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 concern is with the children who aren’t being educated and, secondarily, those who are being educated but not prepared for the next steps in life

I did specify in a follow up post that children with disabilities, and this includes MH, should be exempt from any milestone requirement. Suicidal ideation very much falls into this category.

If you wish to aim for university, it is crucial that any EHE be very high quality and that you prepare for the demands of your degree programme. With the best will in the world, mitigations go only so far. I write this as a supportive former admissions tutor and appeals panelist in a very highly ranked Russell Group School.

I agree it’s become an actual option in children’s minds. It feels an added pressure to make their educational experience as good as possible when for me home school just isn’t a plausible option- I feel like the secondary school years are the hardest parenting stage and I’ve got four more years to go for youngest.

I really don’t think it’s only neurodivergent kids who struggle in school - or maybe every child I know is. The early mornings, the boredom, tiredness, focus required, pressure and constant testing, let alone their peer issues and insecurities. It’s a real slog and this is for my two who are doing really well!

AFAIK pursuing a diagnosis has always been the parents’ responsibility (or perhaps one for Social Services) with teachers, HCPs and other responsible adults making suggestions. If you take some of these adults out of the picture, you increase your own responsibility.

You’re operating on the assumption that all teachers are highly trained subject specialists. That’s not true , for various reasons, but mainly the teacher shortage.

https://www.cornwalllive.com/news/cornwall-news/tears-high-emotions-cornwall-parents-10837039?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=Iwb21leAQPpyJjbGNrBA-nHmV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHpOb9A1KbNdAgLYHeHYYJEP2JzTjcOFK9eRNfnFIwjTFbRjUV-r0kqrRp1fg_aem_Y_ntgFY4_XV7n5K9UmEehQ

By your narrow view and uneducated stance it shows you don't have an understanding of home education as it stands in this country.

My youngest has never been to school. At 12 he has a full vibrant life, he mixes with a wide variety of different people, learns from experts in classes that other young people want to be in. Has time to deep dive into areas of interest and is on track to start GCSEs in a couple of subjects next year with further ones the two years after. He has regular opportunities school kids don't, he has a monthly day at a farm, he's done heritage crafts, plenty of workshops, trips, group outings, led by people skilled in what they're talking about. They're not stuck with the same 30 kids in primary or in hot bed of children/young people with unmet needs. They can use the bathrooms when needed.
He learns in small groups often 8 to 10 for core subjects, trips are varied we've done RHS, space centre, a museum archive on the stone age and done flint knapping and weaving rope, and an m n s archive one already this year plus had author visits, art gallery, theatre trips drama and music workshops. This is in addition to his regular ice skating, bouldering, snowboarding, drama, gymnastics and trampoline, scouts, forest school, Octopush, swimming, maths, science, English language and lit, Spanish, geography, Spanish and philosophy classes. Oh plus his Asdan in animal care and group singing, and book club.

He cooks, and knows how to sort himself out for activities, negotiate with adults, happily sticks up for friends and acquaintances if the need arises.

Lazy parents aren't going to home ed their kids. It would be souch easier to send their kids to school and not have to
A..have them home all day every day
B. Plan and provide and education
C. Write reports on their progress for the LA

If you really are a lazy parent you send your kids to school that is far easier option

Right so it's the victims fault for not putting a stop to it straight away got it

Additionally, it doesn't matter how well qualified or knowledgeable that teacher is if the systems in place don't allow them to teach because they are constantly having to manage the needs and behaviour of 30 children. Imagine you have 2 very disruptive pupils in your class. These 2 are then able to influence another 5 or 6. Let's say these 2 children work their way through the consequences system in the first 15-20 minutes. During this time they will each have disrupted the lesson in one way or another at least 4 times. That's 8 disruptions. Probably more, as the teacher tried their hardest to keep them in the lesson and learning. During that time, the teacher is expected to have put into place interventions to support these children and try to avoid them needing to leave the room. So the teacher is focussed more on these two children than on anyone else. Let's then say that the influenced 5-6 children also join in with lesson disruption, but don't push it as far as being asked to leave. So let's say they each disrupt 3 times but then stop to avoid a detention. That's a further 15-18 disruptions, plus the original 8, so we are on a minimum of 23 disruptions. The teacher is doing their best but these kids know how much they can get away with.

Let's then say that at the point of the fourth disruption for the original 2, one of thesr children then refuses to leave the room and go to another teacher as per the sanctions hierarchy. The teacher is then forced to place a callout for a senior leader. This involves sending a trustworthy child out of the room to reception to ask for the fallout, meaning that child is losing learning time. The on call SLT member takes 10-15 minutes to appear because they are busy dealing with similar issues in other classrooms and truanting children hiding in toilets, maybe smoking or vaping, possibly drug dealing. During that 15 minutes the child in question now has nothing to lose and continues to do their best to challenge the teacher's authority and disrupt the lesson repeatedly and loudly. Also during this time, one of the truanting children from the toilet who has overheard from the SLT radio that there is an issue in Room 4 and has run from the toilets to join in the fun repeatedly opens the classroom door and shouts into the room.

Doesn't matter if the teacher is a world-leading expert with several PhDs in their subject area. They can't teach effectively in those conditions and that is NOT because they are a poor teacher with no classroom control. It's because some kids don't care and lack of respect is rife in UK secondary schools.

The above scenario isn't unusual in secondary schools in this country. It's regular and routine. I am confident, having taught and home educated, that I can provide a better quality education for my child through a combination of my own facilitation and using other resources / facilities, than they can currently get in many UK schools.

And education authority - I have to give them kudos for their imaginative and inclusive policies which faced huge opposition.

Our family coped because we were able to provide the challenge and input for our children (and their friends) that primary school would not. This is one of the reasons why I believe that education is valuable, even when it is not leading to a well paid job - I was a SAHP in those days, wasting my education in the eyes of some, but that is not how I (or DH) see it. Our children benefited.

But that's assuming that you are actually doing steps b and c. If all home education was like posters are describing their own being on this thread then that would be one thing. But it isn't. I personally know three separate families who withdrew their children and none of them are actually educating them.

But that is less a problem with home-schooling and more a problem with the system of oversight - a bit like saying chicken has no nutritional value because you know people who don't actually eat it and they have nutritional deficiencies.

I just think it is important to distinguish between the method of teaching and the sorts of checks we might need in place to ensure it is being delivered.

Sure, but my experience is that many many people who home educate, including those who do so very responsibly - and this thread bears this out - are against there being any oversight that they see as intrusive, which often means at all. One of the three families I mentioned deregistered their children so that they could travel for about half the year (which they consider to be 'more education than any school could offer' in and of itself), which would realistically be pretty challenging for any oversight system.

There are children in schools not being educated no one seems to care that these kids aren't getting an education.
Who decides which children have needs enough. Because the LA only care about avoiding funding adequate education and will gaslight and ignore the children in school who need support to access education.

The irony being our LA failed their duty to safeguard and provide an education for our child for over 7 years before we gave up fighting the system and home educated. I am expected to provide education of an education to the same LA that continuously failed to provide for years.

The thing you’re missing is that there are feckless parents in all walks of life. Always was and always will be. You can’t mitigate for all of those people by increasing regulation on what tiny sector of society. Because at the end of the day home ed kids still only make up 2-3% of all school age children in the UK.

There are useless parents who send their kids to school. They don’t prioritise education, the don’t do their homework with them and even many who actively neglect them (I’m an ex primary teacher). Many of those kids leave school without the basic level of education. I think it’s about 33% that don’t pass maths or English at age 16. School is not the way to guarantee a good education. And who gets to decide what a ‘good education’ is anyway. Perhaps those ‘farm children’ are better off out of school. Farmers are essential to our society and maybe the best education those kids can get is learning the work of their parents? I don’t know all the answers but I do know that we have become so school-centric as a society that many of you believe it’s the only way to a ‘successful’ life.

Then the current process of report to LA not being done would flag Up that education isn't being provided and the LA can use the current legal owners to put the child/children back into education with a court order.

Parents have to provide a report if home education or the will be issues a legal order to return to school

No we are against undue oversight, when the oversight in place now is sufficient.
We are against overbearing people with inadequate training, inadequate understanding of home ed, trauma and SEN making unfair judgements and holding undue power to issue orders to return to school based on their own narrow view of education.
I am against my child being forced back into an environment that nearly killed them by someone who thinks they no better but in actual fact has no clue what the system is doing to many ND young people

Tutoring is rarely to make up for short comings, it’s additional support to maximise chances. If this is how your friend sees her role then perhaps she’s in the wrong job!
I have done tutoring and I would be seeing red flags and would probably decline if a parent approached me and blamed everything on a child’s teachers!

Do you ask people in their 20s about where they were home educated?! I don’t think anyone has particularly asked my 2 who are in their 20s.

Hundreds through my current job, my previous job as an teacher and tutoring school refusers. I also know of former classmates of my own DC who were home educated during secondary school. Sadly, I don’t know of any who have the social skills and resilience to hold down a job or even to function in society really. I know schools are failing these children, I witnessed that first hand but so are their parents in most cases. There has to be a better solution. I don’t think parents are doing enough to change the system, all I see is teacher bashing when in reality that isn’t the issue. It’s the lack of funding, failures to address behaviours and inadequate provision at the root of all the problems in schools. Parents need to direct their anger in the right place, towards the government!

What a strange question! I don’t ask them I already know.

Yes that is true about oversight in that circumstance.

I think the travel thing, though, needs consideration of a couple of things: firstly what is meant by "travel" and secondly, what is meant by "education."

When I was a girl at an independent, our head actually did ask that parents took us if they travelled, as it was seen to be educational beyond what the school could provide. However, that depends a bit on whether it is a Butlins type holiday (not educational), or lying on the beach in the Maldives which is only marginally better. Going with your parent on a business trip while they go to meetings and you order room service and watch Netflix and use the hotel pool is not educational. But visiting the Roman forum, or spending six months travelling round Italy or visiting tea plantations in India etc is, arguably, educational, especially when enriched by relevant reading around the places you visit, and depending on your answer to the next point.

Which is ...

I think we have developed quite a narrow view of what education actually means. The GCSE syllabus is rigid, superficial and geared more towards an ultimate end-goal of ranking children with grades up to 9 than it is with what I would call true education. It rewards rote learning and format following rather than real intelligence. It is stiff and narrow in terms of the types of interpretation candidates can bring, even in subjects like English.

Travel is unlikely to get you further ahead in the highly prescriptive format that you need to follow to answer questions on the definition of respiration according to GCSE guidelines, that is true. But is that REALLY what we believe a rich education is?

Ultimately you decide. But you take on a huge responsibility if you decide on EHE.

I don’t see anyone on this thread excusing LAs that fail children. That doesn’t lessen the responsibilities of parents who choose EHE.

@FigTreeInEurope , @whyohwhy246 isn’t a teacher though despite her claim to having 20 years in education. I have asked her in what capacity she was involved in education but as yet I have not seen a response. On top of her dubious education credentials she appears to be painfully ignorant on the subject of home education. Just wonderful!

Yes we currently have the right to decide.

It is now our responsibility and our child now gets far more education and isn't suicidal so I'm grateful we got to decide.

Those of us in that situation are being responsible.
There are thread on here every week having a pop at home ed. Parent blaming for children not in school. Very few people really understand why schools are the issue and people aren't supportive of the school problems.