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?

@MyTriviaI wouldn’t dream of moaning about anyone receiving PIP. You know nothing about me.

my daughter goes to the toilet to vape and take selfies with her mates, that’s a huge part of why they’re not allowed free reign

I’m not sure if you have kids this age but my daughter and all of her friends in various different schools still have single sex toilets

There's a book on the US best seller lists about being homeschooled:

https://www.theguardian.com/education/ng-interactive/2026/jan/19/homeschooled-memoir-excerpt

@whyohwhy246 We home edded our 2. One until secondary and the other right the way through. Dp and I are not arrogant and entitled. You sound rather aggressive.

I am now hiding this thread as they tend to become a bunfight.

Kids may spend 6/7 hours per day in school, but they're not spending 6/7 hours per day actually being taught. Probably half the day is spent doing other things, moving between lessons, breaks, registration, assemblies waiting for teachers, waiting for disruption to be stopped, reading during lessons with cover teachers, old fashioned tests, etc.

3-4 hours of actual "lessons/teaching" can be done in evenings and at weekends if they can't be done during the day, but they could also be done mornings or afternoons. So it is feasible to "home school" alongside both parents (or single parent) working. Sporting activities can be done at weekends or evenings.

So as long as the child is "supervised" during the day, the actual teaching could be at other times. "Supervising" depends on age etc and could be via grandparents or an older teenager could look after themselves and could probably teach themselves without a parent standing over them.

We need to move away from the idea that "teaching" has to be by someone standing in front of you telling you stuff. A lot of the modern online teaching and modern tech available is far superior to the old fashioned "teacher in front of you" kind of teaching of a few decades ago.

I know 3 people who have taken their children out of school, and none of them took the decision lightly. Their children were all neurodiverse and the school model as it is, was in no way designed for their children to thrive. They're all much happier now and homeschooling going well for them.

I communicate all day with people all over the world. I have a very good job and am well-paid. I have a wide group of friends and colleagues, a great network, hobbies, sports etc. I still wouldn't choose to be in a busy, overwhelming environment day in day out, so I don't.

I'm an adult and can choose the things that suits me best - why should kids have to run the gauntlet just to say they've done it? Adult life is NOT a reflection of school!

You must be so proud

There has been a thread about sen children costing the tax payer to much money, there has been a thread about young people not wanting to get a job, and how there practically lazy and its the parent fault (which yes there probably is some,but a lot of them young people have been failed by the systerm).
And now there is a thread about parents homeschooling.
No-one can actually win, there is always somebody on here to pass judgement ( with no actual knowledge of sen,homeschooling or young people who can not get jobs).

But don't worry, the government are going to make it harder for parents to homeschool and make it harder for children to get support at school.
Which in turn will make it harder for these children to secure jobs and then people can come on mumsnet and moan some more.

@FryingPam Did you teach your children to walk, or to talk?

Or did you create an environment in which they were safe to learn (ie. clear floors, responding to them)

Humans have always learnt whatever they need to - but not always in school. They have often learnt from communities, from parents and family members, from peers and from their own experimentation.

I would argue that the internet allows a wealth of learning for someone who wants to learn.

I am not sure that school creates people who believe they can learn whatever they need to - I think sometimes it makes passive recipients of knowledge who expect the learning to be packaged into something easy to swallow.

I think true learning is harder, takes longer and is best created through intrinsic motivation.

So are you capable of delivering high school education? Can you afford for one parent to not be earning anything, so you can do this five days a week all day? As a teacher my fear is people think they can just get it all "online". Can you explain chemical reactions, how current flows, how cells divide, quadratic equations? I can explain all these things but I absolutely cannot teach a child how to analyse a poem to the standard required for a gcse qualification or write an essay. Watching an online "tutorial" is nowhere near the same as being taught by a teacher who knows you and is having a conversation wth you, responding to your progress and addressing your misconceptions.

I think you're romanticising the school experience a bit. I don't know anyone who looks back and thinks school was the best days of their life.

Also, no-one owes a teacher anything just because they trained in something. It's like saying that if you have good basic DIY skills and can sort something out in your own home, that you're insulting a plumber, carpenter etc by not employing them.

My social anxiety came from being abused/bullied at school as a teenager in the 80s, long before screens!

Absolutely. What you can cover, 1:1, sitting at the kitchen table while making tonight’s dinner, in half an hour, can take weeks in a school environment (from my experience)

I totally agree with this.

The system is failing young people and it must be soul destroying for teachers who want to impart valuable knowledge to their students but have their hands tied by a rigid curriculum.

As an aside, don't start me on the lack of basic grammar skills of some/many teachers: the incorrect use of "I" and "me" is just one area that grinds my gears.

Just to add, I did a full career in the military with multiple operational deployments. So you could say I've worked in a lot of pressurised situations. I'm not a snowflake in any sense and probably much more on the side of 'just get on with it' attitude.

I have never come across a situation where anyone thought that resilience in the workplace was built by early experiences of bullying. Resilience in tough situations is built on a bedrock of confidence in your own abilities which comes from self esteem. Bullying erodes self esteem.

Kids who joined up after bullying had to be taught through basic training to believe in themselves again. We worked hard to build them back up and make them believe that they were capable. The time we spent trying to help kids who'd been through awful school experiences was significant.

For a professional educator to hold the view that somehow resilience is built by surviving bullying is very troubling and is probably indicative of how broken the system is.

Schools and their performance indicators and PC gone mad are also to blame.

I see many children from chaotic backgrounds - often a single parent with depression/mental health issues - whose school attendance is poor. This is often because the parent likes them to be at home for company or because they are worried about leaving the parent alone. Schools - knowing the child will not get 5 decent GCSEs - threaten the parent with legal action for failing to ensure attendance and simultaneously offer the option of home ed. Parents leap on the latter while schools breathe a huge sigh of relief that they have managed to off roll another problem.

There are others, usually girls, who are kept at home to help with younger siblings and to keep them away from boys. “Cultural” reasons play a role here and social workers are frightened to say anything.

None of these children are receiving any kind of meaningful education. For the odd one who morphs into a creative genius there are 100s who end up forgetting how to get up in the morning and spending their lives in aimless internet activities or skivvying for their parents.

We should not be tolerating this.

We are home educating.

I very much agree that there are many people choosing home education just because they are anti establishment and I am concerned for their children (some of the parents have a pretty poor level of literacy and can't articulate themselves very well).

There are also a lot of people for whom home education was a first choice (our family included). We are actually making an effort to connect with other families who have chosen to home educate to offer their children a personalised learning experience, not just to stick two fingers up to society. It is a sacrifice in terms of earning potential, DH and I both reduced hours at work. We each have different academic strengths and also open to outsourcing as needed or being part of a co-op with other parents. DC have very many opportunities to socialise.

Just like you know nothing about the parents home educating their children- their skills, their abilities, their financial set up, their morals, what type of learner the child is.

I have a feeling you work in a nice area with fairly nice families. The reality is my child is learning a lot of rude behaviour at school as well as being mistreated daily by his peers. Children can be so cruel and not all schools supervise and educate adequately.
If the school staff’s job these days is to crowd manage, why do I need to leave my little human lost in that crowd if I can give him a customised 1-2-1 in a peaceful environment instead.

ETA re teachers spending years to learn their craft - don’t you find it insulting that often it’s TAs (no degree requirement) who often end up delivering a lesson at school? Clearly, following some Kapow slides on a screen is all that is seen as appropriate pedagogy in our current schools.

A teacher who thinks it's fine and character-building for children to be bullied.

I'm hoping you're just here to stir, OP, but no I don't think it's the least bit arrogant of parents to think they can do better than a teacher who dooesn't see bullying as a problem. Educating one child is not the same skill as educating 30 at once. I absolutely value teachers' professional skills but if they are happy for my child to be repeatedly hurt, or to be so distressed they self harm or even attempt to take their own life, then we will have to forego their professional skills and make do.

There are plenty of jobs where you don't have to be squeezed onto a small site with 1500 other people, where you can go to the loo when you like and there are locks on the cubicle doors, where no one hurts you or tells you to go kill yourself, where you don't have to wear a polyester blazer and tie or change for PE with 30 girls criticising your body or stealing your clothes for fun. None of that is good or necessary preparation for real life.

"walking to school together, having your first crush, a detention, school trips". My child is either not interested or is actively scared of all of them.

The pupils I know who are home educated were pupils with MH issues / autism who the school did not support and the parents has to remove the child completely so they were fined by the education authority. Fortunately Miss Stubborn here stood my ground, got a GP note for my child (that was an epic battle and a half) and my child missed 18 months of school in year 10 and 11 but school got their act together so they did pass GCSEs. I was never even threatened with a fine.

Aghh, edit to "the parents had to remove the child completely so they were NOT fined "

Nope, I only know one family who home schools (like I actually know know them) and they have been forever. They are very hippy dippy anti-establishment sorts but the dad is an heir to the family pile (literally titled aristocracy). From what I can tell from their instagram, they mostly seem to go on a lot of term time luxury holidays (recently back from a month at a resort in the Caribbean) interspersed with drum circles and content creation. 🙄 They are always stressed about money.

There a lot of disgruntled parents at both my dc’s schools, but no home schooling. Most of the disgruntlement seems to be parents angry because their little darlings keep being expelled for swearing at teachers or bringing knives to school. 🙄