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?

My granddaughter is severely dyslexic but is becoming really stressed as she gets no help at all from the school she started at in September.. she's 11..its really not OK. My daughter would home school but she has to work and realises she is not up to it in reality. But it's disturbing to know this child is being made to feel upset and worried about her school years.

This is not an accurate description of the majority of schools in the UK in 2026.

Removed our dd from year 10, best thing we did, gave her time to rebuild, went back to study Alevals, a year behind her peers, but so much happier
schools only care about attendance and grades not about the child

Those groups vary a lot and have different purposes. There are some that are more for supporting parents, letting them know responsibilities and where they stand legally and there are also many for sharing ideas and resources too. I am in a huge number of them, seperate groups for each GCSE subject for example.

Also as with any Facebook groups, some are just a bit crap and full of people giving incorrect information.

If it is due to the fact that they can't cope in school due to a disability, it will be part of the evidence but far from the only form of evidence.

It's interesting that you 'know of people' who have used it as evidence but clearly can't have talked with them much to refer to it as PIP as they wouldn't have called it that.

But food tech is an academic subject and one of the possible pathways into professional opportunities I am glad that my dc learn about these grown professional sills. She can cook and bake at home in a more relaxed manner.

I think there many issues and can understand why someone opts in for home education it's good to have the option for sure. I also there is a lot of parental anxiety on this thread but that's understandable as many will have dc with additional needs.

I am open minded about it and while there are certainly issues I have huge respect for those who actually manage to teach their ids at home.

Actually I think home educating we are worse off financially because we could work more if DC were at school. Also, we don't stay at home, we go places, not always with a cost but even our local.community home ed meetups have a cost per family plus travel to get there.

We don't want to be at home all day, DC also have classes for sports and music, these are opportunities for socialisation.

Costs for most school uniforms are pretty cheap, I don't even count that in the equation.

I think home ed does cost more than school for a lot of families and it is not affordable for everyone to fit it around work or instead of work, particularly single parents. One of the home ed families we know is a single parent family and effectively take their children to work with them 3 days per week (self employed).

Also schools seem to lean heavily on competition as a motivator. For someone like your GD that can be very damaging. A more personal and involved educational experience can be far more empowering for children who have strengths that aren't necessarily the ones that shine brightest in a classroom.

IME - and I say this as the parent of high achieving dc in traditional schooling - the "reward" system in schools (class prizes, work displayed on notice-boards in the hallway where some are obviously much better than others, work selected to be showcased in the school magazine) is just a repackaged, inverted and slightly passive aggressive version of the old Dunce's cap.

That environment might energise some children, but by no means all.

I think modern society is difficult to navigate for NT and even more so for ND people. People say being at work is easy in comparison to school but that is not true problem and difficulties continue. People have become quite harsh around each other and self centred. It's just the general vibe now.

I have and am not at all surprised. The state school system is simply not fit for all - it is entirely incompatible for any child that doesn't fit the mould and is not neurotypical / doesn't fit within the banding of expectation.

Schools these days are vast, busy, and noisy - this can be incredibly anxiety inducing.

I have three children, two suit the state school system - neurotypical, academic and outgoing (one currently in an independent prep school but starting at a state grammar in year 7, the other already in a state grammar), the third is neurodiverse - also in state grammar but hates it despite being academically very able. The size, noise, moving around, changing teachers year to year etc cause her extreme anxiety. There is no chance of an EHCP - the LA turn them down based upon cost rather than need - quite honestly she doesn't need one, she just needs a smaller more nurturing environment with consistency and predictability - which certainly doesn't exist in the local state schools, only the independent sector.

We are making do and limping through - she would love to be home schooled. We are very fortunate in that all being well she should come away with reasonable GCSE grades however these will invariably be 5/6's rather than the 8's/9s she would have achieved in a more suitable environment and which were her targets at the beginning of year 7.

We had hoped to send her to a small independent school for her A Levels however the introduction of VAT has now made that very unlikely.

Yes, I've noticed. The sharp rise been an interesting reaction to the COVID lockdowns.

The idea that school in a classroom as essential to the process was already weak with rising technology and conflicting education philosophies, but those lockdowns broke what threads of it were left.

I found it interesting as I'd already been home educating for a long while at that point and knew families who were going the other direction - their home educated kids were going into schools - because of how badly the private candidate exams were handled, the increase in isolation as many groups closed, and other concerns going on shortly before and during that time.

I do have some concerns, and have for a while. Many home educators, as shown on here, are very defensive, most I've known have had serious issues with schools either for their children or for themselves and rightly feel severely let down and wary of local authorities.

IME that defensiveness has only gotten worse since the Badman review days when there were some horrifying actions by some home educators to cause fear in other home educators to get support against any changes to a the very lax laws on home education in the UK. This has largely developed since that so many home education communities pushing to develop an attitude in their own to be harshly against questioning. I think the entire 'cultural war' there for well over a decade has made any conversation around issues in home education, failures in home education many of us have seen, a no-go. One only has to look at how some homeschoolers and home educators act towards spaces like HomeschoolRecovery (specifically for those who had bad home education experiences) to see we are largely too reactive to have meaningful discussion. I'm not sure how we move past that to be able to discuss that all education has pros and cons - and that includes home education.

home schooling would be impossible for me as how do you home school without giving up work?

How people I know make it work: Some work opposing shifts, some bring grandparents, other relatives, or other childcare as part of their home education, some with a child with significant additional needs have a PA or similar involved in both care and home education, some are self-employed and work around their kids, and some I know have one parent working. Some I know from all of those groups also rely on benefits.

Even with those options, some families will find it impossible to make ends meet and home educate in a way their child would need, just like not all families can afford private education or tutoring and many struggle affording and managing the demands of state education.

Parents want to protect their children from being brainwashed and told they can change sex.

Home education doesn't protect kids from ideas, not unless you are cutting them off from all other ideas -- and eventually they will be adults.

I had to explain my one of my kids at 8 that he wasn't going to suddenly change into a girl overnight after an afternoon at a home education group where he came across these ideas. I know home educating families with multiple kids who've all changed their identities repeatedly, and are absolutely the 'sex doesn't matter' types.

IME and from everything I've read, one of the big differences between the US home school communities and the UK home education communities, is that we tend to be significantly more leftist, more "live and let live", more "we're all special".

I see lots of parents who are homeschooling who don’t even have a GCSE to their name so it’s not a matter of being threatened

I immigrated to the UK after secondary school so don't have a GCSE to my name.

You'll find many will counter with studies like this Canadian one which gives some evidence (small sample size issues and so on, not a fan of it, but it comes up a lot IME) that for mothers who use structured curriculums to home school, lower education doesn't have the bias it would usually have and parental involvement is a major indicator for success whether a child is home or school educated: www.researchgate.net/publication/232544669_The_Impact_of_Schooling_on_Academic_Achievement_Evidence_From_Homeschooled_and_Traditionally_Schooled_Students

it’s being concerned for the future generations whose parents are so arrogant and entitled that they think they know better than professionals who have often honed their teachings skills for years.

You sound like a member of my local authority who called all home educating parents arrogant and reads out portions of emails of parents begging the LA for help as evidence to school volunteers (which I was when I heard this) about why the rise in home education is very concerning.

Sure, I'm arrogant enough to think that if an adult who has passed a secondary school education can't teach an individual child that doesn't have significant additional learning needs how to read, write, do basic maths, and handle most early primary topics, then the school that taught that adult failed.

I'm entitled enough to think once I had one child neglected in a childcare setting because of their disability that I would never leave them in any setting until they could clearly communicate issues and do whatever I needed to do to ensure their wellbeing.

I'm very big on home education doesn't protect kids from ideas or other mean kids, but there is one think it did protect them from: bullying adults, they're much less likely to pull shit if a parent is there.

Home schooling just wraps them up in a ball of cotton wool which is not helpful in later years.

The whole "teenagers are mean" applies just as much to home educated kids. If anything, it can be more intense because there are fewer kids in any group and within the previously mentioned 'live and let live' type spaces, parents rarely challenge each other.

For example: at one home education meet-up, the sex ratio of kids was 10 girls to 3 boys - and two of those boys were significantly younger than most. Those girls made sure the 1 boy their age knew they thought he was shit and wasn't allowed to play with them. They also tore apart two of the girls who didn't do makeup. Most of the kids weren't even teenagers yet, the oldest were 13, didn't stop some being vicious.

Their parents were all chatting together while this happened, I took my kids home early and talked about it as I knew these parents wouldn't take challenge well.

And that's before getting into how many parents are handing the internet over to their kids - both home educated and school educated kids - with very little oversight because of the idea that they can teach themselves. I think very few kids are wrapped in enough cotton wool these days, we literally have heads of parties saying it's 'impossible' to protect kids with the internet as it is as an excuse for more state control.

It’s far better to equip children with the life skills to deal with their mental health issues rather than just removing them from the situation.

Some of the life skills to deal with mental health struggles involves things we don't generally let kids do - standing up for themselves get qualified as talking back & punished, managing their workload or removing responsibilities when overwhelmed isn't something most kids can do - their school or parents decide without their input, most aren't allowed to choose when they rest, they have very limited control of their environment - a very important part of managing mental health. It's no wonder many are fried.

I have multiple reasonable accommodations around my health needs at work, and barring possibly some of the equipment, they aren't the type of things that are accepted in schools. Even without those, I am allowed to just walk away if someone is being abusive and I will be fully supported. One of my colleagues was punched, and it was stark to me the support he got from the higher ups was so quick and thorough and nothing like what either I or my kids got when faced with physical violence at school. Not all workplaces are like this, but it is more common in workplaces than we see at schools for students.

My DD1 went from crying at least once a week in Y11 at school to flourishing working with SEN kids at an all through school starting as an apprentice TA at 16 . The change was night and day, and it was largely because she now gets those reasonable accommodations many places don't bat an eye at for an employee that were just too much and would make her too reliant when she was a student.

So sure, it's better for kids to learn those skills - but we'd actually have to treat them like people with individual needs first, rather than beings that need to run the gauntlet as part of growing up. You can't learn skills if you're denied the ability to use them.

IMO it’s far too easy to opt out. Who ever checks that parents are at all competent to teach their children?

If they were school educated and pulled out, that information is passed the Education Welfare department of the local council and it is their responsibility.

If they home educate from the start, once they are registered (which happens to the vast majority as it happens once anyone reports you as home educating), then the information is passed to the Education Welfare department of the local council and it is their responsibility.

How well they do it depends on a lot of factors. I am aware of cases where a child who already had safeguarding concerns when a parent tried to pull out and the end result was a different education placement in part to prevent EHE.

What I'd love to know is how are exams completed? Do the children sit specific GCSEs? How does course work account for it?

If they remain home educated, then exams have to be completed as private candidates, so parents have to pay the fees and find a site suitable for them. The number of these has shrank dramatically over the last decade or so, but some companies have taken advantage of the rising demand so there are some specialised centres usually in large cities. Exams are usually at least £100 per GCSE.

The exams done privately often have to be ones without coursework as the private candidate exam centres typically don't get involved in coursework and IME it tends to be more IGCSEs than GCSEs, in part for this reason.

There are a some colleges and education centres around England who will take KS4 age children and do a limited number of GCSEs, though at least in my region that shrank dramatically around the time of COVID in part due to additional complications of having children under 16 including safeguarding concerns.

What happens where I am more often is kids wait until they are Year 12 age and take a GCSE programme one of the local colleges does specially for home educated and school educated kids who have few to no GCSEs. This does tend to be more limited and more focused on getting them what they need to move onto the next level of qualifications. I have met home educating parents who go this route and then get really angry that colleges require all students who haven't passed GCSE English and maths to take them.

if you're child is in high school they shouldn't need you to stay home with them, they should be able to work independently at home in workbooks and online.

Should, possibly. But what if they don't? What if they don't engage or don't learn well?

Parents are responsible for their child's education and putting that responsibility onto the child's shoulder to do on their own is failing in that just like if a school put a kid alone and expected them to learn from just online and workbooks (which too many do) would be a failure on the part of the school.

The fact multiple people are just saying 'high schoolers can do it on their own' is saddening.

Home schooling is the proper term and the term used in every single country - bar the UK. If anyone use 'home educate' in front of me I always correct them. I cannot abide 'home educate/d'.

You can choose to correct them to your preferences, but our legal and education frameworks at least in England disagree with you. There is a divide in Elective Home Education (EHE), where the parents are entirely responsible and Education Other Than At School (EOTAS), where the local authority is still involved.

Before COVID, home educated meant EHE and home schooling meant EOTAS. The two are very different.

They merged and I think online there was some intentional confusing of the two to make EHE look better, as I've seen an uptick of people who pull their kids from school and ask about how to get packages they've heard about for children who've been granted EOTAS support. I've been in meetings with the head of Education Welfare in my area, and she's seen quite a bit of this with parents having a lot of expectation from the LA whereas pre-lockdowns, EHE largely meant not wanting anything to do with the local authority and them having to fight to get any details.

So yeah, I home educated my kids, the local authority wasn't involved. We were the happy to write lengthy reports and done the visits types, and spent over half the time home educating not hearing anything from them - it seemed we'd ticked the box long enough and they stopped caring. That being not uncommon is also saddening.

Yes You may well be correct. On a similar line I went to school and started working during holidays in a hotel,adult environment, aged 13 years, it was tough,long hours, I valued my pay, many laughs and odd tears. Interestingly folk like to portray old days as bad days but the adults I worked with were very careful to push me but not break me. I think they were surprised I was up for it, but I needed money for my hobbies. I do think it is important while carefully monitoring to "stress test" young folk. I noticed later as a manager I was much more sensitive to those below me than I might have been

OP in my previous post I forgot to comment on a rather big misunderstanding you have "it seems more and more children are being allowed to opt out of formal education".

The law says parents have a legal duty to provide a suitable education for their child - it doesn't dictate what that is.

Home Education is actually the default.

Parents are free to opt-in to a formal education system at 4 years old, or anytime after, but it is not compulsory. Parents don't need to be allowed to home educate their own children. They are free to de-register their child and remove them from a school any time they want. There are a few exception to this but for most families it is as simple as sending the school and email and you are done.

What other life skills would you like to see?
we home educated. Son is 23 yo, fulltime employment, great salary, job he enjoys, rents a flat, has friends.
Daughter graduates this year. Part time employment to help find uni. Loads of friends, delightful young lady. manages her money well.
what skills do you think home ed youngsters miss out on?

I agree.. I find it disturbing that people can be so harsh.. for very little reason... I think well what goes around as the saying goes.....!!

It's certainly possible to give your child a good academic education at home, especially if you are well-educated yourself and you're willing and able to buy in help where needed.

It's also possible to fill your child's days with lots of activities that don't actually add much to their education. Adding up the shopping as you go round the market is not the same as studying algebraic fractions.

And of course there are many kids who would historically have been labelled as "truanting", or more recently as "school refusers" who are now more likely to be deregistered from school without necessarily having any better alternative in places.

And that's before we consider the outright neglect/abuse/radicalisation scenarios.

I'm not sure that anyone has any real sense of how many families fall into each group.

PIP is very very hard to claim. But DLA is incredibly easy.

I was encouraged to claim for my autistic DD and thought we’d get nothing as I had almost no evidence, but they essentially took my word on everything. Benefits groups online are full of people telling others what to write on forms. A huge recommendation is “fight for an EHCP because it’s such good evidence to get the higher rate”.

Insane rise in shit school policies.

Kids leaving in droves, teachers leaving in droves.

Agree. I dont understand the home education route and if there are any checks about whether the parent is suitable to prove an education or not.

The only person I know who has done this was a woman who had not a GCSE to their name & never worked a day in their life. The child was allowed to stay up all night on computer games and she couldn't get them to get up for school in the morning, which I think was the reason for the change to homeschooling. Of course that child didn't get any qualifications. She had a partner and 2 more kids. The dad said absolutely not to home schooling. They are both doing very well.

Some parents may be cut out to give their children their all and a great tailored education. They may be able to afford their children a wider social alternative to what school provides with clubs and hobbies. But many are not doing that, and the child is left to their parents limited intellect and living a very isolated life.

I dont understand also how if parents are educated enough to teach their child to be able to get a decent career, how are they not too busy in their own career?

Some also as others have said are just living an alternative lifestyle, anti establishment, anti vax and so on. Having their child at home leaves them able to brainwash their children to follow the same beliefs.

I do get it when it comes to extreme SEN needs, where the children are not coping. Also understand if a child was so severely bullied and there are no alternative schools to send them. But even then, if the parents are not cut out, they are just limiting their future. My sibling was badly bullied, they battled on with classes being their OK time. They left school with decent grades and now has a high flying career. They learnt strength and resistance and now takes no shit from no one. If my uneducated parents had took them out and done homeschooling, they would not have been able to educate them to the same standards and they would not have the life they do now.

I was not bullied, just the minor thing. Nor was I popular. More invisible. When I come to the world of work, I realised that adults are also bullies and I was bullied more in the workplace than ever before. Luckily, the minor cases in school, plus witnessing my siblin having to endure and stand up against it. Give me the tools I needed to push back. Dread to think how someone with a sheltered life in bubble wrap would deal with it

I don't know many people who find it incredibly easy. Especially those who have to go through MR and then tribunal.

I suppose as state schools get shitter and shitter, people who can't afford to give their children a decent education will turn to home education.

Anyone who thinks a standard state school is doing anything to make children employable is sadly mistaken. Just look at the youth unemployment statistics.

I agree the school system is about displaying the high achievements of the best in class.. but my granddaughter has severe dyslexia and her own style of spelling when she writes stories is just brilliant.. In her own unique ways she gets the story across with drawings that are also really creative but none of this seems to be acknowledged as it isn't "correct"... Government cut backs to schools.

I think it is easy to overstate the value of the "skills" acquired in surviving largely unpoliced nastiness of other pupils who may also be stressed and ill-served by the system, the ministrations of teachers who are often frazzled with the pressures of meeting targets imposed at arm's length, and generally not having anyone truly involved to look out for you.

I'm not saying every school is like that for every child, but I do think there is much in the "survival" argument as a "preparation for the workforce" that is not well-thought out.

My belief is that children flourish and become genuinely robust and ready for the adult world when filled with confidence and self-knowledge nurtured by supportive and truly involved adults. ETA " that is, adults who truly understand that child's unique strengths and don't compare it to the bog-standard national average expectation for some target or other)." This is about educating individuals not packaging cereal.

Exactly.

I wanted to add something about the social aspect of school. Most children are forced together with people they have little in common with. Learning to get on with different people and conform is a lesson in fear and survival. These are not real ‘friends’ in the true sense. Most children just go along with the crowd through fear of being bullied and many end up doing things through peer pressure.

Children in school only see friends for 10 minutes in the morning and maybe a short time at lunch. However, they are often waiting in the lunch line for the whole of the allotted time. The rest of the social aspect of school is learning to sit and wait for teachers to deal with disruptive students. Let’s all be honest this is in no way akin to the adult ‘real’ world.

Children are no longer encouraged to discuss their learning and opinions on topics. Collaboration is non existent. Students are not allowed to talk in lessons. Schools no longer teach proper time management and organisation skills. They claim they do with these rigid rules, but then give 1 hour detentions for being a minute late. This is not teaching children how to manage their time effectively in order to get their work done or how to deal with the real life situation of being late for work. They are not allowed to think for themselves or problem solve when these situations arise.

I agree about the toilet comment from pp. Children at my DDs school can only go at lunch time, but it’s often too busy so they have to choose between getting lunch or using the toilet. If they are waiting for the toilet when the bell goes they are told to go to lesson without going and the toilets remain locked for the rest of the day. My dd tells me that the lunch hall is so busy many students don’t make it to the front of the line by the time the bell goes and are told tough by staff. They have to go to lesson without having eaten. She tells me there is nowhere to sit and eat, so definitely no where to sit, eat and chat. How is this socialisation beneficial? Why do we need/want our children to learn that they must fight to the front of a queue or go hungry/go a full day without being able to use the toilet. This is not exclusive to DDs school either, many parents and friends have told me similar stories.

How is that setting them up for the world of work? Imagine being at work and not being able to run ideas past your colleagues, not being able to share struggles with colleagues, not being able to check your understanding of something with managers or colleagues or not being able to talk to others, other than for 10 minutes a day. Ridiculous. If my manager told me I’d missed my allocated toilet time so would have to hold it for the rest of the day, or she told me I didn’t manage to eat in time so would now have to go hungry, I’d think she was having a mental health crisis.

This magical social aspect of school that home educated children are missing out on is a load of rubbish. I think most people would be more than happy to miss out on it. If it was like this at work people would be aghast.

Home education has the ability to allow children such as rich and meaningful social education and experience. What are they missing out on? Learning they are not allowed to use the toilet or eat all day unless they can push others and beat them to the front of a queue? That they must sit in silence looking at 4 walls while staff spend half the lesson dealing with disruption? That they must wear certain clothes or do certain things to fit in even if that’s harmful? That they will get bullied and no one will listen and they have to just quietly put up with it? That they get to see some friends for 10 minutes a day while getting drenched in the rain as they are not allowed coats on the school grounds? That they have their socialisation monitored and are told what to think and feel?

Many highly intelligent people struggled when I was at university because they could not get on bored with the self directed learning. School does not teach this. School does not encourage educational curiosity.