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’m a teacher, and I don’t think I could homeschool. I could obviously teach my subject and the basics of others, but not another language, or advanced maths, or scientific experiments needed for the exams. I wouldn’t have the passion for every subject, and I’m sure some days I couldn’t be bothered. I don’t think any one person has the knowledge to teach every subject well enough to give a child all the options needed.

People (the public) are allowed to be concerned about children.
We are allowed to be concerned about their welfare at home and in education. We are allowed to be concerned about their physical and mental health, and the outcomes for their lives.

When a significant cohort of children disappear from a regulated and monitored area such as school, the public is allowed to question if that is in the best interests of the children.

Home education soars by 21% in a year (article from 2024)
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/home-education-soars-by-21-in-a-year/
archive.ph/2NRA2

Feeling aggrieved that you have to keep justifying homeschooling is not the oppression you think it is.

The trouble is that the ones who aren't doing a good job will not be mixing with those who are and who use a homeschooling community to help their children. We all have seen the news where some children fall through the cracks of social services because they've been told they are being home schooled, mainly so that their abusive parents can stop authorities being involved.

This obviously isn't why most parents home school but it is a risk for all home schooled kids. Surely the group of home schooling parents would be better agreeing with this and banding together to weed this out rather than pretending it isn't a possibility at all? If they see a kid regularly in school times they could ask the parents if they home school and offer an "in" to the home schooling community.

I looked into home Ed for DS and I am very much in favour of it in the right circumstances.

I know many in the home Ed community hate the idea of any sort of oversight but I do find it very worrying that any parent could tomorrow remove their child from school and then have no sort of follow up, checks on the welfare of the child etc for many years. We shouldn’t be prescriptive about what home Ed should look like but we should have certain levels of safeguards in place. Sadly not all parents do it with good intention.

I can’t get too worked up about this. Yes there are some very uneducated (dare I say it, unintelligent) people who are home educating, however there are plenty of kids who’ve gone through the entire school system without a GCSE to their name, nor any type of grasp on the English language so it won’t be the downfall of civilisation.

And for the record I home educated my eldest who’s 20 now and a full time cyber security analyst, my youngest two are in the private school system through choice.

I attempted homeschooling for my eldest son when he wasn't coping well at Primary. Took him out for a term (you could do this kind of thing then and he was being disruptive so the school were happy for it to happen so I could 'catch him up'). We did reading and workbooks etc and he went back into school having caught up with the rest of his class and became a lot more co operative.

But. I had three other small children at home too (which was why I wasn't working). Trying to teach a child to sit and go through a workbook when his sister has to be taken to and fetched from playgroup, his younger sister is crawling all over the table and the baby wants feeding every hour nearly broke me.

If he'd been an only I would probably have HEd for another couple of terms to let him catch up maturity wise and education wise with his peers. But I just couldn't cope and the other children were suffering - how could I 'enrich their childhoods' when I had to concentrate on their brother?

Indeed. DD2 was fine at primary school but not secondary school. We engaged with every meeting with the school and LA representatives but no alternative education provision was ever offered between Y7 and Y10.

And the word homeSCHOOLING really grates on anyone who’s actually home EDUCATED their child. It’s not school.

Yanbu - I remember watching a video interview with Charlie and Erika Kirk where his wife declared she would personally be homeschooling their kids and said ‘I’m really excited to relearn everything, like what a triangle is’.

So many people seem to think being smarter than a 4 year old means you can teach them, when it really doesn’t.

I also agree many parents aren’t even attempting the above and are doing the whole ‘nature’ thing, assuming teaching them gardening and wildlife names on nature walks is enough. From what I can see the girls cope better and eventually assimilate probably because women are better at it, but the boys all suffer and become isolated oddballs destined to spend their lives gaming and claiming benefits.

More ignorant prejudice here. In my actual lived experience of homeschooling for 7 years, most homeschoolers were caring, dedicated parents failed by the school system. I only ever met one I would in anyway deem odd. When DD was at school from 5-9, I met many “odd” parents at the school gates!

It's a shame you're leaving because I am interested in how you did it the right way, how you worked it out logistically and what you did to stretch your kids. It's a shame you took offence when homeschoolers like yourself aren't the target of concern at all.

I saw a video on TikTok by a woman who was homeschooling her kids (no SEN just didn’t want them to be in school anymore), and she was using the word ‘wasn’t’ when it should have been ‘weren’t’ and that was worrying.
my son really struggles with school sometimes as he’s autistic, but I know I wouldn’t be able to home school him. And my 9 year old is better at maths than me 😆

I think it’s different somehow. They also lack the socialisation, routine and so on - everyone who I went to school with who left at 16 with few GCSEs got jobs. I didn’t know anyone who left to claim benefits, yet this is really common now. Not saying it’s all homeschooling, but there’s been a huge decline in ‘life coping’ due to anxiety and screen time

People really don't get it.
I wanted my child in school. School/LA has continued to fail them by not providing an appropriate education or the support they need.
Child has not attended for over a year. School still gets the funding, we continue to have meetings trying to get needs met but we get nowhere (over 6 years of fighting to get support).
The school/LA have provided no education and we haven't had one wellbeing safeguarding check in over a year.

People complain about home Ed children not being checked for safeguarding or education purposes but seem to not care that even kids registered to school aren't effectively monitored or educated.

I see some absolutely amazing home Ed families about

There has always been illiterate people. There are many programs in the UK aimed at teaching illiterate adults to read. Those adults went to school but weren't taught to read. School has always failed to teach everyone appropriately

Ironically school is worse now

I’ve talked about this on so many of these threads now so feel free to search on my user name. I would rather spend my Saturday morning with my dd than being bombarded by posts that just continue to show discrimination and ignorance (not yours) but just answered one claiming homeschool parents are ‘odd’ so good they aren’t at the school gates! I mean honestly! Way to show your ignorance.

On socialisation: could people please explain what they mean when they refer to the socialisation children receive at school that they don't receive through home ed? The examples I can think of from my time as a pupil and as a teacher are largely negative so I'm intrigued.

In my lived experience of talking to homeschoolers they tend to be a bit odd.

Maybe it is just your perception of what is odd and my perception is different. That is ok.

There will be plenty of that going on in certain religious schools too, and if a family is that way inclined they don’t need to homeschool their child to have opportunity to indoctrinate.

This is the problem. The problem isn’t a lack of legislation allowing for such provision. Too many parents have to enforce s19 provision, including some via JR. It is rarely just offered without pressure. Too many parents have to pursue EOTAS/EOTIS via SENDIST too even when it is blatantly obviously the parent will win.

@Iamthemoom the homeschools I worked with who were like the first group described by @winewolfhowls would never meet the latter group she describes.

The latter group would never seek to join the HE networks that are in place. To be frank they would terrify them if they did and that’s not hyperbole. They are not easy families to be around. These families and their motivations and outcomes are absolute opposites.

I’m a secondary teacher and we often get homeschooled children reappearing in Y11 so they can take their GCSEs- possibly when parents realise how expensive it actually is to enter for the exams. I had a long conversation with the parent of a lovely student, telling me all the stuff they had been teaching her at home in my subject, which is all well and good but, as I had to delicately explain, none of it is actually on the GCSE syllabus.

I'm going to reach a point fairly soon where the support I can give my daughter in maths is more on the cheerleading side than anything to do with maths. There is so, so much I could never teach her. I hate her school, I think much of the school system absolutely sucks, but it's what we've got and they can still do the education part better than me. There are definitely people who need to know their limits - but then that goes everything really. Although I do appreciate that a lot of parents (seems to be mostly mothers) are pushed into by the aforementioned sucky system.

To be fair, I was so glad to no longer have to talk to the cliquey school gate mums who treated it like secondary school all over again with the gossip and the bitching, so I couldn't care less if those mums saw me as odd for home educating 🤣

I haven't seen any more homeschooling parents with bad SPaG than mainstream schooled parents. Neither have I seen any more homeschooling kids with bad SPaG than their mainstream schooled peers. These things are everywhere and doesn't mean one is worse than the other, or whatever point this thread is trying to prove.

Perhaps you have too high of an expectation of homeschooled kids and their parents (that you don't have of others) to only notice something that is just as rife in mainstream schools.

This is what drives me mad. There’s a woman on insta who reads out her sternly worded emails to both the school and Local Authority. You can tell she has no experience of letter writing/emailing in a formal manner. She obviously thinks she’s done a sterling job but in reality she is exactly the sort of person this post is about.