AIBU to offer an AMA as a home-schooled adult?

[Giraffapuses]

Following the publication of this article I've noticed a lot of interest in home schooling so I thought an AMA with a home-schooled adult in the wild might be interesting.

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/home-schooling-uk-inspector-gx982bgd6

Unfortunately can't read the article as don't subscribe. Interested to know what it says.

Interesting AMA as we tend to hear more from home schooling parents than dc

Did you get any formal qualifications from your home schooling?

Did you have appropriate boundaries set as a child?

Can you speculate how (if at all) different your life would be if you had gone to school? Better, worse, the same?

Are you happy with your parents decision?

Would you or are you home schooling your own children? Why or why not?

It essentially says that the quality of education provided to home-schooled children is often poor and there should be more government supervision. The article is in general not very balanced (e.g. does not examine the quality of school for nurodivergent people etc). It also does not provide any counter-perspective (for example from home-schoolers).

YABU to do it here, there’s a dedicated AMA board somewhere.

Was it your choice?
Did you ever try school?

I completed the first year of an Open University degree when I was 15/16 which was equivalent to the requisite number of UCAS credits to go to university. At university I studied politics and philosophy.

I feel on reflection the boundaries were in general appropriate. I had a bed time, the usual rules about being polite, being kind to others. Where it differed was in that my learning was mostly self directed. Some days it was lego all day. Some days it was Shakespeare; this is obviously normally what freaks people out. 'What if it's all lego and too little Shakespeare and you turn out a moron??'. But this isn't really how it works. Long term studies (though, small and hard to generalise), typically find home schooled kids do well academically and in career.

But presumably all those studies can only interview those they have access to and it sounds like access is a huge issue.

I also couldn’t access the article so here’s an AI summary.

The article describes a local authority inspector responsible for monitoring about 700 home‑educated children and argues that a worrying proportion are receiving an education that is clearly inadequate or unsafe.[1]

Short résumé of the article

• The author explains that the number of children being home‑educated has risen sharply in their area, often for reasons such as anxiety, bullying, special needs, or parental distrust of schools.[1]
• During home visits, the inspector finds huge variation: a minority of families provide rich, structured learning, but many others offer only minimal work, poor materials, or no clear plan at all.[1]
• They stress that councils have limited powers: parents are not required to follow the national curriculum, there is no automatic right of entry to the home, and children can effectively disappear from oversight once deregistered from school.[1]
• The author calls for stronger national regulation and a compulsory register of home‑educated children so that authorities can check more reliably whether young people are safe and actually learning.[1]

What is said to be “alarming”

• Some children have almost no structured learning: no timetable, no proper supervision, and sometimes just a single textbook or worksheet for all subjects.[1]
• Others spend most of the day on phones or social media, essentially “doomscrolling” rather than studying, with parents assuming that online content is enough education.[1]
• The inspector frequently meets teenagers who are years behind in literacy and numeracy, with little chance of getting basic qualifications because there is no plan for GCSEs or exams.[1]
• Vulnerable children, including those with special educational needs or previous safeguarding concerns, can be removed from school and then become almost invisible to services, raising serious worries about both welfare and education.[1]
• Overall, the author finds it alarming that the system relies so heavily on parental goodwill, with weak legal powers and patchy monitoring, while the number of home‑educated children continues to rise.[1]

Sources
[1] It’s my job to check on 700 home-school pupils. What I see is alarming https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/home-schooling-uk-inspector-gx982bgd6

I wonder what proportion of those 700 families would say they are home educating by choice? In my work I meet hundreds of families who are left with no choice through school based trauma/refusal and inadequate alternative provision from SEN services/councils.

We are home educating.
I very much agree that very many children are receiving a poor standard of education at home, it depends on the parents.

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 make 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.

We don't do a version of school at home, but would like DC to work towards some qualifications later as a gateway to other opportunities.

I have met some families, particularly with SEN children who would have gladly sent their children to school if only the state would provide a decent setting and adjust to their needs. It's very sad that some families feel forced into home education, it is hard enough when you want to never mind when you feel your hand is forced.

@Giraffapuseshonestly it sounds like a prison - holding on to children for too long, not letting them go out there and build their own relationships with adults outside the home (teachers etc).

Many homeschooling parents are not actually teachers by background. Why do they think that they’re automatically better placed than qualified teachers? Do I think that the teachers love my child as much as I do? No of course not. But many of them are ambitious people who know so much about child psychology and milestones etc. in the same way that I wm
ambitious with my
own job and I have a boss to impress like they do which keeps their performance high. Who am I to say that I am better than them?

Aren’t you worried that later on what you end up with is not much by way of savings for the children who may need things when they’re older (driving lessons their first car, help with a deposit for a flat) as you decided to play teacher and in the end they feel like you kept them away from a special experience of going to school?

I think, unfortunately this does not consider that schools are increasingly rigid and unsuitable for a number of children who might have special needs or mental health issues. My child’s secondary school is far more inflexible and rules based than the secondary that I attended in the 90s, which was more relaxed but very much the norm for that time. The lack of flexibility over uniforms and punitive approached to things like forgetting pens/pencils etc or generally being disorganized is always going to count against children with things like ADHD or sensory sensitivity. There aren’t enough special schools, so the government continues to insist that all the square pegs must go through the round hole. Is it then honestly a surprise when we end up with far more children being Home educated.

One more tweet from me then I will be quiet ;)

I am educated (master degree level) and I don’t think I can decide to be a teacher at the drop of a hat. I think homeschooling parents thinking that they can wake up one day and be a teacher sort of insults the profession when many teachers train and then practice tor years.

I think some parents have an inflated sense of their own importance in their children’s lives. I am far from a perfect inspiration and I want my kids to go to school and meet the teacher who moved to the uk from Australia, and the other teacher who grew up in a different part of London and the children who we may never have otherwise crossed paths with.

To clarify I absolutely agree if it is a special needs situation that’s entirely different.

Do you mean elective home education? Or are you actually talking about home schooling?

It's incredibly hard to speculate on how my whole life would have turned out if I had gone to school. I am satisfied by my life today. Had I gone to school, I would have had a very different intellectual background. I did not follow the coriculumn.

I am overall happy with my parents decision.

I would home school. My husband would not. We argue over it a lot! We settled on an alternative school (e.g. a Stiner school). But luckily we don't have to make that decision for a while.

It was my parent's choice when I was small and too young to make that kind of choice. As I got older it was discussed frequently. It felt like my choice but I guess there was an element of pleasing my parents that went into my decision to remain home schooled.

I tried school several times and hated it.

This was not my experience. Talking specifically of forming relationships with adults outside the home, I developed relationships with many adults who helped me learn about my interests on a deeper level. This was actually an immense benefit of home schooling.

Home schooling is not analogous to a prison. The perception that home schooling means being stuck at home is false. It's more not being stuck at school (which incidentally are more analogous to prison comparably).

You are of course correct that most home schooling families are not teachers.

However, there are a very large number of home-educated children who perform at a high standard academically and go on to lead successful lives. So, it's possible to be educated outside of the school system when you neither parent is a teacher. Equally, there are a vast, vast number of children in school who do not leave with a good education.

Clearly something more than 'access to a qualified teacher' is at play in recieving a good education. This is obviously a complex academic debate that I have a view on but is a bit too long to type out on a phone keyboard!

Thanks, all good points. I constantly feel a sense of obligation to provide for my children financially - genuinely, how are you comfortable not focusing on that? Do you think that it is not your role to work hard enough outside the home so that they can have things that they need in the future

especially with cost of living going up

You're right home schooling could be interpreted as making a mockery of the teaching profession. If children perform perfectly fine when home schooled, why is teacher training even necessary? But I think this argument is too reductive. Perhaps there is value in both. Perhaps teachers do have some frameworks and skills which could help parents, and perhaps it is worth asking the question why do so many people in conventional education get so little from it whilst their peers removed from school often benefit so deeply?