.

I've no idea what you mean about 30 mins 5 days a week. I assume you are referring to lunch break, as if that's the only time school kids interact with each other.

Again, I think there are pros and cons to home ed and to school but it is as well to acknowledge the cons and seek to mitigate them rather than deny they exist. Same as I look for ways to mitigate the downsides of school.

I would say there is more supervision and interference or socializing in schools than at home Ed groups. Parents are there but not micromanaging socialization unless needed for genuine reasons.

In schools they don't get the freely socialize in class time

How would you compare it fairly?

That’s been my exact experience iver yhd years, too.

Far more helicopter parenting at school settings

How would that occur? Given that children with SEN are over represented in home e’d bevause of the systems failure to include them?

In high school especially, it is. Yes.

Well that seems very counterintuitive to me. The adult-child ratios and lack of parental presence would make this unlikely imo. And I volunteer at a Woodcraft group which I imagine to be similar in some ways to a home ed group, but the strong parental presence does affect the dynamics even when not trying to intervene. Anyway, disagree if you wish, I'm not actively trying to persuade you, just sharing my perspective.

I’m more than happy to believe my several years experience in both settings. A single weekly woodcraft extra curricular group made up of school going families is clearly not remotely representative of home education

I'm looking at the Ofsted report of the school I would have sent my child to.
'Around 60% of pupils enter year 7 with reading skills below those expected for their age"
60%!

Our only option if we want something different than that is an out of town private school or to home educate.

But this mirrors my experience in school. I didn't go to one as nice as this but in year 9 I would estimate that 60% could not read effectively. If asked to read from a textbook, these children were still running their finger along the lines of text and having to spell and blend words out loud to try to decipher them. Imagine how frustrating that was for a pupil who just wanted to get on. My history and geography knowledge was woeful because they were pretty much turned into literacy lessons due to it not being a streamed class. The teachers could have stood there and told us all sorts of fascinating things about history and geography if they hadn't required some sort of "work" and we would have been so much more engaged and knowledgeable about the topic.
What I learnt was to pretend not to read fluently and to pretend to stumble over some words in an effort to keep my head down and not stand out.

I'm really sorry to hear of the experience of the children of one of the other posters who were the recipients of violence and threats. That is a whole other level and was mind blowing to read.

I have already said I have taken these children camping regularly over several years and they have built friendships, but only in this context with time exposure and reduced parental involvement.

It seems no one else's perspective is of remote interest to you.

School children are constantly told "you're here to learn, not to socialise" and forbidden from speaking in class, so it's not unfair to say that socialisation in school is limited.

It's definitely the area of home ed that requires the most work, and it's one of the reasons I wouldn't say home ed is for everyone (the same way school isn't for everyone). DD has always sort of drifted and just made friends wherever she goes without having one specific best friend, which is why this works for her - she has friends in all sorts of different places and likes that. That won't suit everyone.

Unless you have five several years of home ed , you don’t have a perspective.

Taking them camping in school holidays isn’t recreating a home ed experience

Ive done both - I can confidently say tgat my child who is now in high school has far far far less opportunities to mix with theif friends than they did in primary, and dven Jess so than in home ed.

The socialisation in clubs only works if they go to clubs. Not all will be.
The woman I knew who HE her children they went to scouts and that was it, by mid teens that had dwindled away. She was obsessed with them socialising with the ‘right kind of children’. They were fine with adults but couldn’t mix with children their own age.
Some people HE to also prevent/control their children socialising with others.

I didn't really say it was, I was just saying there were likely some parallels - and more than with other extra curricular groups like karate lessons or what that others have pointed to as evidence of opportunities to make friends. I don't know why you find what I've said so offensive.