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?

As a fellow home educator I couldn't agree more re: unschooling: to do it properly would be such a tremendous amount of work that I certainly wouldn't feel able to do it properly despite being very well educated, and a lot of what I see being described as unschooling is just... not. And as you say can sometimes mask educational neglect.

I love using curriculums and use one for most subjects, they free up so much time and headspace which I can then use figuring out how to really personalise them and really bring them to life. The couple of subjects where I don't use one take so much more of my energy, I can't fathom having to do this for every subject.

And it's impossible for those who children cope in school to comprehend just how bad it can be for families who children are suffering at school and not recieving an education

One of my DC was home educated, he went to college, on a specialist home education course, doing a vocational subject and GCSE Maths and English, then carried on doing the vocational subject, and now has Level 3 in it. He's now looking for work, though he has a temporary job lined up. Home education worked for him where school had failed to take any notice of his SEN because he wasn't disruptive.

Being on lots of home educating groups I have seen many parents post asking for help. Quite a few with many spelling and grammar mistakes. Then you have the ones who ask for help with LA reports, and I've seen so many where old hands of HE will tell them how to word the reports so that playing on Minecraft all day every day will sound educational. Yeah, it's not. Those old hands don't tell the new ones that their playing Minecraft all day kids are now late teens still on their computers in their bedroom, haven't gone to college, minimal job prospects. But hey, unschooling is great, they follow their own interests, in their bedroom. Forever.

I've known plenty of home educated kids who have gone to uni or college though, so it's not all terrible. Just the terrible ones seem to shout loudest about not wanting contact with the LA, so that's what people see.

5 year olds can pour a bowl of cereal and eat snacks by themselves. They can also sit on an iPad all day.
But I was actually talking about older children.
The ones someone else talked about who pretend playing Minecraft all days is an education.

If you know actual real people that you have genuine concerns about you can report these concerns to the authorities. They can investigate and determine if there are actual concerns or not.

Everyone should act where they have real concerns regardless of if that child is under school age, at school or home educated

You’re using your own experience of 5 year olds. Some 5 year olds I have known do sleep that late as they’ve not been put to bed or get up and watch TV while their parents sleep as they’ve been shouted at or ignored when they’ve tried to wake their parents before. They get their own breakfast and lunch if they have food in the house as if they didn’t they wouldn’t eat. These are the children my school go and pick up from home. We feed them and make sure they have suitable clothing for the day and provide pastoral support. Thank god these children are enrolled in school.

Then these families should be reported to social services by your school.

Just because they are in school in term time doesn't mean safeguarding should be ignored

Safeguarding matters to children in school too.

The point prior to 5 year olds was that lazy parents opt to home ed as it's easier
As you pick the children up and feed them why would the lazy bad parent home ed ?

Who’s ignoring safe guarding? Schools take it very seriously. They have been reported. My point was that lazy parents are crap whether they home educate or send their children to school. The difference being that the ones who are enrolled in school can be helped as they are visible to schools.

And the children being failed and damaged by school?

How do we ensure children damaged and failed by school are safeguarded against further damage by the schools and LA?

I didnt say special school was home ed I said colleges treated him the way they would a home ed child in terms of admissions and his options were narrowed. My child did spend some time home educated also for about 3 years and I am pro home education but my lived experience is that not having 4 gcses or gcse equivelents has given him less opportunities than those who have them.

I didnt say children who werent capable of gcses or gcse equivelents for whatever reason should do them or were making it harder on themselves by not doing them.

I said parents who had children who were capable of doing them were doing them a disservice by not doing any qualifications on the basis they could catch up later because my experience of college admissions this year has been catching up options were narrow.

My child wasnt able due to more or less the exact the same reasons your child has basically so I understand youve made a positive step in building wellbeing, but i wasnt referring to peoole in our situations. I was saying someone who was able to do them and chose not to has created a totally unnecessary narrowing of options in my area.

I don’t have all the answers. i think home education can be a good thing for some children.

I just know that lazy parents pop up within home education and schooling. It’s easier to spot children who need support when they’re at school.

That’s what I was responding to.

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

This. The lack of oversight and the system’s inability to differentiate the genuine home educators from the ones taking advantage of a lack of accountability is an absolute scandal and something which I think future generations will look back on as one of the worst examples of massive level institutional failure.

Its the kind of thing Charles Dickens would have written a very long and scathing novel about 150 years ago.

The problem with additional oversight (the LA already has oversight) is that for children like my child who has been very badly failed by school/LA already is that someone coming into their safe space and making judgements on the education they receive without understanding how poor the education they received at school was or the damage the school caused has a very high chance of causing further damage to my child.
If you have child you was not only not learning. Anything at school but was also suffering at school to the point of self harm you may understand why those guilty of causing the harm would not be welcome to cause further harm

Have you had a visit from the LA? It’s not great to hear that they are making judgements to parents infront of children.

Respectfully, because I do understand how traumatic and difficult that must have been for you, having had a bad experience in the school system cannot be a get out of jail free card for lack of oversight.

I completely understand that a lot of children have been badly failed by formal schooling and feel extremely distrustful of any kind of formal education or educational supervision.

But the logic is flawed. A lot of pro home ed people will use the fact their child was failed at school as a kind of "gotcha" to demonstrate that they should operate without supervision and that formal education is not to be trusted.

I don't think it works like this. A child who is failed by the school system has more need for oversight, not less. Whatever your experience of school has been, and however traumatic it has been, it cannot be right for oversight of education to be simply abandoned at the point your child leaves school. A genuinely involved and engaged parent may simply be able to pick up where the school left off and support the child appropriately, but a lot of parents, scared and traumatised by the experience, will need more formal structure and support.

I don't doubt that the LA is not always sensitive in its handling of this, and that's a structural problem. But there are so many posts from people on here suggesting that the answer is to simply stop engaging. You say the LA has oversight and technically that is true but I know of so many cases where coordination with the LA is as little as sending in a lesson plan once a year, and many HE parents stop engaging altogether. It's not nearly enough to prevent the kinds of harms and neglect which can emerge and it's not adequate to provide the structure a child needs.

I really worry about the mindset that says: "my child was failed by school so I will stop engaging". It's an understandable emotional reaction to have in the moment, but it's a very poor strategy for supporting your child long term.

I haven't had a visit as a home educator because currently it is a legal right to refuse visits

I do know of people who have allowed visits but have not had good experience of the visit. With the LA person having poor understanding of how ed and SEN.

In our area the home ed team is now the same team that we have dealt with when we were registered at school and trying to get our child the support they needed. Quite frankly we have very little trust that they would act in our child's best interests. If they had cared about our child's education and well being they could have actually put support in place while they were at school

No it is my child almost died because of the LA and school failures
My child learnt nothing in school but the LA did not think that was important or that I needed addressing

I am sorry but I do not want the same person who did not care about education or wellbeing when it was their job to provide it coming into my child's safe place and deciding that what we provide (which is 100 times more than they ever provided) is not good enough.
I do not want them deciding a back to school order is needed when I know a back to school order would reduce the education the child receives and destroy their mental health

I am responsible for my child's wellbeing and education and I provide this. The LA is responsible for all the damage they caused. No one is holding the LA to account for their failures so I do not want to be targeted in the illusion of safeguarding which is anything but.

An agenda that saves one child from possible harm but destroys other children isn't about safeguarding it's about looking to be doing something but actually achieving nothing but harm
Especially as processes and laws already exist with the aim to protect children from harm

So what did the LA actually do to your child? I don't really understand. I understand a child having problems at school with bullies or teachers, but what precisely did the LA do?

Exactly you do not understand

Which is exactly why these threads are so frustrating - people think it's black and white and home ed needs more oversight but there is so much more to it

Well, unless you can explain I don't see how your individual case can possibly override the general picture that there should be regulation of home education and that there should be some standard basic education criteria all home educated children should be expected to meet. At the moment absolutely nothing stops an abuser taking a child out of school and keeping her/him in the basement for all we know. No one would know or check on that child. This cannot be right.

This is partly why your algorithm is showing this to you and it’s like the fallacy of painting on the bulls eye after all the shots have been discharged

The process when someone deregisters from school is already meant to highlight at risk children

On deregistering from school the school has to complete paperwork that gives them ample opportunity to raise concerns they have about the child's wellbeing or education at home

This would then result in further investigation.

If no concerns the LA will then be expected to monitor. The child doesn't disappear they should still be monitored

The issue we have is when the school, LA or social services do not do their job properly. That's when children fall through the cracks.

And if they aren't doing a good job now what do you think will happen when their workload gets heavier?

Maybe a starting point would be to properly monitor the children (at school or home ed or pre school age) that are already known or suspected to be at risk. How do you think it helps children who are being abused to have their oversight reduced to increase oversight of all children with no known risks ?

Also our situation is not unique. There is a huge number of children who have been severely damaged by school.

Children damaged by school are just as important and their needs should not get overridden either

No they absolutely shouldn’t, and I have huge sympathy for parents and children in this position.

But at a practical level I don’t understand why deregistering these children and allowing them to be at the mercy of parents who might have no idea about how to educate them, and indeed have no intention of educating them, helps them.

I’m not saying you are doing this but the whole point is the system currently has no way of distinguishing able and engaged parents from parents doing their best in difficult situations from parents who are actively neglecting their children.

Well until there are options other than being forced to home ed we have little choice.

This is why LA should be held to account they aren't now and this is set to get worse