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?

I'm actually shocked and horrified at her comments re bullying.
Basically saying it's necessary and useful so that teenagers can learn how to cope with difficult and hard situations.
Wtaf!
How about we try to provide a nurturing educational environment so that teens can develop confidence and self esteem. They would then be able to deal with a variety of situations.

🤔

You're so very wrong.

1. Home educated children are not wrapped up in cotton wool. They are out and about in their local community, at museums, libraries, markets, historical houses and buildings. They are engaged in the fabulous range of activities on offer for home educated children and regularly see a range of other home educated children. Most EHE children I know also have friends who are school attenders and have regular meet ups with them too. They attend birthday parties, plays and concerts. They go to forest schools and enjoy nature based education. They attend the same after school clubs as other children. They learn negotiation and conflict resolution skills and about balancing their own rights and respecting the rights of others. What you call being wrapped up in cotton wool, I call a proactive decision to avoid my child experiencing repeated stress and sometimes even trauma through the demands and difficulties associated with a school setting.

2. What builds an emotionally healthy and resilient adult is not repeated exposure to a stressful environment, to bullying, to children unable to regulate their emotions or behaviour because the school system is intolerable to them, to stressed adults who are also all too frequently at the end of their nervous tether. Too many teachers are desperate to leave the toxic systems pushing them to breaking point within which they are forced to work. This isn't the environment I want for my child. What builds an emotionally healthy, resilient adult is a LACK of exposure to fear, stress and anxiety. School may work well for your children - your kids, your choice. My choice is to educate my child in a way that meets their needs and provides a warm, caring environment where my child can thrive and learn, including how to navigate life. I can't see how you can find much wrong with that. It seems to me that you genuinely believe negative experiences and exposure to stress are the ways to become an emotionally healthy adult - they aren't. Some children will become emotionally healthy adults in spite of them but never because of them.

That's not what I've said at all.

Sorry this sounds like bullshit. O levels died out in the late 80s and an A* only existed at GCSE level from 1994. And its never been a thing at primary school level.

Agree with this. This thread is eye opening and I do find it encouraging to hear many positive HE stories. However let's be balanced most people can't just leave a work place when they don't cope and to all work places are full of mature cooperative adults. Being at school has benefits and home education has plenty too. I'm quite intrigued although I'd be rubbish at he mine, I don't have the patience and prefer working my paid job. A more flexible approach would be nice, a blended approach perhaps with some days at school and some from home. I am also in favour of shorter Fridays.

Dd isn't homeschooled as such she has EOTAS so LA fund tutors TA and PA among other stuff. They are all ex secondary teachers who couldn't in good conscience continue in a system that was causing harm and describe it as their dream job. There is huge demand for tutors here and they are working school hours and school terms with no SLT oversight and 1 student. For dd she has enough hours to study outside the exam syllabus so she gets a wide and rich knowledge of the subjects she chooses. She also studies Japanese a subject not available in schools locally.
There are so many provisions locally for home educated children so the idea that home ed is a parent teaching a child in their home is outdated really.

Are there provisions for home educated kids with a parent on the breadline and no real education themselves, Are the groups and trips all free and would they be inclusive to the kids of such parents

If the local state high school was the only option for DS, we would have home schooled. The local HS is horrific, and parents are posting daily on community FB pages for help because the school does nothing. They had a lockdown recently for a student with a knife.

From my own experience at a similar school, it affected, negatively, who I became as an adult. I didn't learn to be resilient, I learnt to hide and keep my mouth shut so I wasn't bullied or laughed at. It still happened as bullies looked for anyone vulnerable. In fact, someone tried it on day one of HS, just looking for a target to destroy for their jollies. I learned to be subservient and not challenge. Lunches were torture. I didn't go on camps etc because I couldn't cope and being ND I was often left out or abandoned by 'friends'. In fact, I've never anyone who loved school.

Teachers admit they are not trained for ND. Here, they've disbanded SEN classes and all are mainstream. In DD's primary I was at parade last week and seeing teachers try to manage kids who can't sit still, have headphones on for noise, running about etc and clearly couldn't cope. Even DD, who is sometimes disruptive because she's ND, struggles because they can't cope with her needs and are constantly calling or messaging me to 'fix' her. I want to move her but she won't leave her friends & activities there.

Thankfully we have a small, affordable private school that understands ND, so DS goes there. He's happy and nurtured and smiling when I pick him up. I want to move DD but she won't go.

Public is a sh*t show where I am, and getting worse. Given the option between home school or public now, I'd home school. And I really wouldn't want to!!!

I don't think I know any home ed kids who haven't had life's difficulties to contend with. Bereavements, finances, friendships, disappointments, illness etc. it's impossible to avoid.

I'm curious. Why do you think that schools need a convoluted array of punishments and behaviour management systems but then at 16, children go to college and magically, none of that is needed?

I agree.

My second DD struggled with school refusal in year 9 (in Aus). She would have loved to have not gone to school and been educated at home, but we didn’t give her that option. A year later, she was fairly enthusiastic about school although when she finally left she was pretty much pleased it was behind her.

She is very bright and thriving at uni, doing a course only the highest 1% of the academic cohort were accepted into. DH and I are both doctors and high-achieving academically but DD’s maths abilities outstripped ours by late primary. We couldn’t have taught her.

I know the standard response is to out-source but I doubt anything in the home-ed space would have replicated what she got at school. She had experienced, dedicated teachers who had been teaching their maths/science subjects for decades and a group of hard-working, intelligent students all trying to do well.

It was an absolutely awful time of it when she was 14, but the world has opened up for her now, both socially and academically.

When did I say that?

Some are definitely free as I tend to be sent home ed information, I don't know the details of costs involved as, as I said LA funds everything here and dd likes a more "traditional" way of learning I suppose.

My daughter has been asking me to home educate her for several years. She has additional needs and is awaiting a diagnosis of ADHD and ASD. She has been on the pathway for diagnosis for over 3 years. She has been under camhs for anxiety, depression and suicidal feelings for nearly 2 years and sees them weekly. Her biggest challenge is social situations - sensory overwhelm and RSD. She struggles with crowds at school, she struggles to understand other people's views and gets very distressed by them with extreme responses. She gets significantly dysregulated and needs a break to recover. She has been bullied in the past but got through that. However she holds onto things from years ago as if they happened yesterday and has trauma responses. She doesn't qualify for a SEN school.

We have two other children who are neurodivergent with additional needs and I have mental and physical health conditions and stay at home as between us we have medical appointments most weeks, sometimes two or three times and usually long distances. For these reasons I don't feel I am best placed to home educate her; we also can't afford it at the moment. We've not applied for DLA for the children or PIP for myself as frankly I've not had time and wanted to prioritise myself and the children. It's got to a point where I think we will have to. It would certainly open up the possibility of tutors if we do deregister.

School have recently made some more adjustments for her which seem to be helping but it's early days. School gives her routine and consistency which she needs and home just doesn't give her. It's been a hard balance of trying to maintain a consistent environment at school for her vs not breaking her.

What she really needs is the flexibility to stay home when she is dysregulated. I let her do this when she was at her lowest and had a suicide plan, but it got hard as school started putting pressure on me to get her attendance up. They have always been very supportive and helpful but they're very much of the belief that the more they stay off, the harder it is. I've found this not to be true in her case. She now attends regularly but is almost always dysregulated at home, whereas she wasn't before. The more we've made her go without brakes the more she has felt reluctant to go to school and the more she zones out at school.

She is an ambitious girl with big career plans. I could home educate her and she would do well, but I think the cost (literal, physical and mental) would be detrimental all round. I spend my life watching her to make sure we're striking the right balance and that she's not on a downward trajectory again.

There is a massive gap in schools for children like my daughter. Our education system is far too black and white. Whilst people used to "just get on with it" years ago, our society has spent years educating people on mental health, neurodivergence and expecting better for themselves. People are listening and they're saying they need better.

I do think that many are deregistering too lightly. I heard a mum at school talking about one of her children who she's just deregistered. She very much made light of how easy it is, doesn't require much input or work and that those in leadership saying otherwise, say it only to keep kids in school. It worries me that children like this may fall behind. I have some family members who were home educated and didn't get any qualifications so am very cautious.

I'm curious if you have any thoughts on it. Since you saw detention as being one of the necessities for young people to contend with.

Yes helping kids deal with difficult situations can help build resilience, providing they have the support of trusted adults to help them. In my DDs case the trusted adults in school repeatedly exposed her to risk and abuse, she already had a trauma history and school compounded this.

How far should we pitchfork our kids onto the pyre of school attendance in the name of education? What do you think she learned as the adults around her let her down? How much do you think she was retaining while being retraumatised daily? She’s the most resilient child I know, she already has encountered more difficult situations than the vast majority of adults but you think sending her into school will help her? In what way exactly?

This is just a heartless response. Bullying should absolutely not be a normative experience and especially not as this perish described. I work in Mental Health and bullying is a trauma that takes years to recover from.
Perhaps your bullying experience was more harmful than you realise because your comments generally seem inflexible and cold.

My home ed DS said he thought bullying was just something made up in books when he was a kid. He went to college at 16 and is now away in Uni and seems to be managing really happily academically and socially even without having been bullied as a kid. He did a lot of socialising though with lots of different children growing up in the home ed world.
My elder home ed DS (also now away at uni) was surprised when he first went to school for 6th form because a lot of the kids there didn’t seem to travel outside the immediate area to do things. He was used to whizzing all over London seeing friends from different places he’d met through home ed.
I think they got a wider social life in many ways.
Having home edded 3 DS each until 16 it’s not without downsides - particularly financial through loss of earnings and it’s pretty stressful trying to get them through GCSE. I don’t think it should be undertaken lightly but we had a lot of fun and they’re all fine academically. It was a massive amount of work though.

Everything is broken, the system but also parenting.

I’m a teacher and a parent. Schools are underfunded, more expected day after day, teachers are supposed to be superhuman, teaching 30 children to every individual need in a classroom, ensuring you remember every nuance of each child’s preferred learning style, reasonable adjustments, behavioural need, learning difficulties, make it engaging for all (all 30 with different ideas, skills and passions) with less support and more need. Yes, there are terrible teachers, same as there are people who are terrible at their jobs in every career. Those who criticise, do it for a term and then you can have an opinion.

Then you’ve got a vastly growing number of parents who look immediately to everything schools and society are doing wrong to affect their child’s behaviour. Not to what they could possibly be/are not doing. No accountability, excusing all behaviour with blaming everyone else around them. Teaching children ‘if it’s difficult it’s the fault of everyone else. You be you, you don’t need to modify how you react to stimuli/others/disappointment/difficulty, it’s their fault for not accommodating your needs. If you assaulted someone/trashed a classroom/ disrupted learning, it’s their fault. Stay at home where you have most things exactly how you want them, no challenge at all. That prepares you to be a fully rounded human being’

I have two children who could easily have been labelled EBSNA. So could I have been. I was a hugely anxious child who kept myself awake at night with worrying. Socially awkward, felt others didn’t like me. Battled for ages to not go to school, my poor mum. But, do you know what, anxiety gets bigger the more you avoid it. I was made to go. Had real consequences (and I don’t mean physical chastisement) I respected my parents rules, they didn’t hit me but weren’t my best friend. They said ‘no’ when they meant no and treats were just that, treats, to reward good behaviour. I’ve done the same with my children. They attended school daily despite some battles for months at the beginning of key transitions. When others are horrible to them I empathise with them and soothe them but prepare them how to cope with it and respond. All learning experiences for life. They’re thriving, I’ve come a long way. I’m not without my flaws but who isn’t?! I know I’m 100% better for facing my fears and understanding the world isn’t going to bend for me and sometimes peoples and rules are crap!
Sorry if this offends. It isn’t my intention, it’s unapologetically my lived experience and learnt views.
I actually am passionate about inclusion and work hard to make my school as inclusive as possible. We work hard to remove all barriers to learning. All children have the right to learn but we need to work together, schools and those who fund us and parents to support our children.

Previous comment ‘home schooling is fine as long as your children want to be home employed’ is spot on.

I got ripped to shreds for saying this but I stand by it. 70% of the people I know that home school are not offering an adequate education. Arguably mental
health is more important than academic results but I think it would have to be really bad at school for me to home educate and I’m a teacher 😂

While I appreciate your concerns I can only answer from our experience of home educating

1. My children have been involved in various clubs and hobbies from they were 3. Before that they attended various Mother & Toddler groups. They have been involved in the arts and sports from an early age where they have met a diverse range of teachers and peers
2. They have used public transport to travel to and from activities since they have been old enough to do so. They have been involved in planning and making their own lunches (within reason) and fuelling their bodies correctly from a young age as part of their learning.
3. They have learnt how to deal with good days and bad both in their education and in the activities they attended. They have competed at local, national & international level and know not every day goes as planned and subsequently can deal with disappointment and celebration and the emotions that come with both
4. I would argue that the friends they meet at activities with similar interests evolve into much stronger and longer lasting friendships than those they meet at school that they may not have much in common with.
5. My dc’s understand that there are things they have to do that they may not always want to. They carried that work ethic through their learning whether that be education or other activities. As for risks of living at home, never going to uni or having an unfulfilled work life, my eldest trained and lived in London, away from home at 16 and at just 20 is living and working abroad in her chosen field.

I agree I think there is a massive difference between people who are home educating and utilising many of the resources now available and people who well - aren’t.
I saw a thread about this on Facebook this week and one mum who had the LA contacting her about what education she was providing was saying well I don’t know what I can show as evidence as we haven’t done stuff on paper . We’ve done some baking and done some trips to the park.
As if doing that for weeks is education.

I know someone who runs a sports club and says the HE sessions in the week are a nightmare as the kids don’t listen to the safety instructions and a lot of the parents don’t care. Hopefully this will improve with more people doing it though.

I also see lots of people talking about de registering their kids due to fines for holidays so the gov have really shot themselves in the foot there.

I home educated both my sons to GCSE level and for 5 years of that time I was a single parent working part time. One is dyslexic and the other is neurodiverse. They went on to local 6th forms where they did brilliantly and both got top A level grades in their year group. One is now at Durham University and the other is at Cambridge University, both are having a great time and thriving academically.

well if I have misunderstood you, it seems like loads of other people did as well.....

Seriously?