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?

Some schooled children are also at risk of abuse... so you think home checks by the LA should be mandatory for all parents? Surely you'd be fine with that if you have nothing to hide?

Christ - do you even know where the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" phrase originates from? You may want to educate yourself before being so fucking ignorant as to trot that one out.

And by your logic, you'd be happy for the government, say for example the police, to do mandatory checks on everyone's homes, because if they have "nothing to hide", why would they refuse, eh?

Schooled children are at home for weeks every year during school holidays, do the millions of parents with children at school think it's acceptable for the government to knock on their door unannounced at any time? And they just have to drop what they're doing and let them in.

Jesus, listen to yourself and wise up.

Having worked in a school for over 10 years and seen the decline is the very reason my own child is Home Educated. We meet lots of Home Ed parents who are either ex teachers or still teaching...that speaks volumes!

You’ll probably find that home ed families in the UK are very accepting and more open minded than right wing MAGA types.

Loads of HE parents won't even show samples of their child's work to the local authority

That's correct, I don't either. I would bever provide samples of 'work' to the LA. What would be the point of that anyway? It doesn't prove anything as it could be anyone's Maths worksheet/watercolour painting/Toilet roll robot.

I don't understand why nobody is able to discuss the actual point OP made.

Nobody says all home education is shit. Just like not all school education is shit. But education of some sort is important and simply not educating kids is unacceptable.

There are of course circumstances where schools and LAs have failed kids too. There are always plenty of threads on here about that. But this particular thread is about the need to make sure that the people educating children outside of school are able to do a good enough job of it. I don't think that's a controversial idea at all. It's difficult though because the venn diagram of people who reject mainstream education ideologically and yet accept that sort of state monitoring is absolutely tiny.

If you have nothing to hide. ....

Jewish people were told this back when Germany insisted they wore stars to show their Jewish heritage. Look how it turned out for them

I have nothing to hide but absolutely everything to protect

I'm sorry but the nothing to hide I
Means nothing

Absolute rubbish!

There are plenty of jobs if you have the right level of education and skills!

There are huge shortages in many sectors of the economy not least medicine, engineering, teaching, architecture etc….

Without an education your prospects are much more limited!

Yes, you are being unreasonable. It's none of your business, and I am one of those parents who didn't want the government raising my children. People were home educating long before the government decided to open schools--aka indoctrination camps. In the US this was shortly after the civil war. My daughter did pretty much whatever interested her. We took trips, read, raised animals etc. Today she is in university finishing up her BSN (nursing) and is just fine. As well educated and informed as any traditionally schooled child. Personally, I think you should spend your 'worry time' fretting over the children forced to spend their childhoods in government schools.

You should read "Dumbing Us Down" by John Taylor Gatto. He was awarded Teacher of the Year in New York, taught in both public, private and alternative schools, and came to the conclusion that schools are evil. All of them. I agree. Any benefits far outweighed by the detriments.

But it's ok for the government to do whatever they want with regard to your child's education? Not in my book. Nobody has the best interests of my child at heart more than I do.

It's called 'privacy'. We have an inherent right to it. I'm not doing anything wrong in the restroom--nothing to 'hide'. But I shut the door, because I value my privacy. This shouldn't need explaining.

I work in a secondary school in Scotland. I am deeply concerned about some of the families being approved for homeschooling.
There is one child I’m thinking of: shared a room with her big sister’s baby, never came to school with money for food on the rare occasions she was in the building, mum is on Onlyfans, big sister was sexually assaulted by mum’s boyfriend (thankfully no longer on the scene, I believe).
Mum applied for homeschooling and it was approved, despite our objections. We haven’t seen the child since.
It is a horrific state of affairs.

But @SilenceInside this link agrees with the op? The official figures show 126,000 children were electively home educated in autumn 2025, compared with 111,700 in autumn 2024 — an increase of about 13% in a single year

Get off social media would be my suggestion. It's not real.

This thread would sadly suggest otherwise 😢

Oh God that’s horrendous. That poor girl. I suppose there’s nothing you can do as a school now either; she’s no longer under any of your care 😔

That’s the USA where you can expect to be shot in class. A bit different to here, I hope.

But could you have educated 4 or 5 children to this standard? Seems unlikely. And is she now being indoctrinate by big pharma companies on her nursing course?

The RSPCA insisted on doing this before they would let me adopt a cat 🤷‍♀️

But that doesn’t mean you can teach them. I would walk over hot coals for my kids. But I would be hopeless at teaching them maths, and I wouldn’t want their entire memories of childhood to be just hanging out with me.

I work in Attendance compliance. Part of my role is fining for poor attendance

I don’t like my job, (hate it actually) so I’m happy to be honest, that until the absolute obsession with 100% attendance at all costs stops, or at least softens, EHE will continue to rise.

I don’t think it’s necessarily good for the child to be removed from school, but it often occurs when a parent is facing an imminent fine or prosecution. This is often children who have SEN needs, but unfortunately attendance doesn’t really allow for that kind of thing, so really no allowances are made if your child is EBSA and you will be pressured to the max to get them in. Then there are endless letters telling you (basically) to do better with attendance and the meetings and some of these parents cannot get their children in. And there is no support for that.

I can’t say about the education received at home, but I can 100% say why it’s becoming such an attractive idea

Why would you assume that because I have concerns about a system that allows parents to decide to deny the right to a state education to their child, that I don't care about the flaws in the current system, or need to educate myself on SEND provision?
Last week, a relative spent 2 hours waiting for an ambulance to take a child to hospital, before being told to make their own way there. After another 3 hours the child was treated, by which time the situation had escalated. Yet if the parent, who rightly felt the NHS had failed them, decided to withold all future NHS care from their child and self treat with Google and home remedies, I'd be concerned.
I'm fully aware that in some cases parents feel HS is the only option. I acknowledged that in some cases its the best option within our current system.
I can do that while still feeling the system that allows this decision to be made by parents is flawed. In my earlier post I said what I thought should be in place to make this a safe option. My concern is that these things are not in place.
I'm also concerned about the state of education generally and SEND provision. The concerns are not mutually elusive and I'm not criticising HS parents.

I can do that while still feeling the system that allows this decision to be made by parents is flawed.

Who the fuck else should make decisions about a child than their parents? What a very terrifying road.