AIBU to wonder how home educators feel confident teaching children?

[Toodledootwo]

Genuinely interested in those that home school? What do you think you can do better? Do you plan the full curriculum till 18? It is an ethos? how do you have the confidence to teach?
as an educated professional, doing training courses drains me from the stress. I have a masters in engineering but can’t possibly believe I can teach my child maths. So how do home educators have the confidence to think they can do it?

I didn't say anything about academic learning. But social learning away from parental influence is just as important. Learning to pick up Social cues in a large peer group is immensely valuable. I can't see how home education is delivering this to a good standard.
Your post focuses a lot on adult interaction.

It’s maths.

I've also seen similar.

I'm a private tutor and I was the only tutor this child had. Not even every week. When asking what they'd done that day, the answer was often, "just got up" or "been out on my bike"
This child does not have SEN
There are virtually no checks done on these children.
I'm sure there are plenty out there who are doing a great job. I'm a qualified teacher and would be the first to say that sitting still behind a desk every day isn't ideal for every child. I've seen it first hand. But I'm also sure that there are numerous kids out there who are slipping through the net.

Tiktok is full of videos at the minute about new school rules etc with it being September. Phone / uniform/ punctuality and in the comments there are always those who say "just take them out of school" Those people are raising a generation of youngsters who, as soon as they're faced with a challenge, or something they don't like, will opt out. I'll stress that I'm not talking about the home educators who are doing a great job. I'm not talking about the ones whose school cannot cater for their needs. I'm talking about the ones who take the children out, do very little and no one is checking on them.

There needs to be accountability

Yes, noone checks. The 'something happens they don't like' happened to one of them. She took the child out of school immediately, she didn't even try to find another school. The poor child is going to end up with no qualifications. His future looks very like his mother's, no qualifications and a minimum wage job.

One of the women is so chaotic she couldn't get her kids to school on time so just took them out. Her house is so squalid that the council had to re-home her because of rats. I can't understand why social services don't get involved on some level and why there is no joined up thinking- the council knows she lives in squalor and the Local Authority knows 3 children are home educated there. She's never even had any sort of visit.

This is what worries me.
Who is going to look out for these kids?

I know quite a few homeschoolers. One friend has 6 kids at different stages and they are all doing well, including one who is about to go to Oxford. Another sent her kids to college part time from age 14 (their local college runs special classes). And then they went to a normal sixth firm. They also do loads of sport. Again her oldest just came out with 3 As at A level. He's a "normal" kid with a girlfriend who has loads of friends etc.

As others have said, not everyone outsources and joins groups, there's no singular home education community who does it all the same.
I've met many children with an amazing home education - I know a lot of families who have come from other countries and don't like the UK school system and they've pretty much formed a part time language school, many of the children speak multiple languages, they travel a lot, they have a really wide field of learning.

I've also met children whose parents have assumed that attempting to teach their child the alphabet and watch the occasional education TV programme is enough, and frankly there are some parents where the home education choice is clear neglect. There are also others who are muddling through where they have real barriers to delivering home education (money, resources, isolation) but they have no choice due to a lack of statutory provision for additional needs,which is just awful - it shouldn't be forced on someone.

Where’s the accountability though , when a child leaves school with no GCSEs for example?

At the end of the day you can have the best teacher in the world (dd did have a couple of brilliant ones) but if the overall school environment is toxic/not conducive to learning, all the teachers' effort and knowledge is wasted.

For me it's not about confidence, it's about strategy. Getting the passes required for 6th form, by whatever DIY/free method that gets her there.

Well, according to these threads, a lot of Home Ed kids will attend Oxford or Cambridge. They help to skew the statistics for the ones that enter adulthood without GCSE's . So no worries, no accountability needed.

Precisely

I don’t think many are teaching their child themselves. The only two I know who are home educated use an online school I think it’s called kings???

I think the issue is talking in absolutes and generalising.

Some home edders are shit. Some schools/teachers are shit. Plenty of kids fall through the cracks in both.

I imagine the only reason some people point out their Oxbridge bound children is to illustrate that there are many successfully home edded kids. Some of whom haven’t been taught by former teachers or physicists.
I don’t think anyone would disagree that many slip through the net due to lazy and indifferent parents.

I'm not particularly pro home Ed, but I can see why some chose it, and some do it very well, and some do their best out of desperation at the current school system.

I have a bright 10 year old, who comes home telling me they did about 10 mins actual work, and then the teacher spend rest of lesson trying to control children who run out the class, swear, shout and generally misbehave. I feel like we are semi home educating as we will go over lots of maths etc at home to ensure she has covered the full syllabus and feeks confident in it, and support with private tutoring - which she loves as its a small group of children who actually want to learn. In this setting I think they could easily get through more in 2 hours a day than she does in a whole school day.
She likes school for her friendships, and PE, music, clubs etc, but I don't feel she learns that much. If she really hated it, and we didn't need them at school so we can work, she would be better off doing a couple hours tutoring and a sports club each day.

My secondary school was awful. I taught myself the curriculum from revision guides, and got all A's. By about 14, a bright motivated child can virtually teach themselves if given the correct resources.

That's because school work is boring, not because home education is impossible 😂

I assumed that a lot of home educators did this, but is it not really expensive to teach 8+ GCSEs this way?

And so many terrible schools rife with sexual assaults, violence and bullying. Is it 40% of schooled children that don't pass maths and English GCSEs?

Most children don't need 8+ GCSEs, and you can spread the cost over several years rather than all at once.

This sounds like a parenting issue rather than an educational one. You don't know how to talk to your 4 year old? If you went to the library together you could probably find a picture book explaining gravity 😂

@Imaginingdragonsagain
It isn’t cheap, exams are expensive too.

I am a teacher and I would say teaching a neurotypical child with no learning disabilities is fairly easy. You did it from 0-5 without any teachers!

Teaching is complex because of the juggling of 30 children’s individual needs, children with specific learning disabilities and/or neurodivergence, fitting into new (daft) government, local authority and school policies without enough time, money or resources.

There will be aspects that challenge an educator if a child moves to a higher level of understanding than they have themselves at say 17/18. But, at that point you will probably be paying for a tutor, no?

Of course you’re judging 🤣

But as an aside, I know loads of home educators and I don’t think one of them started doing it without loads of research. 🙂

Don't and didn't have a choice.

My child was illegally off-rolled. There is no other accessible school for her. Even if there was, she's not been in a fit state to attend anyway. So overnight I found myself in a position where I have to guide her. On Friday she was enrolled at school and on Monday I was suddenly responsible for her entire education.

I didn't get a chance to ponder if I was capable. My child needed me to be, so I was. I did a lot of research - my background is in research and writing.

We do a mixture of formal learning and self-guided. What works well is that my child is able to take her natural talents and interests and explore them on a deeper level. She spends a lot of time researching her own interests and how to develop them. When she was in school, she was so exhausted by the time she came home, she didn't have the capacity to do this.

I am always open to her returning to a school, if that becomes a viable option. She has access to private tutors and group classes and activities for home ed children, if she wishes to do those.

I’m a maths tutor and most of my students are home ed. A lot of parents use tutors, especially for maths because a lot of adults find maths a bit scary. I’d say out of my students most of them also have a tutor for English, but some are totally educated by their parents for everything else apart from maths.

My son has ASD and while he’s fine in mainstream now we don’t know what the future holds. If he ever needs home ed I am confident I could teach him maths, English, physics, and history to GCSE standards but to be honest I’d probably focus on a practical education and have him go to work with my brother a few days as well to learn to be a plumber. A lot of home educators I know do a lot of work outside the curriculum, or have a split. Personally I would want him to have standard qualifications to fall back on, but a bonus of not being in school is that they can kind of do what suits them.