Insane rise in home schooling?

[whyohwhy246]

Has anyone else noticed a huge increase in home schooling? Someone I follow in IG has just deregistered their child and I just can’t believe how many families are choosing to do this.

Of course it is sometimes the right choice for the child but it seems that more and more children are being allowed to opt out of formal education.

Teenagers need to learn that life is hard and school will throw challenges at them. How they learn to deal with this impacts how they handle things as an adult. What happens when they enter the work place and they can’t just opt out of the difficult things? Where do they learn that resilience?

I have worked in education for 20 years and whilst I agree that some aspects of the system are broken, I don’t think home schooling is the answer to this.

The social aspect alone is impossible to replicate (walking to school together, having your first crush, a detention, school trips I could go on and on…) but I also don’t see how all of these parents can have the skills to teach their children to GCSE. I also find it so insulting to teachers who spend years learning their craft. It’s not just something you can pick up and do effectively.

Has anyone else noticed this?

About being a midday? No, I am not a midday but I have an awful lot of respect for members of staff who help run schools effectively and teach children to use cutlery appropriately, encourage table manners, mediate playground fall outs, model good people skills, teach children the correct way of tying their shoelaces, help them when they’ve had an accident and need a change of clothes…. I could go on but the way you are so dismissive about middays and their potential insight into schooling is frankly very snobbish.

My child has always gone to school, but she would 100% choose to be homeschooled if I offered it as an option. She has never had specific bad experiences at school, but she finds it exhausting to interact with people all day and trying to concentrate in classes where half the students are talking and messing about. But, she has a nice group of friends, she can just go to the library at lunchtime for some downtime and I ensure she has plenty of 'chill' time at home on weekends. I think it's important for her to go to school because it does help with her independence and resilience, but also in teaching her how to manage people.
If she was ever deeply unhappy because of bullying or really struggling to cope then I would rethink it.
I think homeschooling is absolutely a valid option for people, but like the article says, it shouldn't be for convenience sake. Parents need to ensure their child is still learning and able to be independent as an adult, as much as possible.

If the cause is bullying at school, the parents who are home educating ARE dealing with the underlying issue which is removing them from a crap school!

I agree with you op. As a parents with children in education and one who has been home educated since she was 10 . Its a very hard path . A lot of planning ,resources and money is needed. Not to mention time. If a school placement that suited them had been available then i would have taken it.
They do miss out on so much more then the education itself. But the education system does need a lot of improvements and maybe this will make those who have the power make changes.

I can't believe the no. of people who can afford to home school. Do you all have rich partners?

I think there's a real trend towards individualism and home education is yet another facet of it. People want their child to have a heavily tailored personalised educational experience and can't cope with the fact that mainstream schools are a group/community based concept.

Its very worrying, because human beings live and work in groups, we collectively support the vulnerable, we are socialised to limit selfish behaviour in favour of what is best for the population as a whole. School, and learning to exist as a member of a group, accept some personal discomfort for collective benefit etc is part of that socialisation process. If we continue on this individualistic path where people have no tolerance to even try to "fit in" to society for the common good.... where do we end up?

As individuals we cannot expect the world to flex and accomodate our every whim & foible.

Ive not met someone who was homeschooled who just isnt severely socially maladapted.

18% of children in school fail to get 5 GCSEs . Yet we are worried about the 1.4 % who are home schooled. Schools fail many of our children , home ed is a viable alternative

💯%

Absolutely this.

As a society, we arbitrarily decided that education should look like school and that children should sit exams at a certain age.

It’s all so unnecessarily narrow.

Any good teacher understands that not all children learn in the same way. And large classes of 30 with teachers under pressure to meet certain criteria doesn’t produce the best outcome for many children.

Some of our home educated children will take exams at 16 - or earlier. Some might take them a bit later. Some might find a different path to their future. All of those options are ok.

My DC were at school until they were 10 and COVID struck. It made me realise how much happier my children were at home and how they blossomed. Without having to use all their energy to manage a school environment they learnt so much more.

And yes, both my DC are autistic. Two more SEN children that some posters will inevitably scoff at. Both my DC have additional learning disabilities.

School is great for the children it works for. Our primary school was a lovely place. I was a school governor for five years, including a stint as Chair. I’m not anti-school in any way.

We are part of a large and active home education community. Between my town and the next two towns over, there’s probably 5-10 different activities on offer every day.

I strongly refute the suggestion that my children need to be exposed to bullying in order to become functioning adults. In fact, within the home education community it’s common to find children who are much more confident and assertive as they’re used to having a voice and not being forced into silence because it’s required for crowd control.

It’s time we stopped viewing GCSEs at 16 and university as the only acceptable pathway. There was a post on here the other day bemoaning the fact that so many young adults never use their degree. Education and learning comes in many shapes and forms and it’s fine for a family to choose something different if it suits their children better.

It costs next to nothing. No school uniforms, no subject fees, travelling to school/bus/train fares/petrol money, just do some online schooling and get a curriculum plan. It costs far, far, far more to send your child to school than educate them at home on the computer and home workbooks. Homeschooling is the cheapest way.

Arguments like this feel like they're missing a fundamental point about life in 2026 - how young people's minds are shaped by tech. Ask any teacher at all how difficult it is now to get the exact same type of learners who used to function perfectly well, to now focus on the board, a question, a discussion point, even when phones aren't in the classroom. The vast majority of teens have had major damage done to their ability to focus on a single issue and concentrate for an entire lesson, and then when you go to parents to discuss it, the parents say it causes them emotional difficulties or anxiety to take the student's phone away at any time so they won't do it or push the children to do any work at all.

It's all well and good to blame antiquated school systems and subjects (I've heard people on here ask why Maths still has to be taught, since we have calculators on every phone - if that's not a fundamental and telling failure to understand the value of numeracy (and often literacy too) as a basic access point to a fuller, easier adult life, I don't know what is) but parents have to ask ourselves what long-term damage we do when we a) let kids make all the choices about how and when they use addictive tech, and b) normalise all anxiety as a crippling condition (which it definitely can be) rather than recognising that ALL of us at some point will feel anxious and here's how we get through it to develop as people.

I've got some friends who homeschool and do a fantastic full-time job with it, but I've also seen parents opting to take their kids out of school because they then don't have anyone nagging them to get their children in uniform/to school on time/to do their homework/to behave appropriately. The more of the latter group who do that, the more others who also can't be bothered to parent properly will join them in the easy option, rather than the creatively exhausting and time-consuming hard work that homeschooling is when done well.

I don’t think this is true at all. I have 2 children with ASD and they both love school, because the school have worked with them to figure out their needs and to provide what they need. It is possible to do in many cases, and I don’t think it’s helpful to make blanket statements, particularly for parents who may have children just entering the education system. In reality it IS possible for a ND child to enjoy school and thrive there.

Of course, not all schools have the resources they need, and not all teachers are willing to make adjustments. And every child is different and has different needs, not all of which can be met in school. I’ve no doubt that for some children, home schooling is the best option, but it doesn’t always have to be the only option just because a child is ND.

I do want to add one thing to the discussion - The false dichotomy of:

Learn at school vs Learn at home

I'm not in the UK, but here - most kids do plenty of learning at home and outside school, despite attending school during the day. I don't just mean homework, but parents actively engaged in helping their child develop/progress.

I find that in discussions from the UK, it is often framed as school being entirely responsible for the child's education - of course that will lead to ineffective learning for many children. I'd rather think about it as children having multiple routes to learning:

Family led
Classroom led
life led
club/hobby/passion led
work led
etc.

Your job as a parent is to get that balance as optimal for your child as possible. Of course that isn't entirely realistic within the confines of life and society for many of us, but it is still a balancing act. Most kids who go to school would thrive better with a bit of extra family/club/hobby learning etc. Home schooled kids have loads of that, but would often benefit from a bit more classroom learning etc.

Extremes and isolating single routes isn't usually ideal, yet that how the conversation becomes framed. Home vs school. Rather than a more nuanced set of balancing, where school kids are still learning at home, and home-school kids often do attend classes (just in different settings)

That’s a pretty broad statement based on your personal experience of a limited sample size! Homeschooling looks very different for different families, and plenty of homeschooled children, my own included, grow up socially well adjusted. Socialisation doesn’t just happen at school!

I withdrew my son from his sink school at 14 after he was violently assaulted and kicked in the head by another pupil.

All the school could do was exclude the perpetrator for 5 days.

There were frequent reports of knives being taken in to the school and behaviour standards were appalling.

He is now completing his GCSEs through an online school with professional teachers.

I pay for it but it is nowhere near the cost of a private school.

Not ideal but far better than somewhere he wasn't even safe.

I don’t home school but I have seriously considered it for my DS. Let’s flip this the other way shall I? How am I supposed to make money if school are calling me every single day to go in to school and help them with my son because he’s not cooperating with being sanctioned or put in isolation because he has ADHD and is unable to control some of his own behaviour like fidgeting and being unable to sit still for a long period of time, which because he feels he has done nothing wrong, refuses to attend isolation which then leads to him being suspended. All while I’m missing out on being at work and earning money! I’m starting to feel it would be cheaper to home ed at this rate!

My child who is in secondary school (year 8 in mainstream school) has learnt more from me in the last 2 years than she has at school. I am not a teacher and was average at school myself. I have some strength in English language, art and design and the more social studies, due to my university degree, career and ongoing education. However, I have no experience in any of the other subjects. She has still learnt more from me because I am engaged and passionate about it and she is motivated to self study and learn.

At school she learns next to nothing because most of the staff are occupied by dealing with trying to control the students, dealing with disruptive behaviour and many are simply no longer fit for the job. A few of her teachers are brilliant, but they are fighting to teach in a broken system. Her school is supposedly one of the best in our local authority.

Teachers are no longer actually teaching and are simply reciting information out of a curriculum text book. Children are not being properly educated but are forced to regurgitate this information onto exam papers, that claim to measure intelligence, but are in no way a measure of such. There is no longer creativity in teaching, no outside the box teaching, and no ability for good teachers to use their skills in the way they intended. Children who are keen learners and inquisitive are told to sit down and shut up. There is no extension of the topic or ability to take the learning to the next level. Teachers and school staff are so bogged down they don’t have the time and patience to enjoy these sorts of pupils anymore. Schools are decades behind and do not reflect the changes of society and the modern working world. They focus on things like wearing the wrong trousers instead of trying to overcome the bigger problems because they have simply lost control and are clutching at anything they can. This ridiculous focus on these rules, like uniform, are impacting the few students who turn up and do what they are supposed to do. Children are said to have become out of control or people believe behaviour in children has deteriorated over the years, but no one wants to admit the cause or show any accountability. The school system has become so toxic that children are struggling on mass and are labelled as “bad”. The line is repeated that “every other child has Sen these days”, there are no more Sen pupils than previously but schools are so much worse now that there is no flexibility for them and the environment is totally unsuitable. We are seeing it more because those who would have previously been supported by care and compassion and creativity in teaching, no longer have this option. The struggling children have to be the main focus of staff, so the compliant children miss out on hours and hours of education and are never rewarded.

My dd was top of her class in primary school. The head of her primary school and her year 6 teacher, commented that she was the most intelligent child either had ever taught. She has a natural academic ability, I’m not trying to brag, it is what it is. She has ended up being assessed as average at secondary school because she has given up. She said, for example, that in English literature it took her class a whole term to get through a chapter of a book, and the teacher openly watched you tube shorts during lessons. When I contacted the school the hoy admitted that this was true and due to the ‘characters’ in her class very little actual teaching or learning is done. My dd is creative in her learning, she is keen to explore topics in different ways and will come home and want to dive deeper into them, this is not encouraged at school and anyone like this is forced to reign it in.

I also agree with everything re the SEN and ND pupils that pp have stated. School is not a safe and positive environments for them.

I work almost full time so I can’t home educate. Even if I educated her in the evening or whatever, I’d be shattered and have no planning time after work. If things change I will. I can fully understand why many families are doing this.

The whole system needs pulling down and starting over.

If schools took bullying seriously then there would be many fewer
children being homeschooled.

I agree and no one I know truly homeschools their children. Most sit them in front of a laptop or computer on the internet all day, doing the work that they would be doing in school anyway. They also all tiktok, you tube and Instagram how they're home educating their children, with most of them paying more attention to how they can create good content than how they can raise their children to be useful members of society!

I know numbers are rising.
Agree with your point about kids needing to be adaptable to situations they do not especially enjoy (obviously NOT if it is torture) if not they will get a further shock down the line in the workplace !

For me, Covid and kids home learning emphasised QUITE how important school is for social skills / tolerance of others etc. Mine were at secondary at the time!

It is good that HE will be scrutinised more (in the aftermath of Sara Shariff)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78vyzjd8e1o

Schools are now IMHE shit.
Teachers who are nasty and make zero exceptions for any ND kids.
Teachers and schools pushing a lefty, DEI trans loving agenda.
Masses of problems with bullying , weapons, drugs.
Bloody halal meat served to everyone.
Pushing ND kids into mainstream school -but not having a functioning SEN department to support them.
Masses of supply teachers.

Then you have (at the other end) teachers wasting hours of time having to change NAPPIES on kids! If your kids need a nappy at school age then they are not ready for school or in the case of sever disability then they should be in a specialist school.
Schools should be able to say NO to kids who are not toilet trained.
Pushing plenty of religion - but just not Christianity.

Im glad to say my ND daughter has left school. A few teachers got her through and she got 7 GCSEs but the majority ( especially the male teachers) were appalling.
If she was of school age now l would home school her in a heartbeat. There are plenty of homeschool groups to ensure socialisation. I wish I had pulled her out frankly - I could have taught her (and have done) so much more than school ever did. (The only thing I would have struggled with is the ‘pure maths’ that the curriculum Insists on rather than a more ‘commercial maths’ which is much much more useful to individuals in real life).

Cos we don’t lock us up anymore we’ve always been around and we made more cos well it’s genetic

Isn't he on any meds for the ADHD? If he is it's obviously not the correct one or correct dosage. I knew many kids with ADHD (used to work as a school office lady and part of my job was dealing out the medication morning break/lunch time and when medicated they had almost no problems at all.

We could argue though that schools bang on and on about kids getting too much ‘screen time’ when they themselves are sticking kids in front of a chrome book to do their school work. We no longer have blackboards/ white boards in schools anymore as they have now been replaced by large screens on the wall…. So even at school, kids are just sat in front of screens for the most part.