To really worry about the future of homeschooled children?

[AgeingMillennial]

Please don’t think this is a goady thread designed to rile the masses about home education. I’m very much not referring to children with SEN whose parents are homeschooling because they’re desperate, or ‘serious’ homeschoolers who do an incredible job and produce very well educated kids by following a dedicated programme. I follow several such families on social media and their energy and commitment is way beyond anything I could do.

However I’m noticing a huge uptick in people ‘deregistering’ their kids to promote a kind of off-grid, traditional lifestyle on social media. Not because the child is struggling or unhappy at school but ‘I want to spend more time with them’, ‘the government want to create tax paying robots’, ‘I don’t want the state to raise my kids with transgender ideology’ etc.

The problem is the ‘homeschooling’ is then very substandard and then consists mostly of nature walks, crafts and visits to National Trust properties. All very wholesome but the sort of things most families do at weekends anyway. They might do a couple of pages of the sort of workbooks you find in WH Smith, but that’s it. Where there are siblings they all do the same basic things, none of it tailored to be specific to their age.

AIBU to worry about the future of these kids and to cynically wonder if it’s a ‘social media stream’ in many cases?

This is false. It used to be the case when tiny numbers of families were HE. It's no longer the case and this is out of date advice.

Parents also go to tribunal for milder disabilities like dyslexia and win them getting their children into extremely expensive private schools that are destroying local authority budgets. When they could go to state schools.

Not at our college.

Someone who has failed all GCSEs is evidence that they will struggle with a level2 course they also have low confidence and self esteem due to failing

Someone who is home educated and done a few level 2 qualifications already. Has done research into the area of study and is confident is a totally different to the first example.

Say they both want to do plumbing. The second child has already got evidence showing their interest and knowledge of plumbing through self study. They are able to show they can manage the level 2 curriculum. The schooled child not only won't be as confident because of school experience but won't have evidence of achievements because their time and energy was directed towards exams they wouldn't pass

That’s a real shame from someone in the RAF. Denying their own kids the same opportunities

@Scamworried which college?
And plenty of HE children have been in school, so your explanation does not make sense.

Just because they weren’t studying formally for hours didn’t mean they couldn’t read or write. They learned from being read to and having an interest in the world around them, most children will if given the chance in a natural way lead by curiosity. They’re studying subjects from computing to law and history, subjects they do very well in as they had the opportunity to discover what they were interested in and spend time pursuing it.

You said they were just playing until 12. You didn't say they learned to read. Although you haven't mentioned writing, so could they write?

Loads of young kids who can presumably read from having books read to them have simply memorised the books or have poor comprehension

If the mainstream school is unable to teach children with dyslexia then this just proves that mainstream education is in serious need of change.

To get a tribunal to decide the child needs an independent school then there will be evidence of years of failing by the LA.

Dyslexia isn't mild and the right strategies at the right time can make such a difference. However, failing to provide early intervention and support will have long teaching consequences.

For our child if they had actually supported them correctly for their disabilities and SEN in the early years the additional cost would have been small but by delaying the costs needed to support and undo the damage caused by school grew and grew. We never made it to tribunal the process was barbaric and we ran out of time and needed to deregister because our child's mental health had deteriorated too far that we had little other option. But had we gone to tribunal we would have won because I have binders of evidence.

How does it not make sense ?

Even home edders who went to school have also been home ed so I don't understand what you are struggling with. My child is an example of this they were in school. Had they stayed in school they wouldn't have achieved GCSEs and so the college would have put them on the life skills course. As a home educated child how we know that they will get into the course they want with equivalent quals and the experience they have gained. We know this as we have discussed with the college.

Quite frankly I am not going to tell you the college as that would be outing to my location.

Of course there will be schools that can teach pupils with dyslexia. Although dyslexia can have a big impact, in terms of sen it is mild.
Middle class parents hire expensive lawyers for educational tribunals and scare tribunals into giving them expensive private educational places.

@Scamworried outing a city or town and wider conurbation area is not exactly outing you.

So surely if there are people playing the system the system (I don't believe this personally as if you are wealthy enough for expensive legal team you could just bypass the stress and hassle and fund school directly) needs updating and improving.

What it doesn't need is removing legal protection from the most vulnerable so that no child gets support the need

My child didnt fail gcses. He went to a special school that didnt offer them and he was treated like a home school child by colleges due to that. It was very challenging to find courses that would accept him. There wasnt none but he simply didnt have the breadth of options that someone who had 4 gcses grade 3-4 or even 4 grades 1 to 3 had available to them. (Or equivalents) He had a portfolio of evidence and did find a course but so many were closed off.

I just think why make it harder for your child by not letting them do the 4 gcse or gsce equivalents that opens the door. If they are capable of doing them.

Quite frankly I do not have to tell you anything.

If your child is not going to pass their exams and you are considering home ed and alternative routes I suggest you speak to the team at your local colleges and discuss options available to you.

Special school is not home ed.

If a home ed child is capable of GCSEs they can do them and many many families do.

In our case not only would they not pass the exam process would be very damaging so they won't be doing GCSEs so we are not making it harder we are ensuring they have an appropriate and accessible education that focusses on building their confidence and wellbeing alongside education

Apart from in exceptional circumstances, you will not convince me that home education as a form of neglect.

Life is a competition, and hard enough anyway for the conventionally educated.

I used to work in the HE team at the LA. There was probably a handful of families doing HE "properly" - providing a good standard of education, good curriculum, opportunities for their children.There was another group of children with additional needs where the majority of parents were doing the best they could in often challenging circumstances.
Then there was an increasing group of people who chose HE because they couldn't be arsed with the actual responsibility of getting their children educated - can't stand rules, can't deal with authority, often have SS involvement, often not working, want to go on holiday whenever they want, kids moved from school to school because relationships had broken down with teachers. We gave up arranging meetings in the morning for several families because they couldn't get out of bed. They'd be on the phone swearing that we'd failed their children, threatening legal action etc.

I think HE needs some sort of regulation - if you're doing it right (within a broad framework) then there's nothing to worry about but there's a big problem with children slipping through the cracks, ending up wholly unprepared for adult life and costing all of us significantly more through benefits and support.

parents who can't be arsed...

Compare scenarios

Getting kids to school in morning where you don't have to deal with them for 6 hours and they have a meal (funded in certain cases)
You don't have to do anything like write reports evidencing their education.

Or

Having your kids with you 24/7 , having to provide them with lunch( at your own cost )
Having to write reports proving you are providing an education good enough to pass the LA need.

I'm not being funny but option 1 would allow a parent to be far more lazy than option 2.
Even a bad home ed parent has to work harder than a bad school parent.

No body with 2 brain cells is opting to home ed because it's the lazy option

I think a certain type of home education (unstructured, fewer formal lessons) is probably always going to be over-represented on social media. I home educate my 11yo but have no time to be making tik-toks or reels because I'm far too busy planning, delivering, and organising her education! It's absolutely a full-time job for me, and one I take incredibly seriously.

I do worry about those children who are home educated but without much of the education aspect - both for those poor children themselves, and also if I'm honest how this poor practice reflects on the wider home education community. However, in my experience this is a very small proportion of home educating families. Most parents I know are committed to giving their children the best education they can, either themselves or through the use of tutors / online classes / online schools (and sometimes this 'best' will look not much like school at all, either because of significant neurodivergence, learning disabilities, past trauma, or health issues).

Getting kids to school means getting them up, dressed and washed in time and at school with a packed lunch. Picking them up on time. Responding to various letters, providing PE clothes in the right day, providing random cash or dress up for various days.

HE sleep in till noon, let the kids help themselves to food. Let them play on iPads in the afternoon. No need to even get them washed, dressed and out of the house.

Middle class parents hire expensive lawyers for educational tribunals and scare tribunals into giving them expensive private educational places.

What nonsense.

The vast majority of parents (of all classes) do not pay for representation.

LAs have legal representation more often than parents (of any class) do. That includes LAs paying exorbitant amounts of money for representation to defend indefensible cases they know they are going to lose against unrepresented parents. If LAs want to save money on Tribunal’s they could always act lawfully to start with.

SENDIST doesn’t make decisions based on the parties’ representation. If LAs genuinely thought SENDIST were scared into making a decision and had erred in law, they would be quick to challenge the decision.

Parents don’t secure independent provision if there is a cheaper alternative that can meet needs. Like above, if LA’s thought SENDIST had erred, they would challenge the Order.

The needs dyslexic DC can’t always be met in mainstream. It can’t always be met in the state sector. To dismiss it as always mild misunderstands how dyslexia can present in some DC. It can be far more than struggling with academic work.

The demanding, ‘sharp-elbowed’ middle class rhetoric is utter rubbish spouted by people who do not understand SEN law.

And these are the parents who post in a panic on HE groups after a year when they are asked for a report. They get given a template and advice about how to complete it e.g. they watched a documentary once so put that in as an example when the template talks about using a variety of educational resources.

By the time they're teenagers, they can get themselves up around lunchtime, sort out some kind of food for themselves and then entertain themselves online or hanging out until whenever they want to crash out at night/ early hours.

No parental effort required.

It's easy for loving, motivated parents to underestimate how low the bar is to some people.

I was homeschooled and also homeschool our youngest (the eldest thrived in school so no need to homeschool).

Like you, we drifted away from the very small homeschooling community here in the Netherlands for similar reasons. A small handful of the families were absolutely brilliant and although their approaches varied widely, in all cases they had perfectly tailored their educational offerings to fit their children.

But at the other end of the spectrum were a whole lot of kids who had no understanding of age-appropriate basic life skills or general knowledge, let alone common courtesies like "no, we don't throw stones at another kid's head because they said they didn't want to let you take their bike home. You're 11 years old, cut it out."

'Unschooling' was thrown around a lot but true unschooling is bloody hard graft and I know I couldn't do it. It's why we're following the curriculum for the international GCSEs and A-Levels... I don't have the stamina required to properly develop endless learning opportunities for a 15 year old in the same way I could when he was 7. Also, he was ready for a more structured educational style so it worked out well.

In a few cases I saw, I think unschooling was a euphemism for educational neglect, and 'free-range' was a euphemism for wanting to be the child's friend more than wanting to be their parent.

How many 5 year olds sleep till noon, get their own lunch and sit quietly and don't interrupt their parents?

My teen however does sleep in till later. Studies show this is quite normal. They are farm more productive in the afternoon and evening.

I could wake them at 7 am and make them work in the morning but they wouldn't achieve as much