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 had social phobia and extreme anxiety as a teenager. I started refusing to go to school. I particularly hated the large class sizes and being quite bright the teachers would ask me questions in front of the class. I didn't realise at the time that I had ASD. I ended up in care where the small group settings suited me much better. Not ideal to be removed from my family but honestly, I preferred it to going to school. I was bullied at school, too. They can be brutal places.

And everyone in real life is going to make those allowances for your kids I assume...

The education system in the UK is utterly shattered so I don’t blame them. It’s designed to accommodate neurotypical children who can self-regulate and cope with sitting Dow listening to an adult ramble on for hours. Even then, it fails many of them by being so, well, Victorian. The curriculum is horribly outdated and needs major reform. Gove destroyed swathes of the system with his pathetic reforms - fronted adverbials anyone?

I’d homeschool if I could but I need to work.

Resilience is not learned through oppression. You want kids to learn how to survive in the adult world - try punching someone in the nose now and see where it gets you.

When our only state option was a failing school that even Ofsted said wasn't safe, where bullying was rife, sexual assault was not rare and the SLT did nothing, I knew exactly how those parents feel.

We were lucky, managed to find an independent that gave ds a scholarship. But sending my child somewhere I knew violence and disruption were common, was never going to happen. I'd have spent the next 40 years feeling I'd failed him.

If necessary I'd have sold the house.

i think YANBU @whyohwhy246

I hear those here saying the school can’t meet their child’s needs- ok but what about the very long term? if you homeschool how do you teach resilience - even children who have SEND need to learn resilience surely. I can’t help but think it’s a bit short term thinking but I don’t know what the solution is. I suppose ideally is mainstream school with support- that should be the goal surely

I think it’s too complicated to give a general answer.

Im sure home schooling works well for some children. In some cases, it might be a better option than school, it some cases a less good option that still works ok. In other cases it might be a disaster.

It all depends on the personality and characteristics of the child, the ability of the parents to homeschool (and online course is never going to go the whole way) and what alternatives are available.

It can of course be utterly horrific in cases where it’s used as a cover for abuse, and I’m not by any means sure that checks are sufficiently rigorous.

What allowances are you talking about?

No one has made allowances! I have - and they can - simply choose jobs and relationships and situations that are right for them. Choices. No allowances needed.

It's worked very well for me, I have always enjoyed my jobs!

Schools should focus more on teaching, like they are supposed to, and less on what shoes a pupil is wearing if they have lip gloss on,
Ridiculous rules are making schools very unpleasant places to be.

Well obviously I wouldn't do it now. But I was 12 then and fannying around making excuses and pleading with bullies simply doesn't work. Bullies pick on weakness.( Real or perceived ) .

Do your children ONLY learn resilience in school? Is their life outside of school idyllic and problem-free?

I work for a large MAT with a lot of secondary schools in it. We have noticed the trend in people deregistering to homeschool increased since covid for a few years in a row but that had really begun to level off /reduce.

We also know anxious asd children are being de-registered as there is a limit to what a large mainstream can do.

But there is also an increase in people who cant get on board with the attendance criteria for all sorts of reasons - often send but also many other social reason. I think the government's attendance push is actually driving people struggling out of school completely. Not all of these parents are equipped to homeschool in all honesty but the stress of red letters, meetings, threats of fines just makes them go well homr school as its cant cope..

I am pro homeschool when its a choice made for positive reasons not parents feeling they have no choice, all with different capacity to make it work.

So, you wouldn't do it now? So what's your point exactly?

But the general public won't make" allowance" for the " anxious" person on the train or tolerate meltdowns for example.

Elective Home Education is hugely complex.

I can easily believe PP whose DS was home educated and is now thriving at UCL. One of the most eminent professors at my UG university home educated his DC - in reality, his DW did - and they all went on to very productive lives, one in his DF’s field.

However. Anxiety amongst YP is through the roof, as reflected in their MH and other benefit claims. There are notable consequences in Higher Education. For every home educated student who is a model of intellectual curiosity, independent thinking and other intellectual virtues, there are several completely unable to cope with external demands. This isn’t just my view. The major broadsheets and Higher Ed periodicals across the western world publish periodic opinion pieces from academics on the topic - there was one in the NY Times not long ago and the Comments strongly supported it.

There are reasons of varying legitimacy to choose home education. It is very difficult to know where to draw the line. Unfortunately it seems clear that doing EHE right is much harder than it looks.

Thank you, @AnneLovesGilbert , for the link to an excellent article.

What you said was: Teenagers need to learn that life is hard and school will throw challenges at them.

For many people life isn’t hard and why should school ‘throw challenges’ rather than educate and support? Academic challenge is fine but that doesn’t have to be stressful or “thrown”.

@whyohwhy246 you aren't a teacher, you have said that. Are you an activist (not a paid activist obviously as I wouldn't want you to think I am troll hunting, I am most certainly not, I am sure you are very genuine) who wants to out-law homeschooling other than for those with medical problems? And if so, what other issues are close to your heart? Do you support the report led by Becky Francis?

The harassment around attendance for sick children probably doesn’t help. My SIL was harassed daily when her child had the chicken pox (99% attendance previously).

I assume a lot of parents want to take back control of their own children, especially when our literacy and numeracy rates are plummeting. Schools have become exceptionally invasive including pushing ideologies that they should steer clear of.

I did it as it stopped the bullying immediately. Showed I wasn't some weakling posh kid.

I've never been bullied in adult life so no need to do it now lol

This. It's so simple. I have a neorudivergent kid and know a lot of people with neurodivergent children. Some go to private school and some are homeschooled, and the determiner is generally how much the mum earns. Whether paying cost of fees while keeping the mum's income works out better than losing the income as mum becomes home ed teacher (but no fees). The state school system is totally failing the senbetweeners.

People can EHE well or poorly. It suits some DC and not others. Just like some schools are good and some are poor. Just like some DC suit school and for others it is inappropriate.

I have 2 DC who don’t attend school. Although we don’t EHE. The judgement from those who think you can only learn in a school or that forcing DC to attend school solves everything even though it isn’t appropriate applies the same.

@lifeturnsonadime I love reading about DS’s success. A perfect example of how the right support makes a world of difference.

Personally I think the only option will be to accept that the movement cannot be controlled and to regulate it. But that will be complicated and expensive. Realistically LAs cannot keep tabs on every child out of school.

Have you set foot in a state school recently?

I plan on home schooling and have known I would even before I had children.

Why don't you worry about your own family and children, and let other people do what's right for theirs?

Where did I say I was anxious? Where in all of this have I said I was anxious, needed accommodations, couldn't cope?

I've said I have actively chosen to not take roles in busy environments - to illustrate point that no child 'needs' to be thrown into them as that's their only option in life

Maybe life isn't hard enough for some hence why they fall to pieces or get overstressed at a very minor thing