To disagree with home ed

[Freshton]

Unless in extreme cases (ie SEN, extreme mental health or other complex needs) or parent is qualified teacher, I fundamentally disagree with home ed.

It's insular and doesn't prepare kids for the real world.

I've seen first hand some shocking examples that I can't go into for confidentiality reasons but common thread was parents arrogantly assumed they had same skills as teachers with masters degrees. Reality was kids were really behind, had no proper structure or routine.

It's worrying that so many people see home ed as a viable lifestyle choice. I know school system not perfect at all but isolating children at home or in small home ed group echo chambers isn't healthy.

Agree.

I actually want to vote YABU.
I've known a lot of kids who were HE'd. At least for 12m, sometimes much longer. None of the kids I can think of had SEN. All grown up now.

I see drawbacks in how or what the kids experienced or learnt but they didn't turn out worse than School-ed kids. I am minded to predict that NONE of the HE kids will purposefully choose HE, though. One of them her own kids are nearly grown up & are conventional SchoolEd.

I decided that the supposed benefits of HE were exaggerated, specific drawbacks were under-valued, and their prejudice against school-ed wasnt' justified at all... so HE held no appeal to me. However, also want to say that none of the parents I knew who delivered HE were kooks, climate-change deniers, influencers on Instagram or unpleasant at all, really. One couple were creationists tbf. Their kids went to a creationist school from about age 10 maybe.

So I'm voting YABU. Extremists arent' representative of most HE.

Agree. I know of a woman home educating her four children, aged 5 to 13yrs, and she also had a 3 month old baby now. She is not a qualified teacher and I also know that she is out and about quite a bit during the day, without her children, for other reasons. There is no way she is delivering a quality education to them. I feel really sorry for her kids.

I’ve never home educated my children and I also spent ten years as a teacher. But I totally disagree with you. It’s a very fundamental building block of democracy that if you disagree with what the state wants to educate your child you have the right to withdraw them. Otherwise you can end up with situations like in Nazi Germany. Horrifying.

if you’re saying you think home ed should be banned, YABU.

YANBU to disagree with people’s decisions and actions about their DCs’ education and parenting.

There are a lot of problems with the mainstream education system and parents are free to take decisions for our DC.

In most instances there are pros and cons for the DC with all the education options.

Precocious readers do exist. My friend’s child was reading 5+ years material at 3yrs old, fluently. By the time she was in reception she was reading the first Harry Potter book.

@Freshton It’s interesting that you think it’s fine for disabled children to be HE despite thinking it’s massively disadvantages children and puts them at huge risk of an impoverished education and risk of abuse. If the average parent isn’t qualified to teach the average child why would they be qualified to teach a more complex individual?

Make the schools better and people will come.

All my DC attended school but ideologically I am in favour of being able to Home Ed and would be very concerned if governments forbade it. Governments are far too involved in pushing their ideology into school curriculums. Sure parents can push their own ideology on children they Home Ed but parents doing so is nothing like the state doing so. There is a creeping authoritarianism from the current government where impartiality has gone out of many schools and even the PM thinks it fine to go into schools and berate students about supporting another political party,

I know a home schooler, let's the child pick and choose each day. It appears they are mostly at the park, she will not register the child for GCSE as they are pointless apparently...

YABVU! How is it living in the real world to ‘socialise’ with the same 30 children of the same age. Also in terms of the ‘real world’, my children prepare for that by actually being in it rather than being forced to sit at a desk and learn about it. The ignorance about home education is baffling, there are entire communities out there

This. It was the case in my education days 20 years ago. Home ed can be done exceptionally well - or it can be a cop out.

Are you aware that statistically home educated children outperform their peers who attend school? That’s factual, so I think us ‘unqualified’ to teach parents are doing just fine

A huge issue at the moment is the ‘influencers’ jumping on the bandwagon and making it popular and spinning the narrative that school is bad, when in reality they’re doing it for #ad purposes and the ability to create content and go on holiday when they want.

I don't do homeschooling, but I have considered it.

DS, recently 7, started reception at 4 like most kids. He's still in reception. He will still be in reception in September too, so that will be his 4th year.

He has an EHCP, and has been told he needs a specialist school but 14 local specialist schools have said that they can't meet need and now they're consulting schools well put of borough despite DS having medical needs that restrict how far he can travel safely.

We've just had his mediation and been told he can't have his health needs documented in the legally enforceable sections because the medical professionals in charge of overseeing his health conditions haven't directly instructed the LA how long travel will impact him, because generally on their feedback reports they don't write how long distance travel will affect health for any child. They don't write their reports under the assumption that any children they see will need a specialist school, and there's a long wait list to see them again to ask for this help due to staff shortages.

This means in September my son will have seen 4 lots of "friends" excel past him. He isn't forming meaningful friendships or relationships and his mental health is significantly impacted.

He has learnt more at home than he has at school where he is expected to sit and learn, when he can't sit still or sustain his attention long enough. He has the capacity to learn, but not the right tools or resources. Unfortunately he is too overwhelmed and exhausted by the end of the day to be able to catch up to his age group peers at home.

With home educating you don't have to teach subjects to a mainstream curriculum. You can sign up for GCSEs if you want to and your child has that aptitude. You don't even have to wait until they're 15-16, but it isn't essential. It just has to be a full time education that meets the aptitude of that child. Full time doesn't mean a full 6 hours a day either, or even in one sitting.

If my child remains in mainstream, which he won't because we're awaiting tribunal, but hypothetically, he won't get any GCSEs, he will be bullied and won't have friends, and he may even start developing bad behaviours as a result of being left behind, not to mention his already impacted mental health at 7 will continue to get worse.

To me it's more of a safeguarding risk to leave him where he is.

I think the landscape of home ed has changed. It used to be hippy academic types who were well meaning and at least had some brains to have a go at teaching, now it seems to be low socioeconomic families who see it as the in thing because ‘the system just wants unquestioning workers’. Throw in a healthy dose of can’t be bothered to get kids to school, easier to have kids festering on an iPad, and this new weird belief that a nature walk is sufficient daily education, and you have a recipe for disaster in 15 years

I think the problem for me with HE is that it's not consistent and is based on what parents can do or afford. I'm sure some HE setups are really good, one parent stays at home and is motivated to pull together a productive workstream of activities during the week made up of tutoring, being able to teach themselves and joining in groups.

Unfortunately some of the HE children I know do pretty much the bare minimum which is attending college twice a week for english and maths functional skills and possibly one other subject but little goes on outside the rest of the two days as parents are working. When I hear the parents say they there kids really want to go to uni, I can't help feel the kids are being let down at this point.

I also have another ex-work colleague whose son is being HE, I did try to not looked surprised when he said his son was studying basket ball by watching youtube videos - withdrawn just before his GCSEs.

This post is purely stereotypes. Plus ‘festering on an iPad’ and ‘can’t be bothered to get their kids to school’ hardly sits alongside daily nature walks.

Okay, so my son was a good example of how this argument is ridiculous.

When he was home educated, I did a lot to help him socially. Home ed groups (which were the pits, if you didn’t align exactly with the others, you were outcast), lots of clubs and groups with children after school and weekends.

With home ed children, it was just a case of “there is a child roughly my age” there was no choice. There were only ever a handful of children and some had no interest in being friends. Or, like I said previously, it was kids of all different ages just pushed together. No matter how much home ed parents push it, a 13 year old does not want to hang out with a 9 year old old.

Kids from he clubs who went to school - after I’d shown the parents I wasn’t some oddball, it was okay.

When he started school for year 5, he came home after the first few days so happy. He’s an adult now and he always remembers the joy of starting school. There were 3 classes in his year. He had 90 potential friends to chose from. And 90 in the year above, and 90 in the year below. He blossomed.

It wasn’t a case of being stuck with children of the same age. He suddenly had all these hundreds of children, a lot of them the same age with the same interests, to meet and have something in common with.

and as for the real world bollocks - a lot of home educators I knew didn’t live in the real world. They were so sheltered from it. I met a lot of frustrated children.

It's a great opportunity for child abusers/killers ... Sara Ali was an example.

The landscape has changed too quickly for meaningful stats to reflect the future of the current lot. Home ed was very rare when anyone now an adult was a child, so they’ll be very outdated.

My eldest was in school up until the end of year 9. Did great in primary, but shortly into secondary started to struggle massively. By the time I decided to pull her out, she was an anxious mess that couldn’t even walk into the local shop with me. Went into 14-16 college after a short break learning at home. Went onto a different college from 16-18, got 2 P/T jobs and has recently landed an amazing F/T job, drives, has friends, a boyfriend and is doing great. It was right for her 100%.

Not sure I agree with doing it from the start, not giving children a choice to experience school at some point. But I think it should always be an option for children that for whatever reason, school just doesn’t work for them. Not all parents can pull off home ed successfully that’s true, it takes serious amounts of time, effort, money on your part and I’m not sure I could do it again. I’m no teacher that’s for sure and I’m glad she already had been at school most of her life so had benefited from that massively. 14-16 college and online courses picked up a lot of what I couldn’t manage academically. The social side is tough and spent most of my life in the car. It was exhausting and cost a fortune.
So I do, and don’t agree with it, but I don’t think there’s many parents with the finances, time, and knowledge to carry it off from the start, I know I couldn’t have.

I am a big believer that school is more than education. It’s about learning to get on with different types of people, develop social skills, learn tolerance, learn to grow a bit of a thicker skin when people aren’t particularly nice to you.
It’s also about learning organisation and time-keeping, being responsible for having the right equipment and books, learning the resilience to keep going if you find things tough or feel a bit unwell one day.
I look back on school life and remember some stressful times, the times I was picked on/bullied, the times I got into trouble for saying something about someone etc (I do remember the fun times too!) but I recognise now that I was learning crucial skills about people and behaviour.

In my experience this attitude comes with a few reasons.

They went to school and left with few or no GCSEs and got a job easily and don't understand how the landscape has changed.

They left with few GCSEs, managed to navigate qualifications, including professional qualifications at a later date and feel everything will work out

They have experience of working for themselves and feel like they can help their child take this route, even if it's a small trade.

They have qualifications but haven't really needed them.

They are idealistic and have very young children.

They have young children and aren't sure how to navigate GCSEs and have a - we'll cross that bridge when the time comes approach. Nothing wrong with that as there is lots of advice and support out there when the time does come.

They have older children but a clear path in mind - alternative eg. outdoor qualifications, involved running forrst school, water based activities etc.

If people manage to find other home educators , including with older children and speak with them face to face they should get a range of perspectives and experiences. Many will cast a different eye on their children's future to previously as a result.

My opinion is that things change very quickly in a child's world and I think most will want the college age experiences their peers will have, so it is important to ensure they have those opportunities.

Love this! Lucky children.

I (not a qualified teacher) home educate mine and will continue to do so while it’s the best available option for them. For us, this will involve mainstream eventually, but there’s a lot to be gained by society in having children educated in a variety of different ways - none of us can predict the future and the skills we’ll need.

You missed out another option - they are fed up with people questioning their choices and saying ‘but what about GCSEs’