To wonder how people who homeschool acquire the knowledge to do so?

[Homeschooll]

Just as the title really. I don’t have strong feelings on homeschooling, I don’t think it would be my choice mainly as I have little patience and I don’t feel I know enough about science or maths.

If you do it how do you know what you’re doing is right? What about the pastoral side? How do you make sure there’s a routine?

Just interested really. I’ve found more and more people are doing it.

How do home educating families manage financially? So many families can only keep their heads above water by both parents working (or the only available parent working obvs in the case of single parent families). I can't see how you can successfully HE a child of any age if you're working to keep the roof over your family's collective heads.

So is HE only really an option for those families who are wealthy enough not to need both parents working, plus those who are already not working and on benefits where you don't have to prove you're looking for work?

This is a genuine q as it's something that puzzles me.

You know that Einstein was an exception right? He’s not a typical example. You’ll always get a few geniuses amongst the masses of uneducated/badly educated.

ok fair point, but you can understand my point

It’s definitely a privilege! Something that many fervent home educators fail to recognise when they go on their rants about how awful school is for all children.

Not really as you were using Einstein as an example to try and counter pp’s point that there could be trouble down the road for future generations of badly home-educated kids.

in that case i would agree and counter with the books by john gatto taylor and also if mainstream schooling was so great then why are all the students not perfect ? people are omg at homeschooling education methods etc yet mainstream is doing so much better etc

I was simply pointing out the irrelevance of your Einstein argument to that particular point.

my bad, fair point

We don't have a car. We don't have a big house or go on fancy holidays. We don't buy a lot of stuff.

Answer enough?

There is no requirement for home educated children to sit 9/10 GCSEs. In fact, it's not compulsory to sit any at all. Also, there is no requirement for parents to "teach", by law, parents must facilitate learning by providing the required resources and opportunities for their children.

However, for those that do, they self-study, and sometimes also have a tutor. Many home educated children self-study. Home educated children are usually very good with self-directed learning giving them an easier adjustment into university than schooled children. This has been recognised on many occasions by uni lecturers.

There's no real need for 9/10 GCSEs as usually only English Language, Maths, and Sciences are required. Of course you will get some children who do more than 4, but it's not that common for HE children to do 10, as it simply isn't needed, and it's very costly.

My children do a mix of self-study and some online tutored lessons, with meetups with all of the HE students and the tutor for workshops.

Some do... Remember the Turpin case!

Use the term home education if you are in the UK, and you will find more sources and information. https://educationalfreedom.org.uk/find-your-local-group/

The curriculum is basically book taught. All the information is available. You just need to be able to read and impart the information.

There is a lot of admin, stats, meetings and reports and dealing with parents etc that takes up a lot of time and space which a home schooling parent would not have to deal with.

Most of what is taught in school can be taught in about 2-3 hours in a day, leaving the rest of the day free for useful things like teaching budgets, cooking, field trips.

Anyone with an average IQ can home school a child in their primary years. Yep. Fact. Yep, still a fact even though that enrages some of you 😅 Secondary education is trickier, but still very much possible with the resources available.

The big issue is the day to day behavioural stuff, kids being bored shitless being stuck home, not wanting to stick to a routine, mum slacking off and just staying in bed. It is the showing up and sticking to it that's hard, the information is not that hard to impart and it is all freely and easily available.

Many home schooling parents get together in groups with others to avoid the pitfalls of no socialising, to give them breaks and to make it more workable.

The UK education system is failing a lot of kids. If your kid is doing fine in school, great.

But it's entirely understandable that those who can do so choose this path for their individual children.

to be honest you would have to be dim not to be able to support a child through primary education but you do need to be dedicated

What a dreadful and derogatory thing to say.
I must have wasted my first class honours degree in education, my master’s degree, and my postgraduate qualification in management and change. After thirty seven years in primary education, including roles as a headteacher and senior education adviser for early years and primary, it seems I am little more than ‘dim’.

In answer to @Homeschooll To wonder how people who homeschool acquire the knowledge to do so?
I was going to say, after a whole career dedicated to developing the primary curriculum, which is broad and balanced, in ensuring prior learning is built on, that threads of knowledge are expanded, that adaptive teaching is based on observational assessment and that key characteristics of effective learning are developed, I don’t know how people homeschool either.

Oh, and the person who said you would have to be dim not to be able to support a child through primary?

They're right.

When talking about only the curriculum and imparting the knowledge in that curriculum - they're right. Average IQ people can definitely do this.

Homeschooling presents challenges. The knowledge base required is not one of them.

A friend of mine is homeschooling her grandson. She left school with no qualifications. But she is so invested in her grandsons education. She does 2-3hrs of school work with him 5-6 days a week. Despite her lack of education she has thoroughly researched and found lots of resources to help. She says she is learning so much herself too. Her grandsons is picking out topics that he wants to learn about- beyond things he would be taught in mainstream school. For example he is mixed race and so they have spend time learning about his ancestry and looking at history from multiple perspectives not just the British history narrative. He also has several tutors for various subjects. He is incredibly resourceful and invested in his own education too. He is very capable of researching on the internet things he doesn’t understand or wants more information on.

So it is perfectly possible to provide a very full and very rich education regardless of your own education background so longs as you are truly invested in the child’s education.

From the moment your child is born you naturally become their teacher. You figure it out. Teaching the school curriculum is no different from any of the other thousands of skills you teach your child during their lives. There is tons of resources available to help guide parents through the curriculum. There are few areas that are not covered repeatedly throughout their school years. And gaps are easier to find and fill in because you are dealing with the understanding of one child in front of you not 30!

I have a friend who homeschools. She left school without any GCSEs. Thankfully for her, she landed on her feet and married a man with family money and a title. Oooft, she cannot spell or use proper punctuation though. 🙈 Everytime she posts some rant on Instagram about how great home educating is, I think, oh man, the spelling! 🥴 I want to take my red pen to it. I think the pastoral care element is a huge bit that’s missing. We see that especially in the US where a lot of people ‘homeschool’ because they have extremist views or because abuse is happening and needs to be kept hidden.

That sounds a lot like school.

Books!

Sorry, but you definitely don't need to have many degrees to teach primary school kids phonics and basic Maths. In many countries kids start school at 7, so you definitely don't need any special skills to teach kids between the ages 4-7. I'm actually not a fan of home education, as I think it's largely completely unregulated, which is shocking. For any child with dedicated parents and tutors, there are many more sitting at home doing nothing or worse - being abused and no one knows about it. However, you definitely don't need to have First Class honours degrees to teach primary-aged kids.

There is no requirement to follow the national curriculum if you homeschooling. This means there is a huge variation in experience. There will be many people doing a good job and even using tutors or online programs to provide a broad curriculum but sadly there are also children out there just left to their own devices and not receiving and education. It needs more regulation.

My friends who homeschooled split it up between about 6 families. With each family doing 2 subjects for GCSE,. Either in stuff they were already specialist in, or they learnt it ahead of the kids. Most the kids came out with amazing grades at GCSE and Alevel. Most chose to do Alevels at colleges and most are at uni now.

This. DD2 is thriving at work in a restaurant, and is learning to drive and picking it all up at a pace I could only dream of. Anything practical I often have to be shown/do/practice several times whereas DD2 you just show her once and off she goes. She is also immensely likeable. How could school fail someone with so much potential so badly?

Replying to @Mauvish1 - We work opposite shifts. Tiring but it works. We budget / cut back on outgoings while making sure we still have what we need.

General comments- If my state schooling was so adequate, then I am adequately capable of teaching my children, surely?

I’m an ex-teacher, certainly none of my time spent in the classroom is helping me teach my kids. Not particularly tiger mum or earth mum, whoever said that earlier. We do ‘sit at the table’ work in a morning which at primary school level isn’t difficult to understand or prepare for. Then out at groups such as forest groups, sports groups, social groups, special trips out in an afternoon. We also choose themes of current interest and make sure it covers a broad range of curriculum content and academic/ life skills in that way.

It looks very different to school (no “no talking, you’re not here to socialise”, no 40 minute lunch time stood in a huge queue for social time, no wasted minutes waiting in queues / for quiet / for everyone to have equipment and be organised, lots more hands-on experience). While the structure of school works brilliantly for some children and that is great, for our family home educating is a joy and a privilege.

Well no because you might be talking about 4-6 kids. One parent maybe leading a concept and one or more others around to help as needed. In a room with most likely decent, non fluorescent light, no uncomfortable uniform, not freezing or boiling etc. Im a teacher by the way.