to tell teacher friends to stop with the negativity over our decision to home educate?

[teaandaflorentineplease]

We’ve made the decision to home educate our child. Fulltime school isn’t right for our family, and I genuinely believe that play based, informal learning suits early childhood far better than sitting at desks from age five. I’d have been open to flexi-schooling if our local school allowed it, but they don’t so we’ve chosen home education.

What’s surprised me is the strength of the negative reaction from our teacher friends. These are people who regularly describe the state of education as dire. Dreadful behaviour, no funding, days spent on crowd control rather than actual teaching, children falling through the cracks, classrooms falling apart, pressure to hit their academies’ targets rather than do what’s best for the kids, they can’t even afford gluesticks. This insight into education from a teacher’s perspective has also informed my decision to home ed.

However when I said I was going to home educate, suddenly schools are wonderful and I’m making a terrible mistake. It started a few weeks ago when a teacher friend mentioned our children will be in the same class and since then the comments about how awful home ed is have kept coming. I’ve been shrugging it off to avoid an argument, but I’m getting increasingly frustrated. I’ve spent years validating how broken the system is, for both teachers and children, and yet the moment I choose to opt out of it, it becomes the only way to educate a child.

For context, my husband and I are both well-educated and take our child’s learning seriously. I feel comfortable teaching the early foundations like reading, writing and maths, and we plan to build projects around history, geography, science and whatever else our child shows an interest in. Beyond that, we haven’t planned anything because our child is still one. As we go through it, we’ll learn about what works for our family, and we’ll have seen how other home ed families approach things as children get older. We haven’t ruled out school further down the line either; it might turn out to be the right fit at some stage.

I’m not looking to convince anyone or get into a debate about home ed vs school. We’ve made our decision and we’re comfortable with it. I just find the contradiction so confusing and a bit hurtful. These are people who in some cases we’ve know for years, know how seriously we take our child’s wellbeing, and have spent years telling us the system is broken. I want to say firmly we’ve made a decision and we don’t want to hear anything else about it, but I also don’t want to lose long standing friends over it.

Whether it’s in a hall in silence on individual desks or in an informal classroom setting, it’s still not the play based early education that other countries use have better qualifications and MH outcomes than our education system does. I’m. It saying that has to be important to anyone else, but it is to me and it’s the basis around the choices I making for my child’s education

Exactly!

If the op’s child eventually does go to school it’ll last 10 minutes because it’ll have been conditioned to think school is Terrible and Damaging and Not Good Enough.

Obviously you need to move near a Steiner school, you sound the perfect fit, your DC is thriving at nursery so homeschooling will be a shock to him, the Montessori or Steiner schools fit what you want.

I'm the opposite to you, I'm in Scotland where they start at 5 and play in zones rather than classrooms for the first two years and it's so boring and unrewarding for the kids who like learning and have completely outgrown it by 7. I wish there was a bit more learning.

You are clearly hugely susceptible to hyperbole, so take a step back. It would make you happier to just spend time in the here and now a bit, more. What makes your DC happy, most kids (school and HE) are fine and happy with home life making the biggest difference. Try to enjoy these early years as they are honestly brilliant.

Termly assessments are helpful to identify which children need extra support. This includes children who have dyslexia or dyscalculia. It’s not a bad thing. What are you basing your opinion on? Have you experience of children completing such assessments?

Unless the teachers home educate themselves they're not qualified give advice. People who teach in schools obviously don't tend to have a lot of "actual professional experience and expertise" with regards to home education.

It’s one assessment, that is informal, that doesn’t take much time and that the children are largely unaware of in terms of it being an assessment. I don’t think it’s damaging to their mental health or that it’s an issue, especially when children in any education setting are being continually assessed by whatever metric that education system will use.

Would you ever assess your child’s progress at home @teaandaflorentineplease, or is that not something you’d do as a general rule?

Your child is only 1. Lots of time to think about schooling options
Have you considered the other skills that children learn at school. Not just academically but learning the social skills and building friendships these can be achieved while home schooling but it's difficult

It’s interesting as teaching reading is one of the things I feel least confident about! And I’m an editor.

Obviously I can’t remember how I learned to read but it was 35 years ago, and I was a fluent reader before school began. I don’t remember being hot-housed, my upbringing wasn’t like that, so I obviously learned organically, but despite reading a lot etc to DD1 and trying to learn letters etc., she never picked it up that way and started school as a non-reader.

The way she has learned at school is very different to whatever I had in my head about how to teach a child to read.

We flexi-school one day a week but it’s the day they have no fixed literacy or numeracy tasks at school, which works out well for us. They do reading groups Monday-Thursday and Friday is for stuff like assembly, finishing off outstanding work, they have a play session with the other class, etc.

I’m not sure what level of progress keeping we’ll do. Well obviously have to do an amount to share with local authorities if they want to see evidence than my child is in fact being educated. There’s talks of an increase in scrutiny on HE so maybe there will a documented system I’ll have to follow by then. I also plan to educate with an awareness of the national curriculum especially as my child gets older because I’m not opposed to starting school later on.

Have you missed all the posts where I say I’m not opposed to schools, I’m open to schools in the future and I’m open minded and flexible about making the best decisions for my child’s education at the time?

They have professional experience of children who were HE and joined school at some later stage. They are also professional experts in child development and education. I still think that's a better source of information than a HE Facebook group.

Does it ever occur to you that the shift to more formal education in year 1 happens for a reason, and it's that by and large it's when children and developmentally ready for it?

Year 1 is when most children turn 6. In pretty much most developed countries by age 6, children attending schools are in a more structured learning environment, and it's because actually the majority are ready for it and actually get a bit bored with 'free play' for extended periods of time.

Anyone who has actually been in a year 1 classroom will tell you they are actually pretty nice places - they aren't packed with children say miserably crying because someone made them sit at a table. They are actually full of kids experiencing those magical moments when learning to read clicks and they feel so proud that now they can read stories themselves! Children doing interesting history and RE and geography, making music together. And full of children learning to navigate friendships, teamwork, group activities, doing school shows together, big art projects etc.
HE is all well and good but schools are actually amazing places for children by and large and you can't replicate so many of the benefits at home.

You make interesting point. An acquaintance of mine started to HE her children, unsuccessfully, so she sent them to school. It turns out that all her children are dyslexic, which is something she hadn't picked up on when trying to educate them herself.

Given that didn’t get picked up in my niece in 12 years at school it’s hardly surprising

I think you’ve got it all wrong.. research shows in the early years, particularly up until the age of 3, that all children develop best being with their primary caregiver. If your priority is development and play, and you’re currently living on one salary, you’d be better off being a stay at home mum now until preschool or school to support your child’s development. Rather than live off one salary but you still working and saving all that money to spend the time with your child later down the line when they’d actually benefit more from a structured and social setting. Where is your child now when you are working? If they’re in a nursery then I can’t understand your choice to do that at the age of one but not school at the appropriate age.

and the poster upthread whose daughter got diagnosed because of the HE groups she was part of, not the schools she was in. I’m not saying schools are bad and HE is perfect but clearly there’s good and bad in both.

Yes agree gentle that was what our research and instinct bore out. I was there for first 6 years did a gentle pre school for a couple of mornings from 3. They were keen and ready for school . I went back to work then.

Loved being around those early pre school years and the few nursery sessions dd1 did she hated. So was glad to avoid that. They both really thrived at school generally.

I would see how you feel when they're older. There is a lot of development and growing before the school years arrive. My only point would be that it can be difficult being the default parent. And 24/7 home educating I would make sure you have a plan for some regular time for yourself from the start. And that’s not going to the supermarket on your own but dedicated time to do something for you somehow.

Agree with this.

That would be very limited.

90% of us who had to homeschool during the pandemic (and saw the negative impact on the dc) will think you’re bonkers. The only time home education is right for a dc is when they have additional needs. Dh and I are intelligent people but teaching dc clocks nearly broke us 😂

At school in the last few weeks my child has

• met a famous author
• had a sports day
• had a company with exotic animals and creepy crawlies come in
• written and performed with her class at her class assembly (for whole school and parents)
• practiced for The Greatest Showman performance they’re putting on.
• Made a class volcano (that apparently actually erupted)
• taken part in Debate Mate
• had a school disco
• planned their class stall at the upcoming summer fair.

So yes, you’re 100% right that good education is a whole lot more than studying.
But this is exactly what primary school curriculums are build around - fun whilst developing life skills and social skills. Pretty hard to emulate that at home as you ponder your Viking history project for 2 on a rainy Monday PM isn’t it….

Haha - I never appreciated school more than when we realised that due to the pandemic they had totally missed ‘clocks.’ So hard to teach such a basic thing - to a really intelligent kid! And I’m PHD’d up to the eyeballs.

Without trying to sound patronising - have you been to many junior schools? I mean I hadn’t in the last 25 years before my child - I was surprised how play based they are.

kids are certainly not sitting at desks most of the time. Up until yr 2 they don’t even have desks (at my daughters’ school) and when they do they’re shared tables. Classrooms are usually free flow into play areas.

Even now in yr 6 my child tells me they’ve not done much learning. Yet she scored top percentile in SAT’s - they learn so much but they have so much fun they don’t even realise!

That's not even close to the same thing though.