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?

so now, if your child is in a special school (not mainstream) you need the councils permission to electively home educate.

in mainstream you can just send a letter and deregister them unless the council has a school attendance order which is basically a legal document stating that your child must attend school.

https://www.gov.uk/home-education

these are used in cases where the parents are clearly not educating their child.

I can’t find any data on their use (they have existed since 1996).

It’s interesting that you state disruption as a reason why your DC didn’t like school. As a former teacher I totally agree with you that this is a major issue. However, others are saying that schools are too strict and that schools haven’t moved with the times. Part of the reason that many teachers are leaving is the awful behaviour, complete lack of consequences and the disruption this causes to the students who actually want to learn.

I far more worried about the children registered to schools who are not safeguarded and not recieving an education

But no one wants to stick up for them or the families at absolute breaking point trying to get their child supported

It's always easier to target the minority and blame it all on home education than deal with the actual issues

What made you decide to give up home schooling for year 4?

TBH I think if anything what that proves is the inherent issue with schools is they simply do not (cannot) cater to individual children's needs. You've got a class full of 30 kids, all of whom will respond to different things. That's not the fault of teachers who physically can't cater to all 30 kids individually, but it is why many of us are choosing a different way.

My son found school strict and scary, hated teachers that shouted at the whole class, but even though this was happening it made no difference at all to the badly behaved children. So he felt penalised despite being compliant.

We'd talked about it a lot and he decided he wanted to try it, so he did.

He was 8/9 years old at that point? Out of interest… what was his reasoning for wanting to stop home Ed?

Think he was attracted to it by all the Enid Blytons he was reading at that point, to be honest!

So not about school (because EB isn’t about school) more about friends and getting up to mischief and of course having fun

I think you'll find Enid Blyton wrote multiple school stories. He was reading all the Malory Towers books at the time.

Regardless of the child's reasoning - school obviously didn't live up to his expectations as he is now home educating again

About the girls boarding school? oh yes I remember them! And he read about all their mischief and fun and he thought “I want a bit of that!” - good on him for giving it a go.

Presumably you told him a girls boarding school in the 1940s wasn’t remotely reflective of a state day mixed school in the 21st century! 😆

I meant reasoning for wanting to go to school
which is relevant to the discussion because it would indicate what he felt he was missing by not going.

He gave it a good go and it wasn’t for him.

Of course!

He's super academic and I think the pace of most of the work was just too slow for him apart from anything else. But he did hugely struggle with other kids messing about and not doing as they were told, and then subsequently the teachers shouting.

So you think children who want to give home ed a go because they feel they are missing something so all have the opportunity to try home ed too right?

Huh?
I don’t understand your point

In any event, people can do whatever the heck they like with their own kids. Mine are happy and thriving and tbh - that is genuinely all I care about.

I am simply curious about the detail around behind he schooling

Also as an aside I was genuinely shocked by the poor standard of written English displayed by the teachers at my son's school.

I wonder how many who are happy at school decide they want to jack it in and try home education.

Not a barbed question, a genuine question!

Your child’s school sounds… pants!

Some do. But what I tend to mostly hear about is children not happy at school who want to try home ed but parents not open to it.
To be fair the children aren't terribly unhappy in school (just not generally happy) but they just want to try home ed.

I feel that in general home educating families are more likely to be open to a child led change than school families.

Not open to it

or more likely can’t jack in jobs to home educate them or feel that they possibly have the skills to home educate

What I don't understand is how parents can afford to home school. Both parents need to work these days in most families. Also I teach English GCSE for a living but could no way teach Maths. How do parents teach their children to a competent level in all subjects?

Both my husband and I work flexible hours and both of us WFH. He works full time, but for an American company so he tends to work afternoons to evenings and I work 3 days a week but spread out across the week so I only work mornings, so we tag team.

And we absolutely don't teach him every single subject, that would be impossible. He has tutors in the subjects we can't teach (namely the sciences at the moment). I cover English, History, languages and the arts and my husband does Maths, Geography and techy things. As he gets older depending which GCSEs he wants to do he'll have more tutors.

Neurodiversity runs in families.

Rated Ofsted outstanding!

And doesn't sound very different to what I hear from my friends with children who do attend school. Maybe private schools are different, I don't know.