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?

We are currently braced to remove our autistic eldest child from school to support her through her GCSEs. I do not believe that doing 23 exams in a 6 week period at aged 16 is the be-all and end-all for education. However, it will be incredibly resource-intensive for us as a family to deliver a rounded, ambitious education,'so we are giving school one last mega push with all cards on the table and all asks for support...

Call me naive but I genuinely don't think there can be that many families playing hard and fast with their kids' futures - those who appear to be removing children from school on a whim may well be fighting EBSNA, bullying, undiagnosed SEN, MH issues in the parent or child that you know nothing about. Eldest is a 'school refuser' and I would never ever share her struggles in real life so those around us just think "she's not a big fan of school".

For all the rigorous training teachers have they don't seem very capable of actually recognising SEN needs or delivering an education to meet that need.

Inspections aren't actually helping the vulnerable pupils either.

I was a teacher prior to having children so I get the difficulty of all the different levels and need in a class, I understand the limits and frustrations many teachers face. I have been through a fair few inspections too.

Interestingly as a home ed parent I have had to disregard much of my training to teach my children. For one child in particular the teacher mode causes them to shut down completely (due to how badly they were failed).

I have learnt a lot from other home ed families. They are very welcoming to the influx of us that find ourselves home educating due to school failing to meet needs.

Generally speaking I think the vast majority of parents are going to care more about their own child's education than the trained teacher with 30 pupils per class.

Let’s be honest, without being cruel, no child is getting in to Oxford on merit alone without any formal qualifications. That’s nonsense. Perhaps post 25 as a mature student when ‘life experience’ can count, but you still have to have GCSE level, core subjects. It’s just the A Levels they will bypass. Nobody is getting in to Oxbridge by doing nature walks and junk modelling. Come off it.

They can't string a sentence together after 12 years of school education - but they went to school ........

I often wonder if there’s a market for a co-op Home Education offering as they do in many areas in the US. As it seems many here would love to do Home Ed in a formal way but cannot due to work or time or perhaps experience. Maybe I need to open up my home classroom!

No one is suggesting a home ed child is going to Oxford unable to read any more than a schooled child would go to Oxford unable to read.

Those home ed children who go to Oxford do some type of exam they just don't generally do the same number of exams as schooled children and they may do subjects not offered to school children

But the whole point is, to even understand how exams work and the structure of exam questioning / how to actually exert information from a question and answer it succinctly is not going to be something that’s learned from nature walks / gaming on an app. We are talking about two types of ‘home ed’ here.
I’ve taught my child (in age appropriate way) how to understand the above so if they do want to go on to higher or further education then they know how exam systems work. (Obviously we will be doing GCSEs regardless).
A poster was implying you can rock up to Oxford after a very loose Home Ed experience and they’d be welcoming your child with open arms, that isn’t the case.

Not all children will be able to manage exams no matter what you teach them.

If your child had SEN nature walks may be the be a good way to introduce animals and talking about what they see is a stepping stone to language development

If your child has poor mental health causing self harm a walk would be beneficial to their health and well being. Sitting them down and teaching them how to do an exam could be very detrimental to them

Passing an exam is useless if they are struggling so much with their mental health they are suicidal especially if the pressure of exams worsens their mental health.

You can not know the full background of why one person does x while the other does y. There could be genuine reasons why they are opting to do a nature walk right now. Most importantly they do not need to justify themselves to every random person

IF you have genuine concerns about education neglect or abuse then report this

Because believe it or not ,home education doesn't have to be done between school hours . It can be done at any time and seeing as its been found that the average school pupils only get about 5 minutes one to one with a teacher in any lessons due to the needs of other children, school children dont get the amount of education you think they do.

Ok I’ll bite. I home educate my son. Mainly due to SEN, but boy do I wish I’d done it from the start. My son used to be carried by four teachers into school - for years! He never spoke to a single adult in school (took them till year 5 to tell me this mind), and in year 5 when I’d finally had enough and deregistered there were huge gaps in his education.
His mental health however was the worst it had ever been in school (think MH crisis team), and to be honest I’m not sure he’d have been with us into adulthood if we’d carried on down the school path.
so I had to either fight the LA for EOTAS (a two year battle at least plus mentally draining), or educate him myself and give up full time work (no I do not claim benefits).
He is now working 3 years ahead of his peers in maths and English, sooooo much happier and healthier (never went to a toilet in school or ate), and has come on leaps and bounds.
we are semi formal in that for core subjects we use the curriculum and dedicate our mornings to it, but for other subjects we learn in many different ways.
he goes to home ed groups, he’s made friends. But most importantly home ed quite probably saved his life.
for those who aren’t aware we do have to provide progress to the LA yearly, and if progress isnt deemed suitable they can be sent a school attendance order and registered back at school.
What you see in these ‘what we do in a day’ videos is not their entire day! Maybe the children don’t want videoing whilst doing their work, maybe they do unschool and are bringing up the next generation of creatives, it’s literally none of you’re business.
Just because YOU don’t understand something it doesn’t make it wrong.
The reality is most home edders do a brilliant job for THEIR children. It’s one to one learning in a way that suits their child. You’ll never get that kind of education in a school with 30-35 kids crammed in a classroom.

I don’t think we’re ever going to agree, there is always a ‘don’t judge’ caveat to everything, and as awful as it may sounds, maybe as a nation we need to bring back a bit of judgement. Children are literally being failed.

We have co-ops for home ed where I live. Many places do.

Also as a side note. My son may not do GCSE’s he might do functional skills instead, he might go to college and sit maths and English GCSE’s there alongside his course, he may go to an agricultural college - because god forbid there’s more to life than GCSE’s.
I got 10 A/A* GCSE’s and I’m now 40. Want to know how many times in my life I’ve used them? Zero. Yet I still earn 6 figures working part time.
I get so sick of hearing ‘what about GCSE’s’, so ridiculous.

Going to school and paying attention are two different things though.

In a formal, structured fashion separated by key stage?

It was the school and LA that failed in our case and many others have had the same happen.

6 figures working part time is amazing, alongside HE. What job do you do?

Going to school and being taught in a way you can learn is not a guarantee

Do you think it is better to
A. Send a child to school when they can not learn in that environment and it is making them mentally unwell

B. Home ed so that they can learn and be healthy

I have my own business, I used to make a lot more full time but took on more staff to cut my hours right back so we could focus on home education.
And before anyone jumps in that I’m lucky, it was not luck, just a lot of hard graft over many years.
And to answer your previous question yes co-ops round here run for different key stages. Managed by the parents. Mainly for core subjects.

But your comment is the reason people worry, you say god forbid there is more than GCSEs - you may not care but your son might that you severely restricted his career opportunities! What jobs do you think he's going to get in agriculture? A low paid farm labourer? Farms are struggling with Brexit impacts and climate change impacts, many farms have shut up shop! He may resent being limited to slogging his guys out in all weathers fir low pay.

You missed my previous post then about how we do actually follow the curriculum and he is 3 years ahead?
My reason for other options is they are options that will be good for HIM as he gets older, should he wish to have them open to him.
My son has SEN and so exams are a difficulty for him, but that doesn’t mean he won’t take them, we will see where we are with that as he gets older.

But you are operating on the assumption that any old parent can be a good teacher! I operate on reality! Why do you think teachers spend years studying to be a teacher! Like others have said, it's too unregulated and unmanaged and it's not fair to limit a kids future career opportunities.

There was a drop in GCSE pass rates this year and I imagine they will continue over the years as the home education trend leaves it's mark.
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I took one DC out of school due to bullying that the school seemingly could do nothing about. I wouldn't worry about him OP, as he got a first class degree and also did Masters. He was very self-motivated, and was doing OU courses before he was 18.

Not certainly not luck, you obviously have worked hard and continue to do so. Unfortunately, where we are there is a focus on unschooling and no formal groups.

That's fair play but a lot of parents won't be and it's too unregulated and unmanaged.